How to Create a Vannevar Trail

Vannevar Bush envisioned some sort of apparatus in a desk that would electronically allow linking of documents (represented by images on indexed roles of microfilm). It is clear that this linking could not involve the original images, as they were read-only on microfilm. It was also clear that whatever form these links would take, they were not only separate from the original documents, they could be shared with other people, as well as being intermixed with original text by the author.

I decide to call these things (or special type of document if you will) a Vannevar Trail [VT for short].

I also want to explore how XML technology might be employed to implement the Memex concept. In particular, the most general form of XLink - where the links are stored external to any documents seemed like a good candidate technology to implement a VT.