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From: lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Les Carr)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Hypertext extensions to TeX: anyone doing it?
Message-ID: <2535@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: 16 Mar 90 11:14:12 GMT
References: <3117@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <114808@ti-csl.csc.ti.com>
Organization: University of Southampton, UK
Lines: 30

In article <3117@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes:
>Recently I've been examining some decent Hypertext authoring
>environments.  They use ASCII source with a markup language to indicate
>pages, frames, links, and threads.  It seems quite obvious to me that a
>hybrid TeX/Hypertext markup language would be an ideal first step
>towards the development of a truly flexible, portable environment for
>the collaborative, professional construction of structured documents. 

In pursuance of a PhD I have written a system called `Lace' which is
based around LaTeX. It uses the generic(ish) markup to automatically
create links from (eg) a reference to a labelled section or (another
eg) an entry in the table of contents to the appropriate section. Each
document is stored as an hierarchical structure of nodes according to
LaTeX's structuring definitions (chapters/sections/subsection and the
like) and can be individually retrieved. The structured markup idea is
also used to provide similar facilities for videodisc documents and
(another eg) live database access (enough to be able to fashionably
label the system as "multimedia"!). The idea is that providing yet another
document style for an *unchanged* generic document has turned it from a
report/book/article into a hypertext network---well, it works.
At the moment it only works on SUNs under NeWS, although it is being
ported to X11. There is also *some* support for other markup schemes
like troff's man macros, but, I too would like to head off in the SGML
direction if only life weren't so short and LaTeX so ubiquitous/well
supported.
-- 
L.Carr@ecs.soton.ac.uk               Les Carr
Tel: +44 703 593649                  Dept of Electronics and Computer Science
Fax: +44 703 593045                  University of Southampton
Telex: 47661 SOTONU G                Southampton  SO9 5NH  England