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HyperNote Pro: a text annotating HyperCard stack

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

In 1992 I wrote a HyperCard stack called HyperNote Pro.

HyperNote screenshotHyperNote allowed you to annotate plain text files, and it really was a hypertext system. Import a plain text file. Click a word to see a note. Option-click a word to create a note. Shift-click a word to create an image note. Option-shift-click a word to link to another document. Use the HyperNote > New HypernNote menu option to duplicate the stack and create a new HyperNote document.

HyperCard is all but dead, and need an older Macintosh computer to use the application. It was pretty cool. You can download it from my archives. Here is the text from the self-extracting archive:

HyperNote Pro: a text annotating stack by Eric Lease Morgan

HyperNote Pro is a HyperCard stack used to annotate text. It can also create true hypertext links between itself and other documents or applications.

Simply create a new HyperNote Pro stack, import a text file, and add pop–up notes, pictures, and/or hypertext links to the text. The resulting stack can be distributed to anybody with HyperCard 2.0 and they will be able to read or edit your notes and pictures. They will be able to link to other documents if the documents are available.

Here are some uses for HyperNote Pro. Context sensitive help can be created for applications. News or journal articles could be imported and your opinions added. Business reports could be enhances with graphs. Resumes could go into greater detail without overwhelming the reader. Students could turn in papers and teachers could comment on the text.

Another neat thing about HyperNote Pro is it self–replicating. By selecting “New HN…” and choosing a text–file, HyperNote Pro creates a copy of itself except with the text of the chosen file.

HyperNote Pro is free. It requires HyperCard 2.0 to run.

Features:

  • any size text–file can be imported
  • format the text with any available font
  • add/edit pop–up notes and/or pictures to imported text
  • add true hypertext links to any document or application
  • includes a “super find” feature
  • self–replicating
  • System 7 compatible
        \ /
       - * -      
     \ // \       Eric Lease Morgan, Systems Librarian 
    - * -|\ /     North Carolina State University
     / \ - * -    Box 7111, Room 2111
      |  |/ \     Raleigh, NC 29695-7111
      \ /| |      (919) 515-6182
     - * - |
      / \| /      
       | |/       
    ===========   America Online: EricMorgan
     \=======/    Compu$erve: 71020,2026
      \=====/     Internet: eric_morgan@ncsu.edu
       =====      The Well: emorgan

P.S. Maybe I will be able to upload this stack to TileStack as seen on Slashdot.

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Code4Lib Journal Perl module (version .003)

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

I hacked together a Code4Lib Journal Perl module providing read-only access to the Journal’s underlying WordPress (MySQL) database. You can download the distribution, and the following is from the distribution’s README file:

This is the README file for a Perl module called C4LJ — Code4Lib Journal

Code4Lib Journal is the refereed serial of the Code4Lib community. [1] The community desires to make the Journal’s content as widely accessible as possible. To that end, this Perl module is a read-only API against the Journal’s underlying WordPress database. Its primary purpose is to generate XML files that can be uploaded to the Directory of Open Access Journals and consequently made available through their OAI interface. [2]

Installation

To install the module you first need to have access to a WordPress (MySQL) database styled after the Journal. There is sample data in the distribution’s etc directory.

Next, you need to edit lib/C4LJ/Config.pm. Specifically, you will need to change the values of:

* $DATA_SOURCE – the DSN of your database, and you will probably need to only edit the value of the database name

* $USERNAME – the name of a account allowed to read the database

* $PASSWORD – the password of $USERNAME

Finally, exploit the normal Perl installation procedure: make; make test; make install.

Usage

To use the module, you will want to use C4LJ::Articles->get_articles. Call this method. Get back a list of article objects, and process each one. Something like this:

  use C4LJ::Article;
  foreach ( C4LJ::Article->get_articles ) {
    print '        ID: ' . $_->id       . "\n";
    print '     Title: ' . $_->title    . "\n";
    print '       URL: ' . $_->url      . "\n";
    print '  Abstract: ' . $_->abstract . "\n";
    print '    Author: ' . $_->author   . "\n";
    print '      Date: ' . $_->date     . "\n";
    print '     Issue: ' . $_->issue    . "\n";
    print "\n";
  }

The bin directory contains three sample applications:

1. dump-metadata.pl – the code above, basically

2. c4lj2doaj.pl – given an issue number, output XML suitable for DOAJ

3. c4lj2doaj.cgi – the same as c4lj2doaj.pl but with a Web interface

See the modules’ PODs for more detail.

License

This module is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Notes

[1] Code4Lib Journal – http://journal.code4lib.org/
[2] DOAJ OAI information – http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=loadTempl&templ=070509

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get-mbooks.pl

Monday, May 26th, 2008

I few months ago I wrote a program called get-mbooks.pl, and it is was used to harvest MARC data from the University of Michigan’s OAI repository of public domain Google Books. You can download the program here, and what follows is the distribution’s README file:

This is the README file for script called get-mbooks.pl

This script — get-mbooks.pl — is an OAI harvester. It makes a connection to the OAI data provider at the University of Michigan. [1] It then requests the set of public domain Google Books (mbooks:pd) using the marc21 (MARCXML) metadata schema. As the metadata data is downloaded it gets converted into MARC records in communications format through the use of the MARC::File::SAX handler.

The magic of this script lies in MARC::File::SAX. Is a hack written by Ed Summers against MARC::File::SAX found on CPAN. It converts the metadata sent from the provider into “real” MARC. You will need this hacked version of the module in your Perl path, and it has been saved in the lib directory of this distribution.

To get get-mbooks.pl to work you will first need Perl. Describing how to install Perl is beyond the scope of this README. Next you will need the necessary modules. Installing them is best accomplished through the use of cpan but you will need to be root. As root, run cpan and when prompted, install Net::OAI::Harvester:

$ sudo cpan
cpan> install Net::OAI::Harvester

You will also need the various MARC::Record modules:

$ sudo cpan
cpan> install MARC::Record

When you get this far, and assuming the hacked version of MARC::File::SAX is saved in the distribution’s lib directory, all you need to do next is run the program.

$ ./get-mbooks.pl

Downloading the data is not a quick process, and progress will be echoed in the terminal. At any time after you have gotten some records you can quit the program (ctrl-c) and use the Perl script marcdump to see what you have gotten (marcdump <file>).

Fun with OAI, Google Books, and MARC.

[1] http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/o/oai/oai

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Hello, World!

Monday, May 26th, 2008

Hello, World! It is nice to meet you.

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