Who would have thought it would look that way?


Sometimes new questions spring up in highly unexpected places. At least I didn’t expect that preparing the printed version of all of this would become an adventure that offered me an instructive glimpse into the construction of hypertextual documents.

Because clicking on the page (with what?) doesn’t do anything, page numbers have been added after each link, instructing the reader as to where each link will lead him or her. To a certain extent the page numbers are arbitrary – I decided on a particular numbering scheme (each sub-linked page follows the page it links from, with each link being added in the order it appears on that main page) and within the confines of hypertext tried to be consistent with it. The result was basically a series of nestings, clusters of pages concentrated around, or flowing out of, the first link that created the cluster from the opening page. This is seen best in the "Go to" links at the end of each page. These links necessarily flow from the higher page number to the lower as they revert back to that first main link on the opening page. I expected, of course, to encounter this phenomenon. It is, after all, an accepted model of networking (hierarchical). What's more, this section purposefully attempted to limit free play with links. Even so, I was often surprised to discover how many pages radiated out of a link which when first created was only envisioned as a minor aside. One of the ways to learn about hypertext is to create it. It appears that another is to try and convert it into something similar to linear text.


Go to: On bringing the conclusion to a close, or
Go to: Trying to make some sense out of all this, or
Go to: An introduction to the extroduction, or
Go to: Web Essays - The evolution of a (personal?) medium