Hypercompendia

Just a note on this process, where I don’t believe at this point that I need an “Install” feature, but am depending on “Drag and Drop” or “Copy and Paste” to move the work onto a user’s computer. I don’t believe it will be a problem, as it doesn’t really require other programs to work (except the browser, I guess).

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the problem-solving and working towards a goal of this project, even though maybe everyone else is giggling and snickering because they already know an easier way to do this.

April 15, 2012

Cleaned off a larger thumbdrive so that I can use the same drive for all explorative copies. Copied “abob2” onto the drive (abob2 has the file:///Users/smgct1/Desktop/abob2/abottleofbeer.html linkage. Copied it three more times into folders named:

abobDrive (for enabling the hypertext to work directly off a removable drive)
abobMac (for enabling the hypertext to be put into a file on the drive, such as     Applications)

abobWin (for enabling the hypertext to be put into a file on the drive, such as     Programs)

Then realized that before I did this, I probably should have run the copies through Tinderbox to change all the links automatically rather than manually.

Another note, am using “A Bottle of Beer” because it has only one link to a new page on each page, uses stretchtext, uses images, and besides, it’s still my favorite piece of hypertext work.

Checked the WinXP pc to find that the thumbdrive which was called “Volumes/BEER” (BEER being the name I assigned to the drive) won’t work on the PC, which I knew, but hoped that Windows called a drive a drive and not its designated Letter. In this case, what I found I would need for a link would be:

<a href=”F:/abob2/abottleofbeer.html”

So Windows puts the path as the letter-designated drive and unfortunately, everyone will have a different letter on their ISB drive.

Next, I’ll try the concept of placing two versions of the piece of work on the drive, one for Mac and one for Windows, and try to find a common Programs path in Windows where it could be installed. Likely, it’d be something simple like:

<a href=”C:/Programs/abob2/abottleofbeer.html”>

And, I suppose, try to do something similar for a Mac installation, or else not make the piece available for both on the same drive.

Thinking out loud here, working around the individual end user file names, and if the Mac or the PC programs call the CD, thumbdrive or whatever by different names:

Unless I find a universal path name for all end users, even if it’s one for Mac and one for PC, I might have to make the file installable instead. For example, instructions (on a Mac) would be something to the effect “drag the folder into your “Applications” file–

“file:///Applications/BEER/abob2/abottleofbeer.html”

That would bypass the need for a Users/–?–/Desktop etc. variable. For Windows, some other obvious item like “Programs” might be the way to go (I’m going to check this out on the PC, as well as try the thumbdrive as soon as I feel like getting up and going into the computer room).

What this would mean is that while the hypertext would not be playable on the removable drive itself, it would have to be installed onto the user’s computer. Probably fine, but this always bugged me with games, where you needed both on the PC installation and the CD to access all the features. And, the user would have to park the file ONLY in the one place specified.

The abob2 project:

Purpose: To transfer a working hypertext to a CD and have it work from there.

Started: April 13th, 2012

Using “A Bottle of Beer”, copied files from abob to abob2 folder on Desktop. Included Images folder, all jQuery files and folder, CSS sheet, html sheets and individual page htmls.

Changed links from their online version at Hypercompendia:

<a href=“http:susangibb.net/blog2/wp-content/uploads/abob/bottleofbeer.html”>

To link internally within the folder on the desktop:

<a href=”file:///Users/smgct1/Desktop/abob2/bottleofbeer.html”>

April 14th, 2012:

Everything is working, complete with images, stretchtext jQuery, and links.

Next step would be to see what code will be necessary to use on a CD drive.

Problems: Users might need instead to point to the CD drive (C?), and indeed, Users may be Mac only versus whatever PC (Windows) may use as file designation, and not Desktop.  And, will “file:///” work? Maybe as long as I can get a generic for the drive/name of CD/then folder name/then file name/

Got the #hypertext to work on a thumbdrive but I see what the glitch is going to be…the difference in what a drive is called on user computer.

As soon as a few files were copied and pasted onto the empty thumbdrive (had to name the thumbdrive “BEER” and put a folder called “abob2” and the files within that), when one is opened, you can see what that file is named. I then changed the code on each page to:

<a href=”file:///Volumes/BEER/abob2/bottleofbeer.html”>

Did not transfer the jquery and complete image file because the drive I’m using is low volume and couldn’t take the whole piece. But the one image on the opening page is fine.

NOTE: Obviously, it will be easier to create the html pages in Tinderbox with the appropriate links at the time the work is being done rather than the necessity of changing code with an existing piece geared for online use.

Just had a thought this morning after responding to a long-growing thread of commentary involving several friends on the Facebook site. Since it was a lively, interesting, and informative discussion, I was thinking of copying the whole thread to one of my websites, likely Spinning since it was more relative to literature, reading, and writing. Why? Because at a site such as Facebook, the main driver behind the purpose is being up-to-date, the latest statement or news, and the rest seems to roll off into oblivion after a few days. I didn’t want that to happen to this discussion. Damn technology, I thought, completely disregarding that weblogs have longer, searchable archives, true, but are as transient in nature as anything online, even as it is everlasting. For while it may be online for all eternity (we don’t know that yet), in anything that is geared towards regular updates or postings, the old news becomes the past and usually goes unread.

