A Hypermedia System for Academic Writing

Katherine Phelps


Introduction

I am not a computer scientist nor a programmer. I am an expert user and a fan of the latest research toys. I teach a class in writing for computer media for the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Creative Writing Department. Many of my students have never even used a computer before, but by the end of the semester they can all hand markup HTML pages for their class projects. At home I use a PC running Linux, but I have to present my material to supervisors who use either Windows 95 or Apple Mac. So, my opinions are primarily from the perspective of a well-informed user who often is required to translate her understanding of various technologies to those who are less experienced or informed.

As I have been working through the process of developing this dissertation, I have found myself longing for certain hypermedia functionality that is either missing or not widely available. I have also found myself getting irritated with some of the decisions made by the WWW Consortium (W3C) as to the direction HTML should be taking. Therefore, I have put together a series of recommendations.