In computer science, hypertext is a concept that denotes text formatted using a markup language and having in its structure hyperlinks to other elements. In a broader sense, hypertext is any text that includes internal references from one part to another.
Hypertext Concept
The basic unit of hypertext in computer science is a link. Through cross-references, documents and web pages communicate with each other, giving links to the necessary material.
To understand what hypertext is, it is worth considering a simple example. Suppose a person reads an encyclopedia and on one of the pages he sees a term unknown to him, next to which is a footnote indicating that the meaning of this term is revealed on a particular page. He turns over the book, gets to the desired page and gets the necessary information from there. In computer science, everything happens in a similar way, with the exception of greater interactivity - in a web document, some data blocks are formed by links, clicking on which, the reader gets to another page, which reveals the topic of interest to him in detail.
In addition to textual information and links, hypertext can contain graphic elements, video, audio recordings.
Formatting takes place in the HTML hypertext language, with which you can add a link or other interactive element to the text. Accordingly, the text is given a specific structure and ordering.
Prerequisites for the emergence of hypertext
It is necessary to say a few words about the emergence of hypertext in computer science. This concept began to emerge at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the American scientist Vannevar Bush developed the idea of a special machine that can view and record various documents in the form of film microfilms. The innovation in Bush’s approach was not in the very principle of such a device, but in the mechanism of access to information, which was to be implemented precisely by the cross-reference method. Accordingly, we can say that he was the first inventor of hypertext as a model of interaction with blocks of information. Links in his system should have been indicated on additional fields of documents, sending the user to the final information.
The emergence of hypertext and the creation of the World Wide Web
However, Bush proposed only a system, and who introduced the term "hypertext"? In 1965, the term first appeared in the publication of the scientist Ted Nelson. He developed his own system for interacting and organizing text, which he called Xanadu. Nelson’s definition of hypertext is:
Hypertext is a form of writing that branches or is implemented upon request.
Thus, he became the inventor of hypertext, gave it the appropriate name and a clear definition, on the basis of which people consider hypertext in their usual sense of understanding as text that a user can navigate non-linearly through links.
The next step in the development of hypertext was the first Hypertext'87 - 99 conference held in the USA. The ideas presented at this conference have interested many scientists.
Two years later, in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed the revolutionary idea of creating the broadest hypertext project - WWW (World Wide Web), and a year later HTML appeared, which made it possible to create web pages.
A few words about HTML
This is a hypertext markup language that allows you to format individual elements of a web page to create the necessary structure of the final document. It is not a programming language: in simple words, HTML with the help of tags points to each element of the page in its place and the functionality that is executed.
HTML is interpreted in the browser - on the screen where the site page is displayed, you can see the result of the specified formatting. Previously, HTML was used including for the basic design of sites, but over time, this functionality almost completely switched to CSS style sheets.
Initially, this language did not have the ability to support multimedia, but only structured a text document. It was conceived as a language that should not be tied to a specific platform and was intended to be displayed on any output devices, but over time this option disappeared, and the emphasis was placed on a wide multimedia functionality instead of cross-platform.
Over the entire existence of the HTML hypertext markup language, certain standards have been set. HTML of the fifth version is now used. Until 1995, there was no standardization as such; there were many unofficial and semi-official options. In the fourth version there was a global cleaning of the standard from obsolete elements, many tags were removed, and it was customary to use CSS to style documents.
Hypertext Structure
As indicated above, hypertext consists of the text of a document containing links. Each link, in turn, consists of two elements:
The address part contains information about exactly where the given link redirects, and the pointer is the part of the link displayed to the user that it follows. To understand what hypertext is, it is worth considering an example of how a link is formatted.
It looks like this:
<a href="google.com">Google</a>
In this example, google.com will be the address to which the client will go when he clicks on the word Google (it will be highlighted in color, underline, or in any other way specified in the text of the document).
This is a very flexible system, thanks to which you can get to the documents involved in the internal structure of the site, as well as to external resources.
Finally
So, the article examined what hypertext is in computer science. This is a very widely used system in Internet technology. With its help, not only web pages are formatted for ease of use, it is also indispensable in areas such as SEO technology, when the content of a site using the HTML markup language is optimized for search engines. In addition, it is widely used in working with multimedia technologies and graphics.
The ability to use hypertext is necessary not only among web-developers: this is basic knowledge that will be useful for any confident user to correctly navigate the Internet.