But there was another path to this theory of constants. Before the internet and its blooming crop of social networking sites, this conversation and all other online 1) would be unlikely, since the participants are globally located, and 2) even in a sit-down, face-to-face discussion, unless someone had thought to bring a recording device, everything said is instantly lost except to memory. Interesting.

With a few little glitches of memory and some software changes in Text Edit (Mac) that I wasn’t aware of, I still managed to complete a short little hypertext story and post it up on site here: Little Lives

The first four text boxes (pages) are directly taken from the Tunxis New Media class project called “Apartment 9″, run by Steve Ersinghaus and John Timmons. I believe this piece began in an earlier semester and when I visited a current class, the students were being asked to jump in at some point in the work and continue on with a separate trail from that point. I chose to start right from the beginning and focus on three characters already introduced (though I’ve assigned a name to one of the characters that was nameless and I’m not sure somewhere in the huge project she hasn’t been killed off).

Here’s the map, from the Tinderbox software which I use and which is being taught in the classroom.

It’s a really silly story that I’ve chosen to continue, but the important part was merely getting back into the style of writing a hypertext non-linear piece. It seemed natural to me to choose the two sisters and the husband of one as a good basis for story.

With the story unfolding, I knew that each sister served a purpose to the story and the husband of one was a necessary tie-in. Another was the theme of food and cooking. I had some fun with that. I threw in online gaming, and of course, a contest, and managed as well to come back to the concept of recipes which was also part of “Apartment 9.”

Then I ran into a problem with exporting from Tinderbox to html files for uploading to a website. What I found was that my simple little free text editor that comes with Mac suddenly didn’t look at all the same as I remembered it would and I needed to change colors and sizing and add some info to the text that wasn’t necessarily in the Tinderbox stage of the piece. It took a little bit of searching around and checking settings, until I found the “ignore rich text commands” on the text edit under “Preferences” and that got me back to the view I could work with, to change and add tags.

I didn’t do anything much new with this piece, instead followed the css and html I’d used on the 100 Days Projects, Blueberries, and a few other pieces. It was just that first step towards getting back into the game.

It’s been such fun the last couple of days getting into hypertext again. Working from Steve Ersinghaus’ New Media class collaboration of “Apartment 9″, the students were asked to select a point of entry and continue a story from there.

I find that writing flash fiction for a couple years has changed my style of writing as I mentioned in an earlier post but it’s becoming more second nature to me now to write into the hypertext narrative form. It all comes back; working with Eastgate’s Tinderbox software, recalling the process of rolling out story without being limited to a single linear arc.

The one thing that hasn’t changed: I find myself falling back into the process of a structured map. I find it easier to create several Notes at a time (blank–”untitled”) and have them ready to write into as the stories develop. Making a new note is quick and easy in Tinderbox, yet the fast-pace of story learned via writing and reading flash fiction calls for minimal interruption and having the blank text box Notes ready is helpful.

And I prefer the Map View to write into both for its visual appeal and for its obvious view of the “whole picture” of where the story is going. But I’m simply not able to make a map without creating it as a proportioned, orderly, geometrically sound piece of art in itself:

Boy, it’s not easy getting back into hypertext narrative. Whoever says it’s the same as traditional text is wrong.

After almost two years of focusing on flash fiction–which is a style that requires a quick body punch–it almost seems like hypertext story is the opposite; expansion on concept and questions and answers instead.

While the text boxes of Tinderbox, the software I use to write hyperfiction, are exquisitely perfect for sticking with a concise, free of overwriting style, the knowledge that more data, more information, more detail, can be added in bits and pieces by simply creating another “Note” leaves a writer more open to creative flare. No one expects you to read every bit of that data so there’s really no overload. While a story may contain fifty Notes, you can get from beginning to end in forty, thirty, twenty perhaps.

I’ve just had the enticement to get back physically and mentally into hypertext narrative, something I’ve been saving to do next year, after I finish out this year’s daily flash fiction writing. But it’s not easy going from one to another form. Just as with the novel, the short story, or poetry, the mindset is completely different and I as a writer must admit I am struggling as if for the very first time.

Really happy to say that my hypertext story “Blueberries”, originally published in New River Journal, has also been selected for translation into Polish publication, been included in a doctoral dissertation, listed in the ELO directory, and a part of a new media college syllabus. Makes me itchy to get back to hypertext writing.
Just looked up the translation of “blueberries” as a title into Polish, and found:

czarne jagoda   (“jagody” means berries, and I thought “czarne” meant “black”)

jagody amerykańskie  (Since blueberries aren’t native to Poland this comes out as “American Berries”)

borówki (this one claims to be “Blueberries”)

czarne borówki  (Again, (“Black Blueberries”)

And this one’s my fave: “There is no human translation for that”