A hypertext environment for using mathematical software: part 1—motivations and design objectives

Two perennial obstacles to the effective use of software, and especially mathematical software, are its documentation and its user-accessibility. This article surveys some of the ways in which software providers address the issues of documentation and use of their products, and suggests an alternative mechanism for both documentation and access via a hypertext database and command processor. Some considerations relating to program size and complexity and to the security of computer applications are discussed.