30. The system of claim 29 wherein at least one of the templates describes a navigation dialog box containing a plurality of buttons for navigating throughout the interactive reference.
29. A computer system for automatically converting a document to an interactive reference that can be interpreted by and displayed on a stylus-based second computer system having a display screen sensitive to a stylus, a processor in communication with the display screen, and a memory in communication with the processor such that at least portions of the interactive reference in the memory can be retrieved by interaction of the stylus with the display screen, the computer system comprising: processor means; memory means in communication with the processor means; means for separating the document into content blocks delineated by content commands within the document, some content blocks containing templates for live interaction between the stylus and the display screen of the second computer system and other blocks of content containing text or a picture; means for creating page descriptions in which the content blocks are arranged on pages whose boundaries are defined by the display screen of the second computer system; means for preparing instructions for treating stylus actions on templates displayed on the screen display of the second computer system; and means for outputting commands describing the interactive reference including the page descriptions, the commands having a format, at left when compiled, that can be stored in the memory of the second computer system and interpreted by the processor of the second computer system.