Hand-made and Computed Links, Precomputed and Dynamic Links

There are alternative approaches to link creation in hypermedia applications. The first distinction differs in the direct or indirect involvement of a human author in the process. The second distinction among computed links refers to when the computation is done, i.e. whether links are dynamically computed or precomputed. The aim is to investigate the relative merits of these different approaches. The approaches are exemplified with three projects familiar to the authors. While most of the paper is concerned with raising the issues involved, it also outlines two methodologies to help hypermedia designers choose the best approach or combination of them to include in their developments, depending on the type of application, data characteristics and user and operational requirements.