Cross-reference
Encyclopedia : C : CR : CRO : Cross-reference
Text retrieval is simply cross-reference from text to text, hence hypertext. That is, the ideas of text retrieval, cross-reference, hypertext, and the like largely overlap and closely resemble one another.
Cross-reference (XR) is triggered internally or externally, on the fly or behind the curtain, in context (XRIC) or out of context (XROC), analogous to KWIC and KWOC which were very early computer applications inherited from the centries old idea of concordance.
Traditionally, reference numbers and footnote marks are examples of XRIC, whereas the subject index and the reference list at the end of text are examples of XROC. Not surprisingly, XROC relying on the subject index and the citation index had remained the mainstream text retrieval until the advent of CD-ROM in 1985, since which the digital text, the hypertext, and eventually the World Wide Web, all inclined to XRIC, have been made widely available. When there was CD-ROM, there was XRIC. Where there is text, there is hypertext. Hypertext is no surprise!
Soon after the advent of the Web, there was a rumor that the Web (based on XRIC) is better than the Gopher (based on XROC), which was soon followed by another that the Web is better than sex, believe-it-or-not. Charles Goldfarb, one of the founding pioneers in SGML, satirically compared the antagonism between XROC and XRIC paradigms to a religious war, which would be moderately called the cross-reference war. It may be inferred from the rise of WWW and the fall of Gopher after all that XRIC is better than XROC. But both are as complementary as the two sides of the coin. Unfortunately, however, the schism between both text retrieval paradigms appears reflected on ACM/SIGIR and ACM/SIGWEB much overlapping each other.
The narrow or common sense of hypertext implies XRIC, while the wide or true sense includes XROC as well. From the text retrieval point of view, hypertext as a new retrieval paradigm, objecting to XROC or subjecting itself mainly to XRIC, sounds like a self-defeating misnomer, because text retrieval and cross-reference well comprise both XROC and XRIC in themselves. Ironically, hypertext was coined by Ted Nelson who used to object to the wide spectrum of text retrieval or cross-reference and subject it mainly to the narrow idea of transclusion, or simply quotation, aiming for text patchwork rather than retrieval.
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