Xanadu Lineage

Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu envisioned a hypertext system with visible connections between documents — “parallel pages” where you could see the source and destination of every link simultaneously.

The vision

In Xanadu, links aren’t hidden behind underlined text. When you read a document, you see its connections to other documents rendered alongside it. The original and the referenced text appear side by side, connected by visible “bridge” lines.

How zetl implements it

zetl’s View Command is a terminal-native interpretation of Xanadu transclusion:

• Left pane — the current note, with numbered [N] anchor glyphs at each wikilink
• Bridge column — color-coded connectors pairing anchors to context cards
• Right pane — context cards: excerpts from forward-linked pages

The Serve Command and Build Command implement the same design with SVG bridge connectors in the browser.

Why it matters for PKM

In a Zettelkasten, notes are meant to be read in context of their connections. Xanadu-style visible links make those connections tangible:

• You see what a page links to without navigating away
• Context cards give you enough of the linked page to understand the connection
• Bridge connectors make the structure of knowledge visible

Transclusion vs embedding

zetl’s context cards are read-only excerpts, not full transclusion in the Xanadu sense. The ![[embed]] wikilink syntax requests content embedding, but zetl’s view renders a context card rather than inlining the full page.

Design decisions

See Xanadu View Design for the architectural choices behind zetl’s implementation, and SPEC-009 Xanadu View for the full specification.

See also: View Command, Serve Command, Xanadu View Design, SPEC-009 Xanadu View