Hypertext and paper: A special synergy

摘要

Some people argue that hypertext is easy to write, is hard to create by converting existing text into hypertext, and has a massive market. This paper argues the contrary. First, hypertext is hard to write. Second, automatically converting a text into hypertext is, to a first approximation, easy. Third, successful marketing of hypertext depends on having a large volume of material that is also available in paper form. These three iconoclastic statements are based on painful experience, having written a book about hypertext with our own hypertext system. To market the book it has been published on paper and converted into several popular, commercial hypertext systems. Users of the resultant products have favoured a combination of paper and hypertext.