BookMorphs

Lex Spoon lex at cc.gatech.edu
Tue Apr 11 21:24:21 UTC 2000


Stephan Rudlof <sr at evolgo.de> wrote:

> - Was it your first BookMorph?
> - Was it difficult to create this BookMorph?
> - How much was the amount of time used for layouting and handling the
> BookMorph compared to reasoning about the contents of the text?
> - Would you recommend to use it to write something with graphics?
> 


Mmm, it basically was my first.  It was pretty easy, but note that I
didn't try for much.  There is absolutely no scripting in it, and there
are only a few graphics.


As far as time spent, to be honest, I actually drew up a fair outline
before I started, and stuck fairly closely to it.  I don't think it took
much different time than writing a similar document in LaTeX would have
taken.  (Except, of course, for the added cost of the diagrams).

Overall, I think BookMorphs are and ever will be the system to use when
you want to concisely express something very important.  They take more
time to develop that a stupid plain-text document, but they also be
*much* more expressive.  They aren't the best thing to use for large
texts.  They could be in theory, but it would be a mistake IMHO to work
on large plain boring texts instead of the more exciting stuff.  Large
texts can be accomodated later, once there is a good system for the hard
stuff.


By the way, I was surprised at how easy it is to set this all up.  You
can save a BookMorph by using the gray halo and choosing "save to file".
 You can download it by copying the code I used in the previous message:


	'...the url...' asUrl retrieveContents contentStream
fileInObjectAndCode openInWorld


I encourage people to try it out, at least once--it's kinda fun!


-Lex





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