The authors define the subject of this paper below:

The system described in this paper interfaces to an existing interactive page-presentation program to achieve the effect of dual-purpose, hard-copy, and interactively browsable documents. The bridging software . . . is quite simple and has proved extremely useful in practice. It has allowed existing documents to be integrated into existing test databases and new documents to be proofread for both content and format before being printed.

With a few caveats as to known shortcomings, and a “wish list” of possible enhancements, the authors describe an existing UNIX-based system which looks very useful. (This is a system which will hide print composition information from an online browser and control information, e.g. menus, from the print composition hardware. You can very nearly have your cake and eat it too.

The paper is a good, short presentation of the system’s capabilities and high level design. There is sufficient detail to understand what the system does, how it does it, and what software and hardware is required to bring it all about.