Hypercompendia

Just a note here on what I’d like to see featured into any upgrades to the Windows version of Storyspace.

First and desperately needed is that "Do you want to save your work before you close?" box that is available in the Mac version but not in Windows.  That just would remove so much of the fear of inadvertantly closing and losing between saves (as well as free up a couple pages of warnings in the manual).  Though to be honest, it appears that if the program is inadvertently closed, when reopened it does look very similar to how it was closed–but that may just be because I’d recently ‘saved’ anyway.

Another almost imperative change would be the "promote children" command that’s again available in the Mac version only.  This would have prevented an awful lot of hand-picking and rearranging for me in getting the Map View the way I later realized I needed it to be the best workable format.  In so doing, it leads to the third area of concern.

Making the Map View make sense has affected the other Views.  Now the Chart View is rather messed up but this depends on height of box on the view, etc. and I’m not sure that anything can be done to coordinate them.  I think you need to decide which View you’re going to work with and stick with it regardless of what it does to the appearance of the others.

Overall, it’s an excellent and effective tool for hypertext writing.  It’s user friendly, extremely easy to use and manipulate, and the manual has extremely good coverage and clear instruction.  What the creators couldn’t realize at the time is how it affects the writer’s technique and style in composing narrative.  This is likely an individualized benefit though I’m sure that much of it is shared in writer experience.  And it’s all good.