Conceptual Framework of the Hypertext Construction

(source: my thesis- improving learning ability through hypertext system)

A General Construction

Shneiderman [1989] has identified three “golden rules of hypertext” to determine whether a document is appropriate for hypertext:
· There is a large body of information organized into numerous fragments,
· The fragments relate to each other, and
· The user needs only a small fraction at any time.

Furuta et al, [1989] also added that the construction of a hypertext engages two parts but united activities:
1. Generation of the individual articles in the hypertext’s database, each with their own internal structure.
2. Identification of the interrelationships among the separate articles (forming the contextual links).

The detail of transformation methodology that Furuta, et.al [1989] proposed is as follows:
1. Design the structure of the target hypertext article.
2. Determine how the source’s structure corresponds to the desired target’s structure.
3. Specify the conversion process, which must
· Extract the relevant components of the source’s structure
· Reorganize the components to form the target’s structure
· Augment the target’s structure with representation of relationships (links)
· Generate the hypertext database files
4. Convert from source to produce the target hypertext database.
5. Modify the hypertext database, if appropriate, to provide a “wrapper”, to incorporate additional articles, and to correct errors generated in conversion or carried forward from original source.

Figure Hypertext Transformation Model

The Furuta et.al.’s approach as illustrated in Figure 2.2 is rather generic and shows the degree of natural logical relationship between the components of the input information source and the targeted hypertext.

Glushko, [1989] proposed some criteria in converting linear documents into hypertext format, both manually and automatically:

1. The most care is required while identifying text units as nodes that can be separate modules and still be sufficient enough to be cross-references for other entries.

2. A good design rule is to choose as the basic unit of text the smallest logical structure with a unique name (such as the title for an entry) - this can be used as a selection key in a hierarchical browser, in search lists as candidate keys, as bookmarks, and embedded cross-references.

3. Pages or paragraphs are less suited as hypertext units because they do not form convenient handles for manipulation.

4. It is very important to understand both the explicit and implicit link structures in the printed version of the material. Careful decisions have to be made as to what links to create and what to disregard.

5. It is important to understand the user's task and to support links that follow some model of the user's need for information in some particular context. It is essential not to link items that are related in superficial ways.

6. The organization of the material should be open and flexible. Different kinds of views should be available for different users. View descriptions may appear as alternate overview diagrams or webs of information.

References:

[Shneiderman, 1989] Shneiderman, Ben, 1989, Reflections on authoring, editing, and managing hypertext, in The Society of Text, ed., E. Barret, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

[Furuta, et al., 1989] Furuta, R., Plaisant, C., Shneiderman, B., 1989, Automatically transforming regularly structured linear documents into Hypertext, in Electronic Publishing, Vol. 2(4), pp.211-229.

[Glushko, 1989]. Glushko, Robert J., 1989, Transforming Text Into Hypertext For a Compact Disc Encyclopedia, Proceedings of CHI '89, ACM Press.