From: Eric Armstrong <eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com>
vaneyken@sympatico.ca wrote:
>
> I believe that we need a secondary form of hyperlink pertaining to
> abbreviations and specialized terms. Those would not be underlined.
> A reader would simply expect that clicking on them would immediately
> generate the appropriate definition, preferably in a separate window
> so as not to interrupt the primary document being read.
>
Yes, yes, YES!
I've been wanting this since working with help systems in the last
millennium. That is a major reason for being happy with XML -- typed
links, so you can mark a link as a "normal" or "invisible" link.
Such words would appear as normal text so the links don't interfere
with normal reading, but the cursor would change shape when over them
to indicate that a link exists.
When you converting the XML document for display in HTML, the type can
control the transformation so that the link displays with no
underlining,
with the same color as everything else, and in a separate window. (That
makes the most sense, as you say.)
Expanding on the concept, it is worth remembering that English is
a second language for a large part of the world's population
(including much of our population!). Much like spell checkers have
a standard language word list and topic-specific word lists, the
authoring system's glossary could have standard-english terms as well
as topic-specific terms.
To keep transmission times down, the work of recognizing language
terms and creating links should probably take place on the receiver's
system. The system can check whatever glossaries happen to be present,
and do the dynamic linking accordingly. To minimize processing times,
one can imagine several levels of operation:
* A right-click option to check the current word for a link.
* A "link all terms in current document" menu option.
* An "automatically link all terms when document is received"
configuration setting.
The glossaries themselves have all the characteristics of a DKR,
or least of a HyperDocument. They need to be authored, edited,
improved, and transmitted. When new revisions are created, the
differences need to be transmitted.
The receiver then needs options to:
a) Accept transmitted differences (& merge into existing copy)
b) Make a "back issue" request to retrieve the difference-base
--If the original document does not already exist, that
means a message is sent back to the "document origin"
that says "send the original". The original is then
automatically sent.
--If the original document exists, but is out of date, that
means a message is sent back to the "document origin"
that says "send all differences between <current version>
and <recently-received differences>. The original is then
updated.
--In each case, the "document origin" should be the central
server from which the document was "published". If the
document cannot be found on that site, then a message is
sent to the system that sent the message originally.
Example:
* A document is sent from eric@myHome, to be "published"
at bootstrap.org
* The document is archived at bootstrap.org at the same
time it is sent to everyone on the bootstrap list.
(How and when that happens TBD.)
* The "document origin" is myDocment@bootstrap.org
* The bootstrap server will then reply to most requests
for back issues.
* If that is not available for some reason, then
then clientApp@myHome will be contacted. (Messages
will be sent to eric@myHome and bootstrap.org to
inform the owners.)
* If both requests fail, then one message goes to the
receiver of the document, and another goes to
eric@myHome to spotlight the difficulty.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Tue Aug 21 2001 - 18:56:49 PDT