StretchText

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A demo of StretchText listing the propositions of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, with Wittgenstein's further commentary on the propositions being revealed Tractatus Stretchtext, by Satoh Sinh (4974655872).png
A demo of StretchText listing the propositions of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , with Wittgenstein's further commentary on the propositions being revealed

StretchText is a hypertext feature that has not gained mass adoption in systems like the World Wide Web, but gives more control to the reader in determining what level of detail to read at. Authors write content to several levels of detail in a work.

StretchText is similar to outlining, however instead of drilling down lists to greater detail, the current node is replaced with a newer node. This ‘stretching’ to increase the amount of writing, or contracting to decrease it gives the feature its name. This is analogous to zooming in to get more detail.

Ted Nelson coined the term c.1967. [1]

Conceptually, StretchText is similar to existing hypertexts system where a link provides a more descriptive or exhaustive explanation of something, but there is a key difference between a link and a piece of StretchText. A link completely replaces the current piece of hypertext with the destination, whereas StretchText expands or contracts the content in place. Thus, the existing hypertext serves as context.

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Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Early conceptions of hypertext defined it as text that could be connected by a linking system to a range of other documents that were stored outside that text. In 1934 Belgian bibliographer, Paul Otlet, developed a blueprint for links that telescoped out from hypertext electrically to allow readers to access documents, books, photographs, and so on, stored anywhere in the world.

References

  1. Landow, George P. (2006). Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (3rd. ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins university press. p. 93-98. ISBN   978-0-8018-8257-9.