Htik

htik is a hypothetical markup and scripting concept used in academic discussions of lightweight hypertext systems. The term is sometimes expanded as Hypertext Interlinking Kernel, but there is no single formal standard. In these discussions, htik is described as a minimal layer that could sit on top of HTML to add simple navigation semantics without a full scripting engine.

Design goals commonly attributed to htik include preserving the link-centric nature of the web, enabling stateful navigation, and keeping processing lightweight. The proposed syntax consists of a small set of tags or attributes intended to be embedded directly in documents. The emphasis is on clarity and interoperability rather than feature completeness.

Commonly cited features include forward and backward navigation, context-aware linking, and optional prefetch directives. Implementations are typically described as browser extensions, document processors, or server-side renderers that translate htik directives into standard HTML and JavaScript at render time. Because htik is not standardized, behavior varies across proposed environments.

Htik emerged in the 2010s within theoretical papers on how to separate content from behavior in hypertext. It remains largely academic and has not seen wide practical adoption. Its value is often assessed in teaching contexts as a thought experiment about minimal control layers for linked documents. See also Hypertext, Markup languages, and Client-side scripting.