© 2000 by British Computer Society
Relations Modelling Sets of Hypermedia Links and Navigation
1 School of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK Email: hla@cs.nott.ac.uk
This paper proposes a mathematical model of sets of hypermedia links and of the navigation of these links. Every set of links can be modelled as a mathematical binary relation and different representations of binary relations then model all the possible implementations of sets of links. Representations are generated by combining the different representations of the sets participating in the relation, although some ‘representations’ thus generated do not genuinely represent binary relations. Despite this, they are still used in hypermedia implementations, although not without some implicit assumption of relatedness in addition to the representation. The navigation of links is modelled by questions asked of binary relations in any of these representations. For some representations and some situations, the questions cannot be answered, so the usefulness of a link set implementation is governed by its underlying representation. The purpose of this model is to create a reference framework for the different implementations of links in hypermedia systems. This reference framework provides a common basis for the analysis and comparison of the mechanics of link implementations, performed independently of the hypermedia system that implements them and independently of the data being linked.
Received 18 July, 1997. Revised 18 September, 2000.