Text to Hypertext and Back Again

Abstract

The establishment of hypertext as a usable medium has raised problems when confronted with the transition to and from more traditional methods of writing documents. If hypertext is to become a viable and widely used methodology, the process of transferring from linear to hypertext forms and back again must be satisfactorily achieved. This paper mainly describes work investigating hypertext to text transformation but the reverse process (text to hypertext) is also examined. Three experiments are reported, the first looking at document structures for guiding the linearisation process, the second looking at document content and semantics. The third experiment is the MUCH experiment where a semantic net is used to investigate the linearisation process. Finally methods will be described to quantify the success of the linearisation process and some conclusions on the role of semantics and structure within hyperdocuments are presented.