> I understand that the \special{foo} command just puts the text "foo" into > the output. Perhaps the LaTeX project should define (if not already done) a > standard to identify which protocol the text belongs to, but no more. For > example \special{html:foo} would identify "foo" as being html, whereas > \special{url:foo} would identify "foo" as a URL. the hypertex project already does some of this standardization, if you want to follow it. not sure what else is needed. > I think HyperTeX defines hyperlinks in terms of HTML, as > \special{html:foo}. My hunch is that this is a bad idea, as HTML is in > itself a markup language (how to combine the different graphical outputs?). > The problem is that HTML consists of two parts, the hyperlink stuff and the > graphical markup stuff, and it is not possible to get only the hyperlink i dont see what you are getting at. the hypertex specials define a set of \special conventions which look like the HTML equivalents, thats all > It seems me that \label and \bibitem could be used to generate URL names > (locations within a file), and \ref, \eqref, and \cite could be used to > generate hyperlinks within a file. For external ref's (to other doc's), one quite. thats what hyperref does > In addition, one could add a few commands, such as indicating a base URL if thats in HyperTeX > The idea is that a lot of people already writes manuscripts using \label, > etc, and one should be able use that contextual information to > automatically generate helpful hyperlinks. try using hyperref. it all just happens Sebastian