Hypertext has been around forever. It got a boost when Macs started shipping with HyperCard many years ago. It is a rare Windows-based program that doesn't provide hypertext documentation in the form of a Microsoft help file or two. And you can buy all sorts of CD-ROMs built around various proprietary hypertext engines. But none of these implementations have had the rapid and widespread impact already enjoyed by HTML. That's what a world-wide web gets you, I suppose.

So I've been translating old documents into HTML, and writing new ones, at a furious pace. After years of writing nroff, troff, and Ventura Publisher markup, HTML is a familiar dialect of gibberish. You just have to think a bit harder about where the links should go. The result is well worth the effort. I can find things worlds faster chasing links than I ever could scanning an index or a table of contents.

For example, the guide to the C Standard that I wrote years ago with Jim Brodie will soon be reissued by Prentice Hall. Stuck in the back will be a diskette with the whole works in hypertext. To be perfectly honest, the HTML is better than the book now. All those hot links between topics make all the difference. (Still, I find myself referring to the musty old book version on a regular basis, if only to minimize the number of Windows tasks running at any one time.)

The interesting thing is, I've put none of this stuff out on the Web so far. If my service provider ever puts my home page in place, I intend to hang out a sampler or two, but I haven't got that far. I'm quite content so far running a Mosaic browser in local mode — to read my C manual, a copy of the draft C++ Standard, and the documentation for my C++ library. I just wish I could get a browser that doesn't complain about the lack of a network everytime I start it up.

P.J. Plauger
pjp@plauger.com