![]() ![]() When you create a link you are always given an opportunity to name the link but sometimes, and only sometimes (the conditioning factor is hard to explain), you are given an opportunity to name the link and attach a guard, all in one dialog. That’s why yet another feature of the interface bothers me. Using guards you can ask a question and have the next action depend upon whether the user types/clicks Y or N you can teach a user a repertory of typed commands (Next, Prev, Subjunctive, Help) and respond to them. When I first started playing with Storyspace I thought it would be the names of links (and Rule 2) that I would rely on most but in building my Greek paradigm reader I find that everything depends upon a combination of guards with links from particular text. HyperCard might be able to do it with a lot of work and careful scripting, and Owl International might have come out with a newer version of Guide that can do something like this, but otherwise Storyspace is unique in this respect. ![]() The ability to link items is rare, certainly, but I don’t know of any other program that gives you the same sort of conditional control over linking. (There’s also a special guard field, BACK!, which sends the reader back to the previous writing space.) It is easy, therefore, to create documents in which the user’s chain of behaviour determines in a fairly complex way what screen s/he is shown next.ĪDAM: The guards are what give Storyspace’s links their true power. Moreover, you can use the Booleans, AND, OR, and NOT on these basic actions. The guards can depend on either of two basic action types – if the user selects (or types) a certain word, or if the reader has already visited a certain text space.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |