Those phrases are even identified for the user by making the text with a larger, bolder font, as in the title phrases of each section of the Tosafot. In front of you lies not a single document, but those of Rashi and Tosafot and others, parked side by side, and linked by references to bits and pieces of the main, Talmudic text.

Gemara, believe it or not, is the first working hypertext2, though nary a Pentium was found in Sura or Pumpedita.

Microsoft may ape it, but the discovery is all ours. Users of the Internet are quite at home with the magic-carpet jumps atop highlighted text that contribute so much to its charm and power. A mouse-click on specially marked hypertext (blue in Internet Explorer other colors elsewhere) automatically transports you to another textual place. Hypertext is all about built-in links, or references, to other texts and documents.

“When I use a word,” said Humpty Dumpty, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”1 The next generation of Torah databases has arrived, and words mean much more than they used to, thanks to hypertext.

Overriding text in davka software