What is Hypertext?



Many people have given definitions. Here are a few:

Ted Nelson (dubbed: "The father of hypertext") "A combination of natural language text with the computer's capacity for interactive branching"

Ted Nelson (again)

"Dynamic display of a nonlinear text which cannot be printed conveniently on a conventional page"

P. J. Brown

"Representation of a body of information in a form that captures all the inherent interlinks in the information"

Elmer Sanvad (If anyone knows who he is, please let me know!)

"Organization of a document as a collection of nodes connected by direct links"

Richard Rubenstein (author of Digital Typography, published by Digital Press)

"A system in which a rich structure of interconnections is created & used within online electronic documents"

Jeff Conklin (author of an IEEE Survey article on hypertext. It's referenced in the bibliography of the reading)

"A computer-based system with the ability to perform high speed, branching transactions on textual elements, to aid thinking and to aid communication"

Fernandez and Lander

"text that recognizes a stimulus (i.e., a mouse click) and is associated with a "link" to another location.

Schneiderman

"a database that has active cross-reference and allows the reader to "jump" to other parts of the database as desired."

Anonymous 1

"Idea Processing"

Anonymous 2

"Basis for global scientific literature"

Prof Paul De Bra's definitions


Send questions and comments to: Karen Lemone

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