Designing hypertext support for computational applications

Abstract

This paper discusses issues and design considerations for providing hypertext as supporting functionality within computational applications, using geographic information systems (GIS) as an example domain. Computation-oriented applications primarily concern analytical results; display or interface functionality is of secondary importance. Many computationoriented applications do not take advantage of the information management and navigation paradigms that characterize hypertext, improving access to application objects and supporting interrelationships among them. Hypertext allows users to create annotations to supplement computational elements and activities, and most important, to interrelate the elements of computation in order to structure or partition the computational space. Many scientific and business applications are computational as opposed to display-oriented. Examples include accounting applications, computer-aided design systems, geographic information systems, expert sys...