Andy Matuschak on Twitter: "@Meaningness @yoshikischmitz @gwern @michael_nielsen @Westoncb An important related consideration is "interaction considered harmful": ideally, the user should do as little as possible to access the ideal information. Lots of little buttons are a painful way to indicate intent; scrolling through thoughtful section hierarchy somewhat better." / Twitter

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Michael is back in San Francisco, soon in Santa Fe

Feb 20, 2020

You're another writer who I'd happily read at 2x the length. And for your particular style, I think your navigation signposting works well - I do sometimes skim e.g., long lists of mostly references.

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David Chapman

@Meaningness

Feb 20, 2020

This is very cool! I seem to recall Dream Machines suggested a physical lever you could pull up or down to get more/less detail continuously. That’s probably difficult and overkill but the general principle seems importantly right

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's Variable Level-of-detail Documents is a neat realization of this idea on the web via inline expansions. One could also imagine adding a global "expansion depth" that controls all expansions, tied to a slider of sorts. symbolflux.com/lodessay/

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David Chapman

@Meaningness

Feb 20, 2020

Oh, nice, thanks for the pointer! cc

@andy_matuschak

in case he doesn’t know about this

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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Feb 21, 2020

There have been so many attempts at StretchText-like interfaces over the decades! Most approaches (including this one) break object permanence in a way that I find very disruptive to fluid reading. LiquidText is maybe my favorite impl.

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An important related consideration is "interaction considered harmful": ideally, the user should do as little as possible to access the ideal information. Lots of little buttons are a painful way to indicate intent; scrolling through thoughtful section hierarchy somewhat better.

12:41 AM · Feb 21, 2020Twitter Web App

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