System for automatic generation of arbitrarily indexed hyperlinked text

Abstract

A system that indexes text according to an arbitrary set of indices and automatically generates hyperlinks from each index to a related subject in a document. A text file containing the documentation of interest is used as input to a hyperlink processing program that generates a file containing links to all of the topics of interest. A category file is then created that indicates an association between each of the topics and corresponding subjects included in each topic. Next, a data structure is generated that associates each topic with corresponding subject names. A plurality of subject name files is generated, each including HTML (hypertext markup language) text corresponding to an associated subject, and a file comprising said hyperlinks to each of the subject name files is generated. A plurality of index files is generated, each including hyperlinks between each of the topics and corresponding subject name files. A list of category names corresponding to a primary set of indices is displayed in a first window, and a secondary set of said indices comprising a list of subject names is displayed in a second window, in response to a user selecting one of the category names. Finally, in response to a user selecting one of the subject names in the second window, the text in the subject name file corresponding to the subject name selected by the user is displayed in a third window.