If a hyperdocument is completely disconnected then all non-zero elements in the converted distance matrix are equal to the conversion constant K. The Compactness is then 0. If a hyperdocument is completely connected the non-zero distances are all equal to the minimum of 1, and hence the Compactness is 1.
The compactness of a document depends on the choice of the conversion factor, which is usually taken to be the number of nodes in the hyperdocument. With this constant some real-world hyperdocuments, including the Hypertext Hands-On! book [SK89], have a compactness of around 0.5. This suggests that 0.5 may be a reasonable value for authors to use as a goal when writing hyperdocuments. In specific applications it is of course possible to write usable hyperdocuments with much lower or higher compactness.