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I searched and couldn’t find an answer on this: CSS is considered hypertext?
I have this doubt because PHP, which is hypertext preprocessor, can also pre-process CSS and even JS.
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Hypertext is common text with other aggregated information. According to Wikipedia:
Hypertext is the term that refers to a text to which other sets of information are added in the form of blocks of text, words, images or sounds, whose access is given through specific references, in the digital medium called hyperlinks, or simply links.
The idea of hypertext is not restricted to the digital medium, however, a simple book with footnotes[1] can be considered hypertext. HTML is the most common language to express hypertext nowadays, but there are others, I would say for example that Markdown (the same language used in Stackoverflow questions and answers) and Bbcode (too used in discussion forums) are also hypertext. Extending the concept to other media - like images, videos, etc - we come to what is called hypermedia (think for example videos on Youtube with annotations, subtitles in multiple languages, or external links inside the video itself).
About CSS (and Javascript), I would say no, it’s not a form of hypertext. No one (no human reader) consumes CSS for its content itself, it is always modifying the appearance of another, main content. Similarly, a programming language was meant to be executed, unread, and other formats text-based (as XML or JSON) have the purpose of storing structured data, to be consumed by other programs, not by the end user.
The fact that PHP is [currently] a "recursive acronym" for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", does not mean that it is restricted to preprocessing hypertext - it is a general purpose programming language, capable of running even outside the context of a webserver and handle data of an arbitrary nature (including binary data). But since his "strong point" is to generate hypertext, people soon realized that he was also able to generate other types of text-based files, hence its use for these purposes.
[1]: like this.
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According to W3.org:
Hypertext is a text that is not limited to being always linear.
Hypertext is any text that contains links for other texts. The term was coined by Ted Nelson in 1965.
Wikipedia in English Hypertext:
Hypertext is any text shown on a computer screen or any other electronic device and containing references (Hyperlinks) the other text that can be accessed immediately by the reader(...)
In other words, hypertext is any text with external references, whether they point to a local directory or on the web.
Now, if CSS is hypertext, well, I don’t think so, but I’ll let someone more experienced answer. About PHP, I think it serves to generate hypertext (among other things), but I also don’t believe that by itself can be considered hypertext.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
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I don’t see why CSS would be hypertext, nor text he is ;)
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Only one detail, if you are going to take this definition of hypertext of Wikipédia in Portuguese to the letter, is a bit wrong (that’s why I used the definition in English as a reference). Hypertext refers only to text and nothing else. When including "sounds and images" we are already talking about hypermedia, not hypertext.
– Ezequiel Barbosa
@Ezequielbarbosa I think you’re right, although the part that says "whose access is through specific references" is kind of ambiguous to me (if a text refers to something that is not text it ceases to be hypertext?).
– mgibsonbr
Well, I no longer see this part as ambiguous. In this case I interpreted "specific references" as the hyperlink itself. In my opinion (based on what I read), yes, if the text references something that is not text - another page, whether or not containing images, audio, etc - then it is no longer considered hypertext. Anyway, this is all very subjective and many different opinions arise in topics like these... But I find it interesting to discuss.
– Ezequiel Barbosa