Post · bonfire.cafe

@Roundtrip@federate.social · 2 months ago

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 · 2 months ago

@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.

Bill Seitz

@billseitz@toolsforthought.social replied · 2 months ago

@Roundtrip @marick @eastgate
https://www.markbernstein.org/Dec0501.html#note_36651

bonfire.cafe

A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate

bonfire.cafe: About · Code of conduct · Privacy · Users · Instances

Bonfire social · 1.0.0-rc.3.1 no JS en

Automatic federation enabled