In this paper, we describe Chrysant, a hypertext version control system for embedded link models. Chrysant provides general-purpose versioning capability to hypertext systems with an embedded link model. To apply Chrysant for a specific hypertext system, we require the containment model for this system's data model, the containment model of the version repository for this system, the hypertext role definition, the versioning role definition, and the filesystem mapping definition. Additionally, a specific parser that retrieves the link targets from the hypertext resources is needed. Hypertext versioning is different from versioning an individual resource in the traditional way, in that both the content of a hypertext resource and the relationships between it and other resources related by hypertext links are versioned. In Chrysant, the structure container and the content of a hypertext resource are versioned separately. We describe the architecture of Chrysant, and explain the procedure of the check-in and check-out functions. An AF-BTU algorithm is introduced in the paper to check in the hypertext network of a hypertext resource. As a case study, the application of Chrysant for HTML content is introduced. We create necessary definition specifications for the HTML system and a parser to retrieve link targets from a HTML document. Some examples of HTML versioning with Chrysant are shown.
['Kai Pan', 'J. Whitehead', 'Guozheng Ge']
Hypertext versioning for embedded link models