To accept that model so readily, however, would be to perpetuate the limitations Goldhill notes and to ignore the opportunities Fowler describes. Although the genre is not easy to define, the two principal features Goldhill names citation and morselisation provide a most fruitful beginning. A hypertextual result seems both obvious and inevitable, but very little beyond that vague qualification is either obvious or inevitable. The paper follows two convergent paths of research, one focused on the commentary form, the other on hypertext. As McGann 1997 notes, one's view of a traditional artefact tends to be profoundly altered by the attempt to render it into electronic form.
Translation is a powerful analytic tool.
Such analysis identifies the component parts of the commentary and the referential gestures that interconnect them. Analysis shows that the referential gestures of the commentary not only delineate subtle gradations of specificity, from exact bibliographical citations to indirect allusions, but also vary by intentional force, hence significance. Except for the bibliographical citation, and perhaps not even then, a direct rendering into unambiguous terms will as a rule not be possible without significant loss. The second path is an examination of relevant directions in hypertext research. This is a complicated, rapidly changing, highly interdisciplinary and poorly surveyed area that is characterised by a number of isolating divisions.