Hypercompendia

It looks like I’ve finally figured out what I’ve been doing wrong for two days and as I guessed, it was right at the beginning of the process in TextEdit by not realizing the “Make Plain Text” in the Format menu, then still saving it with an .html extension.

I was then easily able to convert the two test pages I made so that they show properly, but have yet to merge the test Storyspace file with the changes I want to make.

It’s a huge relief though to get beyond that one stupid mistake to be able to tackle the next step.

I’m going to spend one more day on this before I break down and order more how-to’s from Amazon. I just can’t seem to get my templates working and I just know it’s some really dumb thing I’m doing at the beginning of the process because I don’t understand fully how everything works. Overdosed on lots of book-read instructions and online tutorials and yet it’s something very simple that I’m missing.

Can’t get a simple page online; meanwhile, hundreds of pages from the old sites, for which I’ve deleted all the files online, are still available for viewing. Ah, me.

Still looking for that perfect html template that will give me the ability to reproduce any Storyspace (or Tinderbox) work I do here at the ranch. I found the way to export it here easy enough, but of course want something more exciting than the white full page background with black verdana font and blue links. After checking out both Steve’s place and the Eastgate Reading Room I know the capability is there and that it is merely my own ability and skill that is lacking. I have copied at least twenty five different methods into the Storyspace html template to either easily change those two features (elements and attributes?) or drag in a css, but even though my template and stylesheet pass the test with this very valuable online tool call a validator, there’s something very simple (and stupid on my part) that I’m missing. It is fun to track down solutions to problems; it’s something my analytical mind was formed in convolutions to do. The only problem is that I forsake all else to stay on the trail. It would probably be a lot faster if I just took a class or read a book to understand the whole picture of hypertext rather than my own manner of plunging in and learning only by tracking down the problems. Not as much fun and frustration, perhaps; just faster.

This is more for my own info: Without understanding the problem with the ‘next’ and ‘previous’ links not pointing anywhere near where they either should, or as I suspected, from the last reading I made prior to turning the thing over to the html templates, I eliminated the problem for now by switching to the basic instead of the basic-plus template. For this particular piece, because it’s basically linear, it solves the immediate problem of confusion. I’ll work it out after.

The other problem I had with two of the lexias returning in a 404 – not found page, I believe it was a case of one instance of two lexias named the same–regardless of the upper or lower case difference–and in the other, actually three named alike. I believe that when the piece was converted to html it disregarded the duplicates (since I didn’t find the html files in duplicates) and so in running through the piece, those lexias were indeed missing. Simple renaming solved that problem.

Now I’m on to presentation. Changing background color, font, size of page–or size of text space, font color, and the inclusion of images. Glad I have this short, simple Bottle of Beer piece to play with to learn the basics before transferring something as large as Paths which is also fairly a simple piece compared to most hypertext stories, but would be quite complicated to work with until I know my way around html and stylesheets a bit better.

Just so I have the info here for future information, one of the mistakes I made that caused trouble for me in putting a Storyspace project online was in the way I had filled out the url on the template. It was, believe it or not, a missing forward slash. What I did was create a file in my Lunar cPanel named ‘BoB’ in the uploads folder of wp-content and after creating an export file for the project in Storyspace, uploaded the individual files (I know, I could’ve ftp’ed the whole BoB folder instead) through the Lunar file manager upload. In Storyspace, I filled in the url as: https://susangibb.net/blog2/wp-content/uploads/BoB/  (That last slash was the one I’d missed originally).

Then, in Pages – My Work, I added a link to the first page of the project.

I used the very simple piece of “A Bottle of Beer” since there was little that could go wrong (forgetting about the Spanish letter accents!) and I’m glad I did so because the “next” and “previous” are still a mystery as to how they’re working a bit off. With a piece such as “Paths” with its more complicated link patterns I’ll have to figure out some of the quirks of the process before I attempt putting it online.  I’d also like to see if I can add the images in which I’ve sort of left out in this first attempt.

One of the main reasons that I wanted to set up my own sites away from Typepad’s restrictions was to be able to offer some of my own work online, in particular, the hypertext work done in Storyspace so that it could be read.

Well, I finally was able to export one of my pieces, A Bottle of Beer, originally worked in Hypertextopia and transferred to the Storyspace format so that it was more available to my own whims. Though it’s basically a linear piece that was worked specifically for the Hypertextopia form of hypertext using ‘shards’ or what may be considered ‘asides,’ it was easily put into the Storyspace format. And today I was able to export the pieces into html format via the Storyspace templates, upload it here into the Pages-My Works part of this weblog.

There are some kinks to work out; some of the links point to a 404 page and I suspect it has to do with the titles of the nodes. Another problem seems to be the incorrectness of the links show as ‘next’ and ‘previous’ but I seem to recall Steve Ersinghaus having had that problem when he first exported a file and so I may find an easy answer to that if he recalls it. At any rate, despite the problems, it’s here.

(Posted originally at Spinning 01/02/09)

As always, I read and write with the basic idea of borders, nodes,
times and spatial levels in mind since messing around with a bit of
hypertext and interactive fiction some years back. One thing that hit
me along with all the other editing done in reading and reading and
reading my own work was the notion of the separation of time and place
via nodes or lexias that is the hypertext way. Perhaps because the past
in this piece is enclosed within the face of a four-slice toaster, a
visual space that separates the events; past and present, and the two
women who are so much alike.

I don't really do a good job of
hypertext writing, using it not to its complexity of levels of story,
so not really getting everything out of it for the reader's benefit, I
suppose. But even on the simplest mapping of two or three or four main
story paths, I cannot fail to see the past as an ongoing story that is
not only closely related to the present (the present becoming the past
in the flash of a nanosecond) but is responsible for it as it plays out
toward the future.

The other main appeal (for me) of hypertext
is the simultaneous happening of time within different space. Easier
put: I'm sitting here in CT typing on my laptop, but what's Willie
doing and where?

This particular story is not prime for hypertext, but perhaps all stories contain the possibilities.

Steve Ersinghaus reminds us of the late June Hypertext '09 conference to be held in Torino, Italy. Steve will be part of the program committee and headed a workshop at the Hypertext '08 event in Pittsburgh, PA this past summer. Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems is once again chairing the Hypertext and Community Track.

Deadlines are fast approaching for submission of papers so check out the site for information if you are planning on submitting a proposal or attending this exciting event.

It’s been done to a certain degree, is being done each time a user goes online: a story is being written following a series of plot points from hypertext link to link.  But…

What if a story was consciously plotted out from web pages? 

Simple example: A story called Dawn to Dusk with a starting point of a title page set up on a website, with a clickable link to an image, likely one found on Google of a dawn, then…

Okay, ran smack into my first problem: overriding the intended link found on the site. Also, overseeing the "reader’s" path or paths. 

One workable method (though likely not with the Google dawn above) is to carefully select each site to ensure that it not only bears linkage to a possible narrative flow, but also that a "clue" of sorts is given so that the reader is directed or guided on a preplanned thread.

Interesting.  But then again, this could also somehow be done on a single website through pages, but that’s cheating.

I realize I’ve been fairly silent here of late and when the muse returned it seems to have come in the guise of straight text and poetry, an old fashioned entity that admittedly endures.

When life and time and mood return to normal chaos I shall return with it held in my hand to spread among the paths and pages which hypertext allows.