Design considerations when using external hypertext engines from applications

摘要

More and more applications today are employing the advantages available from the advances in hypertext to better impart information to the user. This position paper addresses experiences with the specific case of an information application using an ''external'' hypertext ''engine'' to reference large textual documents that are regularly changing. As hypertext engines take on a role of ''text servers'' than can appear seamlessly in other applications, we can benefit from lessons learned in code reuse regarding extensibility, expandability and portability. If a text referenced by an application was static, the interface between the application and the hypertext engine would be simple. However, a changing reference document can induce unacceptable life-cycle costs for an application that needs to employ external hypertext engines to display the referenced text. This paper will present solutions to this problem that were developed when building an information system that would run on an ''ordinary'' PC.