a) the protocol and data format definitions were freely available, and b) it was initially targeted at a user community
Also - it was (fairly) simple to write both a client and a server. Xanadu was, from my understanding, insanely complex, because of all the situations it had to handle.
Not clear. The Front End-Back End protocol (from Xanadu Green, the version described in Literary Machines) would have pretty straightforward to implement on the client side, mainly because all of the heavy lifting was being done by the server. The Back End-Back End protocol (which was what I had to ask Ted about), which would have been key to the implementation of the servers, is a different matter.
The other key to the server side is the enfilade data structure. Ted didn't publish anything about enfilades until fairly recently (in the Udanax source release, as source code) because he believed them to be such a good idea that they were worth retaining as a trade secret. I haven't implemented enfilades, but from what I can tell, they should be no harder to implement than any other moderately complex hierarchical data structure.
As an aside, I'm increasingly struck that in the Web of the early 1990s (pre-Netscape) it was much easier to write browsers and servers than it is now.
HTTP/1.0? Doddle. HTML 2? Still pretty easy (and easier yet if you took the lazy route and didn't try to parse it as SGML first). No CSS, SVG, Javascript/ECMAscript, Flash. By 1995, I'd written special-purpose standalone servers and simple clients. I wouldn't want to try that now.
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Also - it was (fairly) simple to write both a client and a server. Xanadu was, from my understanding, insanely complex, because of all the situations it had to handle.
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The other key to the server side is the enfilade data structure. Ted didn't publish anything about enfilades until fairly recently (in the Udanax source release, as source code) because he believed them to be such a good idea that they were worth retaining as a trade secret. I haven't implemented enfilades, but from what I can tell, they should be no harder to implement than any other moderately complex hierarchical data structure.
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HTTP/1.0? Doddle. HTML 2? Still pretty easy (and easier yet if you took the lazy route and didn't try to parse it as SGML first). No CSS, SVG, Javascript/ECMAscript, Flash. By 1995, I'd written special-purpose standalone servers and simple clients. I wouldn't want to try that now.
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Which reminds me of another quote - that every successful complex system started off as a successful simple system.
If the original spec had been HTML5+CSS+Javascript then I doubt it would have got far, the initial barriers would have been too high.
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