Deep Hypertext with Embedded Revision Control Implemented in Regular Expressions

Track: Wiki Track
Authors: Victor Grishchenko

Abstract
While text versioning was definitely a part of the original hypertext concept, it is rarely considered in this context today. Still, we know that revision control underlies the most exciting social co-authoring projects of the today’s Internet, namely the Wikipedia and the Linux kernel. With an intention to adapt the advanced revision control technologies and practices to the conditions of the Web, the paper reconsiders some obsolete assumptions and develops a new versioned text format perfectly processable with standard regular expressions (PCRE 6). The resulting deep hypertext model allows instant access to past/concurrent versions, authorship, changes; enables deep links to reference changing parts of a changing text. Effectively, it allows distributed and real-time revision control on the Web, implementing the vision of co-evolution and mutation exchange among multiple competing versions of the same text.