Hi Everybody, I have to admit I have not followed this thread fully, believe I understand the arguements well enough. It all boils down to what you want and what is practical and practically possible. Linking and references are a problem of syncronisation. Using hard copies you always give the reference author, publisher, year, edition and page (optional line) when a reference is to another book, article. All this information is absolute necessary. The layout of the publication could change or even the text itsself!! The other aspect is that a reference is always made to text and not lines or pages ( blanks, and punctuation is also text in the wider sense)! What is needed is a method to keep all this information syncronized. For e-text(books) you need mark-up in one form or another and a system that keeps track of everything. That is all changes, links, references, changes in text and its position. As mentioned you need an umbrella to keep everything under control. In other words a sub set in which everthing is syncronized. There is no one method that is fool proof and many systems out there. As sugested one could use a method in which the critical edition are marked up and the user can state what he wants to see. That makes the files very large and sometimes difficult to find what you want. I will go with bowerbirds umbrella and take what I can get. To me you can not have your cake and eat it too. That is easy mark- up, easy to read without preprocessing the text or using a viewer ! Regards Keith.