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Referents: hypertext linking and cross-referencing
Prerequisite Concepts	Sample Code	Related Syntax

Referents in OmniMark provide direct support for hypertext links. A referent is a data structure that can be used to manipulate values that may be determined later.

For instance, when a reference (or link) to another part of the document is encountered, the program can output a referent at that point. When that part of the document is encountered, the referent can be initialized. These two activities can take place in either order. OmniMark remembers every place where a referent was written, and replaces the referent with its final value when the processing of the document has been completed. A referent's value can change many times over the course of processing the program. Only the final value will appear in the output of the program.

The process of replacing each referent with the final value of that referent is referred to as resolving the referent.

In order to support server-based programs, the programmer can designate a sub-part of the program that uses its own referents. Those referents will be resolved when that part of the program completes.

Some examples of hypertext link processing are:

• resolving cross-references within a document or sub-document
• inverted lists (top-ten lists)
• resolving step references within a procedure list
• table of contents generation
• ID and IDREF processing in SGML documents

Referents are not limited to processing cross-references that can span the entire document. It is often the case that a small region of the document may be heavily cross-referenced within itself.