🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <870048@hpcilzb.HP.COM> tedj@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson) writes:
>I think that this whole hypertext system can be very dis-orienting.
>Sure, it's fine to be able to jump back and forth between related ideas,
>but how do you know you haven't missed something incredibly important
>unless you have the option of processing the information LINEARLY? 

Excuse me if I'm being dense, but doesn't the right-arrow key do this?
I mean, if you start at the first card of a stack, and then do "go next card"
until you have seen them all, isn't that processing the information linearly?
Or do you mean something different by linear than most people do?

>I wouldn't like to only be able to see ONE PAGE
>of a reference book at a time, because I would lose track
>of the context; skimming through the pages IN A LINEAR FASHION
>is much more effective.

I suppose you read the phone book linearly, and want to see more than one
page of it at once? :-)  It *is* a reference book, after all ... and so
is a dictionary, an encyclopedia, the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, ...

Anyway, HyperCard's mechanism for dealing with this problem is the "recent"
cpommand, which lets you rapidly get to the last 42 screens you've seen.  And
an enhancement for large-screen systems which will allow multiple cards to be
displayed is supposed to be in the works.

-- 
	Howard A. Landman
	{oliveb,hplabs}!intelca!mipos3!cpocd2!howard
	howard%cpocd2.intel.com@RELAY.CS.NET
	"I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't do that."