ABSTRACT
The reader-elicited text descriptors outlined in the last chapter provide a starting point for a consideration of the design issues for electronic text. They reflect both cognitive and behavioural aspects of the reader-text interaction rather than more common classifications based on publication genre or subject matter. Focusing attention on why and how texts are read as well as the reader’s views of what texts contain, immediately brings forth issues related to task, motivation for reading, readers’ models of the information space and the reading situation; factors certain to be of importance in the ultimate success or failure of any presentation medium.
