Instead of presenting textbooks as a page, why not present it as a massive "mind map", navigable via zooming?
Think google earth, but for reading, and with interactive links to internal and external content.
The content could be arranged in a static physical location in 2D space, or it can be arranged as 'recursive relations' allowing for infinite regression (e.g. definitions of each word seen when zooming at a word).
This allows for a natural interface, that minimise clutter by varying the size of the text, based on importance. ( BunsenHoneydew's idea: Provide variable level of summerization of the information at various zoom level. )-- mofosyne, Jun 03 2014 Zoomable Information Seeking https://www.youtube...watch?v=SSVeT5ipvvk [mofosyne, Jun 03 2014] wikipedia on ZUI http://en.wikipedia...ming_user_interface [mofosyne, Jun 03 2014] Very Large EVE online poster http://img.gawkeras...evzjpg/original.jpg [mofosyne, Jun 03 2014] Poster from Kotaku http://kotaku.com/e...comparis-1391608737 [mofosyne, Jun 03 2014] Text Compactor http://textcompactor.com/Free online deVernonizer [BunsenHoneydew, Jun 06 2014] Project Xanadu http://xanadu.com/Started in 1960, they just now released a demo. [Spacecoyote, Jun 06 2014] Because I don't want to have to take a Dramamine just to read a book?-- ytk, Jun 03 2014 probbly as dizzy as prezi. So it shouldn't be that bad-- mofosyne, Jun 03 2014 Why is 2 dimensions better than 1, or 3?-- pocmloc, Jun 03 2014 — bigsleep : I'm thinking more of a really big poster, with content at different magnification. A PDF link simply jumps you to a page or URL.
In a zoomable ebook however, it would instead refocus the user's screen to a new Position & Magnification within the poster (Which may be within the current viewport, but just really small.).
Also content recursion (attaching content automatically near other content, but at a really shrunken size) allows for a more natural reading interface when doing cross referencing. E.g. Zooming into a word may show a very tiny box with the word's dictionary definition, getting back to your original view is as simple as zooming backwards. Check the EVE poster to the side.
— pocmloc : Hmmm... Can you say its 2D, with depth? Kind of like how you can zoom in a Mandelbrot set.-- mofosyne, Jun 03 2014 I like this for a choose your own adventure. Certain words you can spin. On spinning you find out their other dimensions: these words are pieces of other sentences in other but related text. You can head off into this related text.
There could be many of these dimensions. They need not correlate to spatial dimensions but must to some degree to allow for the spinning property. For example I turn the word into the page at 15 degrees and see the different page come into view. 30 degrees brings a whole other page.
Funning with the spatial thing, turned a lot the word might become a different word with some characters subsumed into others. Turned in past 90 degrees of course the word would be backwards.-- bungston, Jun 03 2014 Possibly for some reference books, but for a textbook or something, I want to be able to read straight through and get all the information. If I have to take a lot of detours to get all the information, I may miss some or read it in a non- optimal order.-- scad mientist, Jun 03 2014 — scad mientist
AKA: The TVtropes/Wikipedia Effect.-- mofosyne, Jun 04 2014 Well, this seems more useful in the version I imagined when I read the title.
Use a text summary algorithm [link] to generate summaries at any level of zoom, over any length of the plaintext.
100% zoom is the complete original text of the work. 50% reads much like the Reader's Digest condensed edition. At around 25% you have the Cliff Notes version, 5% is the wikipedia summary, 1% is the back cover blurb, and 0.01% says "Obsessed sea captain hates whale, hunts it".
By selecting which section to expand, you can descend down a branching tree of summaries into the text.-- BunsenHoneydew, Jun 06 2014 Dang, I saw a ghost. [BunsenHoneydew] how the hell are you???-- blissmiss, Jun 06 2014 Kind of reminds me of Project Xanadu [link].-- Spacecoyote, Jun 06 2014 random, halfbakery