Conversion Issues

As much as they are well suited for adaptation to hypertext, converting text to hypertext has been a classic problem while dealing with very large information spaces such as training manuals, encyclopedias, dictionaries. Currently published literature on hypertext contains little work directly related to the scale of transforming large volumes of encyclopedic text into hypertext form (most deal with creating small hypertext documents, not converting large documents to hypertext).

The following are some of the issues involved in converting text to hypertext: ^{[Glushko, 1989], [Riner, 1991]}

1. Identifying documents that would benefit readers if converted to hypertext form.
   
   
2. Determining procedures to convert them to hypertext format.
   
   
3. Preparing documents in an electronic format from paper or other forms.
   
   
4. Identifying nodes and links and classifying them into various types (to capture semantics).
   
   
5. Determining the target of a link as a complete entry, a sub entry, or a derivative form is a challenging task. This involves determining the right part of speech, the etymological root, and applying sense-disambiguation to identify a particular meaning.
   
   
6. With present-day video monitors, the display of large entries in their entirety is still a problem. This can be partly solved by having fisheye views and abbreviations. Structural information can be extracted from the tags and employed in the construction of a structural view.
   
   
7. Performing the conversion and verifying the results.