HyperScope will allow industry standard document types to exhibit advanced features simply by being accessed through the HyperScope system.

           EXAMPLE: Instead of waiting for the full system, HyperScope can add links to documents where there none, simply by accessing the document through a HyperScope aware browser.

INITIAL IMPLEMENTATION: The HyperScope will be a lightly modified web browser supported by an "Intermediary Processor" (IP) which operates between the browser and the files or data bases holding existing working knowledge of a collaborative community.

The HyperScope is not an editor or an authoring environment, it is simply a good way to start providing OHS type functionality at the browsing and reading stage at minimum disruption to the end users.

ININTIAL FEATURES: A HyperScope user will be able to follow links into and between "legacy" files in a manner similar to using a browser with web-based HTML files. And more, there will be numerous new capabilities and features which will give a HyperScope user considerable more flexibility and working power than users limited to standard browsers and "legacy" editors.

High-Resolution Addressability: As HyperScope is used, legacy informaiton is translated into an intermediary file format called I-File. Translation into the I-File's special structure and format creates, among other things, new label tags attached to many objects (e.g. each paragraph), so that links serviced by the HyperScope can explicitly target many objects in the file which were not addressable in their "legacy" form. Ideally, every object in a file should be targetable by a link whose author wants to comment specifically about that object.

Copying-Pasting HyperScope Links: When viewing a legacy file via his HyperScope, a user will easily be able to install a HyperScope link (HS-Link) in any legacy file, targeting an explicit location in the file being viewed on his HyperScope. Clicking on the desired target object in a HyperScope "Copy mode," he can subsequently turn to the "legacy editor" and "Paste" the appropriate link into the legacy file. Later execution of that link will take any subsequent HyperScope user to the desired, specific location and with the specified view.
           EXAMPLE: Here "http://xxx.xxx.xxx#aaa" targets a specific object, assumedly not labelled in the legacy file, but given the "aaa" label by the Translator any time that it translates that targeted file into the I-File format.

The HyperScope can point to any arbitrary object within the document, not just to the whole document. High Resolution Linking allows the convention of a page being the object to refer to to become obsolete. Any object, whether on a page or not, can be linked to. High resolution referencing is designed for easy retrieval of anything anyone might want to reference or comment on.

Every object is accessible through manual links (as with HTML today) and through relative addressing (first paragraph in this document) and indirect linking (find .
           EXAMPLE: Manual Linking (Any word/page which the author of the document has chosen to give an address to, as with HTML and anchors today). Indirect Linking (Find link in paragraph and follow it such as find someone's records and follow any link in their 'Personal" information field if it's a link, to see their personal home page). Relative Addressing (For example: Third paragraph in this document.)

In response to what may be an ordinary HTTP link, the targeted file will be (a) retrieved from its server and (b) dynamically "translated" into an Intermediary file (I-File) with special structure and format implemented with XML+.

EXPANDABILITY: For any community seriously interested in applying HyperScope (and the follow-on, full OHS), it is assumed that appropriate "translator modules" will be developed for every file/DB type of significance to their collaborative efforts. It is expected that an increasing list of customized translators will be developed as different application communities extend the range of legacy files to be brought into integrated HyperScope use.

From past experience it is expected that users will invent many variations of the ways they would like to view portions of their files, under different circumstances, often shifting rapidly between views just as one might rotate a physical object, or shift its distance, to get a better understanding of what is there.