Conversation
Next level is sidenotes in the right referencing footnotes referencing leftnotes referencing topnotes referencing rightnotes
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I think it’s important for authors to do the work of structuring the idea space to help readers navigate it; and a pure mind map graph doesn’t. We don’t yet have good tools for intermediate degrees of structuring. Cc
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Indeed… I’m pretty bearish on this problem space in its broadest framing. There’s been a ton of effort thrown at this over the last four decades with little return; I think we’re going to need some new powerful ideas to make progress.
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I think there are constrained sub-problems that are more solvable. One that looks particularly tractable is strict subsetting, in which the text remains linear but some readers want to read a subset (e.g. without the math). We have decent interface solutions there.
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The more significant problem with that very constrained framing or the somewhat less constrained multiple-threads framing is in authoring. Quality prose dances; arcs can’t readily be truncated or transposed. It appears to be very hard to compose well in these mediums.
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Possibly there’s a chicken-and-egg problem. We’ve developed extensive methods, partly tacit, for structuring linear text—developed collectively over centuries, and individually through reading examples and gradually getting better at producing them.
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Yeah, I think that’s right. It may be possible to develop good patterns for hypertext writing. I don’t think many serious authors have attempted serious work in hypertext: it’s mostly technologists, more interested in the tools than in writing itself.
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I have been thinking about publishing an article myself that would involve lots of hypertext to choose your own route through the arguments but my concern is that we are too conditioned to do a quick scroll to skim and to assume that links leave the website/article
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I often have to remind myself that interactivity is a cost center! They can of course be very valuable—but they begin with a significant deficit which must be overcome by the value they yield.
worrydream.com/MagicInk/#inte
It’s been a long while since I looked through this. Need to read through it again. 🙏
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