Types and inheritance in hypertext

✍ Scribed by Mikael Snaprud; Hermann Kaindl

• Book ID: 102967745
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 708 KB
• Volume: 41
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1071-5819
• DOI: 10.1006/ijhc.1994.1057

✦ Synopsis

Modeling tasks and domains of the real world, and especially developing a completely formal representation of the models, is very difficult. However, modeling is a key activity in, for example, object-oriented analysis and in knowledge acquisition. Since premature attempts at formal representation reinforce the problem, we propose to use semiformal representations. While hypertext is mostly used as a medium between authors and readers, our emphasis is primarily on using it as a means of semiformal representation in the early stages of domain and task modeling. In fact, we have used hypertext as a mediating representation in the course of knowledge acquisition for building a knowledge-based (expert) system, mainly for the difficult process of modeling the relevant parts of the real world. According to our experience, hypertext provides a suitable external representation for supporting the cognitive processes involved in modeling. This intermediary representation becomes increasingly more formal through defining external and internal structure of the nodes, and through typing of links and nodes.

This paper primarily addresses the issues of typing in hypertext. We elaborate on the concepts of typed links and typed nodes, and introduce typed partitions. Moreover, we define and utilize relationships between them. Our organization of hypertext is according to object-oriented ideas, e.g. using inheritance of text. While the usefulness of inheritance in object-oriented approaches to software engineering and knowledge representation is generally known, we show the benefits of inheritance for the semiformal representation in hypertext. In summary, the use of types and inheritance in hypertext is highly recommended according to our experience.