About this hyperdocument
This document is created as the final assignment for the course Hypermedia Structures and Systems as teached in the form of a hypertext by prof dr. P.M.E. de Bra at the department of Mathematics and Computer Science of Eindhoven University of Technology.
The website is my version of a hypertext of the paper State of the Art Review on Hypermedia Issues And Applications published on the web in 1993 by V. Balasubramanian and converted into a set of HTML pages in 1994 by Denys Duchier.
For the generation of web pages out of the source code I used webgen, extended with plugins written by Bas Kloet and Paul van Tilburg for internal link tracking.
How to read this document
There are two ways to explore this document, either linearly or by following cross-reference links (or of course by a combination of the two). In addition to the links in the text, there are three other aids for navigation; the breadcrumb trail, the navigation menu and a site map.
Linear reading
Since the document is a converted linear document, the structure of the original is still present. At the end of every page, a block like the one below is displayed, giving a link to the next (sub)section in the original document.
It follows the logical structure of the original document, so if one reads the document by only following the links in this block, it is as if one is reading the original paper.
Following cross-reference links
One of the core ideas of hypermedia are cross-references between nodes or pages, enabling to jump around the document in a non-linear fashion.
Cross-reference links are displayed in the running text like the word “links” earlier in this sentence. Links to nodes that have already been visited before have a different color, they appear as normal text, but carry a dashed line like an unvisited link.
Breadcrumb trail
On the top, there is a breadcrumb trail, showing the path of the current node.
Navigation menu
The navigation menu on the right shows exactly where the current page is in the hierarchy of the original document. It shows all siblings of nodes on the path and the main chapter structure.
Site map
The site map is a completely “folded out” navigation menu in the sense that is shows the hierarchical location of every node present in the hypertext.