All About Hypertext

Well, honestly, the very significant reason why I can not follow the authors' intentions might be my unstable understanding of "hypertext." So, I looked into its definition, an wikipedia says,

In computing, hypertext is a user interface paradigm for displaying documents which contain automated cross-references to other documents called hyperlinks. Selecting a hyperlink causes the computer to display the linked document within a very short period of time.

Hmmm...
Then, I read those articles again.
Frankly speaking, what I felt is that they all were explaining hypertext with difficulty vocabulary to understand, at least to me.
Especially, in the article, "patterns of hypertext," Bernstein mentioned - I completely agree with him at this point - that there is no vocabulary to describe the complicated hypertext structures so that it is really hard for the readers to understand the designs.
That is why he analyzed and finally came up with some common patterns, along with some vocabulary.
The patterns he introduced in his article are below.

1. Cycle
2. Counterpoint
3. Mirror World
4. Tangle
5. Sieve
6. Montage
7. Neighborhood
8. Split/Join
9. Missing Link
10. Feint

As Curt told me that this article is a little out-of-date - it was published in 1998, - I wonder how many readers have the same feeling as his. Definitely, in 1998, not many users were not familiar with hypertext itself and its structures. Of course, I do not mean that these days a lot of people can understand the design of structural hypertext that Bernstein depited as complicated one.
I am pretty sure, however, that at least much more people than in 1998 became familiar with what it is and how it is applied to the Web design.

At the end, he mentioned, "By developing a richer vocabulary of hypertext structure, and basing that vocabulary on structures observed in actual hypertexts, we can move toward a richer and more effective hypertext criticism."
Even if I read the definition of hypertext so many times, the reason why I hesitate to explian it verbally might be the lack of vocabulary. I want to think so, and that is still our assignment left to us.