Greg Lloyd
@Roundtrip@federate.social  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago
@marick 🧵Stretchtext #hypertext

Ted Nelson Stretchtext
Hypertext Note 8. 29 April 1967.

“The text Stretches, becoming longer, with replacement phrases, new details and additional clauses popping into place. The good of this structure should be evident. The reader remains oriented. If he loses track of where he is, he "shrinks" the text to a higher, shorter level; if he wants to study a topic in more detail, he magnifies it.”

Nelson’s Law - Ted always said it first. 🙂

https://xanadu.com/XUarchive/htn8.tif
Brian Marick
@marick@mstdn.social replied  ·  activity timestamp last week
@Roundtrip Yes, I think a definite benefit of hypertext narrative would be to allow the reader to control the level of detail. (I’m going to start being a pest about recommending @mfowler’s “expansion joints” https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ExpansionJoints.html)

But when I start writing something like https://social.wiki.oddly-influenced.dev/view/methodology-of-scientific-research-programmes or https://metaprog.wiki.oddly-influenced.dev/view/welcome-visitors/view/two-narratives-about-metaphor/view/programmers-dont-much-use-metaphor, the effort for me as an author seems overwhelming. It’s hard enough to get linear text right.