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
-
-
Replying to @Meaningness @michael_nielsen
I'm not surprised. Folding/structural editing/'orthodox editors' were widespread in the early Engelbart/Lisp/hypertext ecosystems, and it's very obvious to apply that to docs as much as code. One could add a scrollbar to go through the levels I describe. All HTML, after all.
2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes -
(This scrollbar wouldn't necessarily be too useful for me, unfortunately, because most of the structure has been added only relatively recently, and it's a lot of work to retrofit collapsed sections/margin notes/list highlights/link-annotations onto pre-September-2019 stuff.)
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
@Westoncb'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. http://symbolflux.com/lodessay/ pic.twitter.com/vFSSQOHMpr2 replies 1 retweet 22 likes -
Replying to @yoshikischmitz @gwern and
Oh, nice, thanks for the pointer! cc
@andy_matuschak in case he doesn’t know about this1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @Meaningness @yoshikischmitz and
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.
3 replies 0 retweets 7 likes -
Replying to @andy_matuschak @Meaningness and
RE: object permanence, I wonder if you could hit a middle-ground between this and
@gwern's hover-previews(nice for quick looks) by showing these expansions in a hover menu with a "pin" button, which when clicked, would insert the expansion into the document itself.1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @yoshikischmitz @andy_matuschak and
The reader could then decide what parts they want to just preview, and which ones they want to keep around, actively participating in the structure of the document, but without contstant reflows of the main text as in the original prototype.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @yoshikischmitz @andy_matuschak and
"interaction considered harmful" still applies I guess, but I think esp. in a really dense and well-researched document, each reader has a different idea of what citations/asides/annotations/clarifications are significant to the value they get out of the document.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @yoshikischmitz @andy_matuschak and
I wonder if that could work with just a timeout. 'Anything the user spends more than a few seconds reading must be important, and should default to expanded.' (It'd also be extremely useful to the author.)
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
That's actually become a common gesture in VR interfaces. In my experience, it's hard to get the threshold right: once you learn the gesture, you end up paying extra wait time when you want to intentionally invoke it, plus you still get false positives. If only BCIs etc
-
-
Replying to @andy_matuschak @yoshikischmitz and
In VR games, the timeout is gatewaying your next action, though. If you're reading through an essay and let's say you pop in a section and want to freeze it, you'd simply leave your mouse there while you keep reading it, and by the time you need mouse again, it's long-frozen.
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @gwern @yoshikischmitz and
Ah, I see. Yes, that kind of parallel-input-sequence interaction strikes me as really promising and underutilized. There's a ton of HCI-lit attempts but very little in the real world. Yet again, some fun stuff there in LiquidText. I also like around 50m inhttps://vimeo.com/64895205
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes - 1 more reply
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.