Structure in Text and Hypertext

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Description/Abstract

Hypertext techniques are now beginning to be used in the ways that early researchers anticipated, from personal note taking to online help for ubiquitous computing environments and universal literature resources, yet despite this, hypertext models have remained substantially unchanged. This thesis investigates the nature of text, how it may best be modelled on a computer and how the connections between related texts may be expressed in a flexible and efficient way. First we look at the development of hypertext systems and then compare that with the complex structured nature of texts themselves. LACE, a small-scale hypertext system based on structured texts is introduced. and compared with other hypertext systems. Approaches to large-scale distributed hypertexts discussed., and LACE-92, a system used to produce hypertexts from distributed information services is presented. Finally LACE-93, a new document architecture for global hypertext environments is proposed.