I love the feel and aesthetic of a good book, but I enjoy the convenience of hyper text available on the web. I would like to see a publishing standard for a hypertext book. This book would have all Footnotes, Appendices, Bibliography, and any other interesting, but extra information linked by paper tabs to the “*” on the page. If for example, you are reading the history of San Francisco, you may want to read… follow finger from “*” to tab, open to page with tab… “The Struggle of Sour Dough”. Wow, that was fast, and there was no little print messing up the page, and no looking in the back for the reference. By the way, no spell check suggestion for asterisk in Microsoft Word, oh, never mind, there it is… I just love these little gadgets! Please let me know what you think...CS-- chrissayre, Mar 20 2004 I literally have a PhD in the workings of hypertext systems and I don't understand this-- hippo, Mar 21 2024 Yes "tabs" to me suggests a cut indent in the fore-edge, like how you get in some alphabetised books like dictionaries or address books.
I have seen books where the map at the beginning folded out with nothing printed in the first page width, so you could read the whole book with the map laid on the table to the left of the text.-- pocmloc, Mar 22 2024 I'd like some books to start with a kind of index, but they'd be a list of arguments instead.
In other words: 1) Germany started WW I 2) The Treaty of Versailles didn't cause WW II 3) Hitler started WW II ...
If accept an argument already, you don't have to read that chapter. But if you don't accept the argument of chapter 3, you may have to go back and read chapter 2.-- 4and20, Mar 22 2024 That reminds me - the first kind of 'hypertext' that many of us encountered was in the form of a physical book. You might have read one of these as a child, with 'links' which allow you to choose the next bit of narrative, e.g. "You whack the bank robber around the head with your typewriter (go to page 43) OR You slip quietly and un-noticed out through a side door (go to page 50)"-- hippo, Mar 22 2024 I distinctly remember reading that book about the typewriter attack when I was a youth. I think it went something like... Here is Peter. Here is Jane. Here is Pat the dog. Here is a typewriter. Here is a bank robber. The bank robber is a bad man. Peter whacks the bad bank robber with the typewriter. Pat the dog savages the bad bank robber's ankles. Jane looks for a weapon in her handbag. Here is a can of pepper spray. Etc. Bun/'bone withheld pending further enlightenment.-- DrBob, Mar 22 2024 The post is from 2004. I doubt enlightenment will be forthcoming.-- Voice, Mar 22 2024 Oh, yeah. Didn't notice that. Still, I live in hope. After all, it took a few years for the Buddha to become enlightened.* * I did try to find out exactly how many years in the hopes of making some clever point, but I got bored after about a minute of searching & gave up. So I guess that enlightenment is still some way off for yours truly.-- DrBob, Mar 23 2024 "He who acknowledges his lack of enlightenment is truly enlightened"*[*from my random mystic quote generator]-- hippo, Mar 23 2024 [hippo] I think that is very true. but of course if you yourself acknowledge its truth, that means you are actually denying your own lack of enlightenment, and so you are therefore proving that you are not truly enlightened. This logically restores your prior state (denying your own enlightenment). This instability oscillates at the speed of thought, i.e. the speed of neuron firing in the brain, which is what causes the 50hz background hum that many people sometimes notice. I understand that in the US, people think less deeply and therefore the thoughts can pass quicker, which means the hum is 60hz.-- pocmloc, Mar 23 2024 Ah, Schrödinger’s Enlightenment - simultaneously enlightened and unenlightened-- hippo, Mar 23 2024 random, halfbakery