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RMIT Communication Studies HyperText Working Web
Series 1
The hyperText ProjectStoryspace and Hypertext
This document was written and refers to work and subjects undertaken in 1995.
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a hypertext writing program Storyspace facilitates writing from the 'ground'
up. Unlike HTML Storyspace writing is intuitive, direct, and allows a form of 'cognitive'
modelling of writing, thinking, and arguing.
It is principally text driven so there is no 'dilution' of traditional
academic writing skills within the subjects where hypertext is offered as an
assessment option, and the nature of the program encourages students to explore
ideas in ways that the standard essay discourages.
It relies on a linking structure that is 100% controlled by the writer. It
supports multiple links from any part of a web to any other part of a web, from
word to word, word to phrase, word to sentence, word to paragraph, word to
graphic, word to movie clip, word to text space, or any combination of these.
All linking is achieved by a simple click and point process.
All writing and linking is done within the one program, and no programming
skills, of any sort, are required. Being a digital technology it allows the
easy incorporation of image, movie, and sound into a web. Furthermore it
supports links within, between, and to images. Storyspace allows export to HTML
so that World Wide Web publication remains an option, but this is done after the
writing process is completed.
Finally, in terms of 'multimedia' production and writing it offers
a relatively 'low' technology solution. The software is cheap, easily
learnt, able to run on virtually any Macintosh, and has very low resource
requirements (in terms of computers, software, and training).
For anyone wanting additional information please feel free to
contact me. I am more than happy to
show the work that students are doing, or to demonstrate the program. In a short
while it is hoped to have some standalone examples of Storyspace webs available
for uploading, though to begin with they will only be in Macintosh format. In
the meantime I have set up a
clickable image map of a Storyspace
screenshot which will give some explanation of what the program is, and how it
works.
NEW
Demonstration version of Storyspace are available for downloading.
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