Hypertext systems provide good information management support for a wide variety of documentation efforts. These efforts range from developing software to writing a book. However, existing hypertext systems provide poor support for collaboration among teams of authors. This paper starts by briefly describing properties of several existing hypertext systems. Then several models for forming partitions in a hypertext database are examined and contexts, a partitioning scheme that supports multiperson cooperative efforts, are introduced. The semantic issues involved in defining contexts are explored in detail.

A hypertext system makes a good information management system for a software development environment. However, existing hypertext systems provide poor support for collaboration among members of development teams. We examine several models for forming partitions in a hypertext data base and define our notion of contexts, a partitioning scheme that supports multi-person cooperative efforts.

Even though many of the essential notions of hypertext were first contained in the description of a “memex,” written by Vannevar Bush in 1945 [Bus45], there are today only a few scattered implementations of hypertext, let alone any serious use of it in a CAD environment. In what follows, we describe what hypertext is all about. We describe a prototype hypertext system, named Neptune, that we have built. We show how it is useful, especially its broad applicability to CAD.