Hypertext

Definition

• A hypertext is (physically) a non-linear text.

• Hypertext is not just HTML.

• Hypertext systems allow users to author, edit and follow links between different bodies of text. Hypermedia systems, are similar to hypertext systems, except that the user can use other forms of media as well.

History

This is a very incomplete timeline:

1. 1945: V. Bush, As We May Think
2. 1965: Ted Nelson invents the word "Hypertext"
3. 1968: [Engelbart] demoes "HyperMedia" over the network
4. 1981: Start of Ted Nelson's [Xanadu project] which never managed to take off, however there finally was an available implementation in 1999 (?)
5. 1992 First commercial hypertext system by Eastgate (still sold as [Storyspace])
6. 1989: Tim Berners-Lee builds the first prototype of the WWW and invents HTML, formally as a SGML application.
7. 1991: Gopher (Menu-based navigation through files and services on the Internet)
8. 1992-1993: The WWW starts spreading
9. 1992 / 1997 [Hytime] is a complex SGML application. Hytime is an ISO standard that has rarely been used, but it had a big influence on the definition of more recent Web Standards like XLink.
10. 1995 Ward Cunningham invented the first Wiki. Wikis are probably the only popular [[CMS]s that are compatible with the Hypertext concept.

Examples

There are not many good hypertext examples on the Internet. Some exceptions are:

• The [Wikipedia
• [Beat's Biblionetz]
• The [Theory into Practise DataBase] (TIP)

References

• Bush,V. As We May Think, originally published in Atlantic Monthly, July 1995.
• Conklin, J. Hypertext: An Introduction and Survey, IEEE Computer, vol. 1(9), pp. 17-40, September 1987.
• Spiro, R.J., Coulson, R.L., Feltovich, P.J., & Anderson, D. (1988). Cognitive flexibility theory: Advanced knowledge acquisition in ill-structured domains. In V. Patel (ed.), Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. [1]

Links

• [Martin Ryder's collection of hypertext links]