Storing, processing and transmitting linked chunks of structured text

Abstract

Digital information and communication technology has sparked many initiatives to
research and reconsider what a text is. But many technical and theoretical obstacles
remain to be solved. Texts are by many theoreticians and researchers considered to be
neither linear, nor hierarchical. I argue that for example for advanced text editing
some of the currently used tools or formats, like HTML, XML and corresponding
software could be replaced with new tools that are designed to handle nonlinear texts
in more transparent ways. This paper is a sketch of a research and development
project that would have as its goal to develop such tools. Specifically, the paper
focuses on a sketch of a core tool. Ideally, this tool would safely store and
transmit texts, and relationships between texts, in the form of graphs. The tool
would handle certification of relationships between text segments as well as multiple
editorship and non-hierarchical structures in a native way.