A hypertext learner navigates with a instinctive feeling for a knowledge. The learner does not know her queries, although she has a feeling for them. A learner’s navigation appears as complete upon the emergence of an aesthetic pleasure, called rasa. The order of arrival or the associational logic and even the temporal order are not relevant to this emergence. The completeness of aesthetics is important. The learner does not look for the intention of the writer, neither does she look for (...) significance. Lexia has a suggestive power and she is suggested in the arrival of aesthetics. Hypertext learning does not depend on communication. The learner in her pleasure transgresses the bounds of space-time to be in communion with several writers/learners. Hypertext learning does not appear to be fundamentally different from the analog learning; however, in performance, as in navigation, the learner assumes a mental state that helps her in her emergence into aesthetic bliss, of an arrival to the completed lexial navigation. This completeness is owing to aesthetics and is not owing to either the semantics or the query-fulfilling qualities. (shrink)

Dalgaard's recent article [3] argues that the part of the Web that constitutes the scientific literature is composed of increasingly linked archives. He describes the move in the online communications of the scientific community towards an expanding zone of secondorder textuality, of an evolving network of texts commenting on, citing, classifying, abstracting, listing and revising other texts. In this respect, archives are becoming a network of texts rather than simply a classified collection of texts. He emphasizes the definition of hypertext (...) as multi-linear text, in contrast to the simple definition of a hypertext as 'a document with links in'. (shrink)

I live in Seattle, the city which last Fall was host to two major international conferences of interest to science fiction readers: The Annual International IEEE Symposium on Virtual Reality (VRAIS- 93) and The 5th ACM Conference on Hypertext (Hypertext-93). I was able to attend both conferences, and I'll use this column to provide an overview of what I learned there.

Hypertext publishing, the integration of a large body (perhaps billions) of public writings into a unified hypertext environment, will require the simultaneous solution of problems involving very wide database distribution, royalties, freedom of speech, and privacy. This paper describes these problems and presents, for criticism and discussion, an abstract design which seems to solve many of them. This design, called LinkText, is presented both as a specification and as design approaches grouped around various levels of electronic publishing.

This paper examines some textual devices that writers may use to pre-structure the activities of their readers. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is used as an 'explicating device' to explore how writers can provide reading instructions, and how these can be experienced by readers. Structuring devices like paragraphs and sections, and hypertextual elements like notes and references are investigated in detail. In this way, the paper aspires to contribute to 'an ethnomethodology of textual practices'.

Hypertext may represent a new paradigm capable of exploring legal sources within which links are established according to pertinent relationships found between statute texts and case law. However, to discover relevant information in such a network, a browsing mechanism is not enough when faced with a large volume of texts. This paper describes a new retrieval model where documents are represented according to both their content and relationships with other sources of information.

Hypertext and knowledge based systems can be viewed as complementary technologies, which if combined into a composite system may be able to yield a whole which is greater than the sum of the parts. To gain the maximum benefits, however, we need to think about how to harness this potential synergy. This will mean devising new styles of system, rather than merely seeking to enhance the old models.In this paper we describe our model for coupling hypertext and a knowledge based (...) system, and then go on to describe two prototype systems which attempt to exploit this composite framework. The first application concerns animated hypertext which accords the text a central role whilst giving access to all the advantages of a knowledge based system. The second suggests how we can augment the hypertext by providing links which reflect the conceptual model of a knowledge based system in the domain, so as to provide a more structured traversal of the text. (shrink)

This paper examines some textual devices that writers may use to pre-structure the activities of their readers. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is used as an 'explicating device' to explore how writers can provide reading instructions, and how these can be experienced by readers. Structuring devices like paragraphs and sections, and hypertextual elements like notes and references are investigated in detail. In this way, the paper aspires to contribute to 'an ethnomethodology of textual practices'.

Interactive computer systems can support their users in problem solving, both in Performing their work tasks and in using the systems themselves. Not only is direct support for heuristics beneficial, but to do so modifies the form of computer support provided. This Paper defines and explores the use of problem solving heuristics in user interface design.