4
Text-Only Hypertext
Not every picture is worth a 1000 words!
"In the Information Age the continuous flows and fragments of speech and images are like gusty winds in our face, but the ground on which we stand is the rubble of text. … The Information Age challenges us to deepen our understanding of written language so that we might better acquire, store, communicate, and access our information through this ancient, acquired medium that we all share."
Robert Lucky [Lucky, 1989, pg. 91]
Hypermedia, the application of hypertext techniques to graphics, moving pictures, and sounds as well as text, is being hyped strenuously of late. This chapter is intended as something of an antidote.
It is not that I do not admire pretty pictures and the technologies that make them appear and change on computer screens. Rather, I believe that the expense and flash of hypermedia is inappropriate in certain circumstances. People won't pay for hypermedia; they'll pay for solutions to their problems. There are instances where problems can be solved only by hypermedia. There are other circumstances where the only solution is text-only hypertext.
Not every hyperdocument requires fancy graphics, sound, and/or video. In fact, many hyperdocuments benefit from the lack of distracting multimedia accompaniment. In particular, most businesses value hypertext more for its timeliness than for its flash; for its economy, elegance, and substance than for its intrinsic beauty.
The documents most people in business generate and read have few, if any, graphics, video, sound, or fury. Text-only hypertext has the power to organize and transform a quagmire of circulars, memos, reports, requests, marketing data, demographic statistics, and annual reports into a business plan. It can help businesses coordinate with government, suppliers, distributors, and customers.
Text-only hypertext has several advantages over hypermedia. These include: performance, economy, ease of development, ability to run on cheaper and more universally available equipment, and portability.
Performance
Probably the biggest advantage of text-only hypertext is the speed at which it operates. The overhead required to support even simple still-frame graphics and multiple on-screen fonts is considerable. Full-color stills, motion video and sound almost always force hypermedia developers to trade off between performance, cost and space. For example, it takes about one second for each of the full-screen images used in the Rediscovering Pompeii hypermedia program [see the case study in this book] to be displayed on screen. The use of sound or full-motion video can involve even longer delays.
Graphics and sound can slow down processing in a number of ways: large graphics and sound files must be loaded from slow mass-storage media such as hard disks or optical disks and the software required to manage graphics and sound steals cycles from the computer's CPU that could otherwise be devoted to responding promptly to user input.
ASCII text files load much faster than graphic files and, once loaded, usually require less work from the system and applications software to manage. With fewer time-critical tasks to worry about, the software that runs a text-only application can react more quickly to asynchronous requests from users and other interrupts.
Economy
Text-only hypertexts can easily be run on inexpensive PCs such as old 8088-based IBM XTs or Macintosh SEs. Multitasking graphical environments like Microsoft Windows or HyperCard require considerably more horsepower. Microsoft recommends at least a 286-based AT class machine to run Windows applications such as OWL's Guide 3.0.
Text-only hypertexts can be run on inexpensive monochrome graphics environments. Multimedia applications often require much more expensive high- or medium-resolution color displays.
Sophisticated hypermedia applications consume other computer resources at an astonishing rate. A single high-resolution still can take a megabyte or more of real estate on a hard drive or optical disk. An ASCII file requires just one byte per character.
Because hypermedia applications often run on cutting-edge technology, hypermedia productions often require the active involvement of one or more technical types such as computer programmers or even hardware designers. Production of text-only hypertext is apt to be much more straightforward.
Ease of Development
Text-only hypertexts can also be developed in less time, with less staff and using fewer resources than hypermedia applications. Hypertext is a literary medium; a writer or editor is almost always necessary, and hypermedia applications almost always require a designer. But text-only hypertexts require fewer hours from artists, video producers, audio producers, etc., than hypermedia products. Thus, text-only hypertexts can be designed, implemented and distributed in a fraction of the time required for hyperdocuments that include sound, graphics or motion video.
Because text-only hypertext can be run on less sophisticated systems, less technical expertise is required to develop and tweak the software that makes it run. Unlike graphics, sound, and motion video, which almost always involve outside content creators, formatters, and/or production, textual content can usually be created, edited, and formatted in-house.
In fact, for most business people who have neither the time nor the talent to get involved with fancy graphics packages and sound and video editing stations, text only hypertext is the only way to go. In addition, text-only hyperdocuments more closely resemble the paper documents that business people are used to, so they are easier for many readers to browse.
Portability
In spite of all the fancy fonts that desktop publishing has brought us, the fact remains that most of the documents available in digital format today are stored in plain ASCII format. This includes all the requirements, policies, procedures, descriptions, specifications, laws or diagnostics, and textual representations of ideas you are likely to encounter. Sticking to ASCII-only text facilitates porting between platforms because ASCII remains the one common language that almost all computers understand today.
Even formatted text is easier to port than graphics or sound. There is a standard for formatted text. It is called the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Even highly formatted text files created in an SGML-compliant manner can be exchanged readily between computer systems. [See Chapter 10 by Rearick and Chapter 26 by Devlin for more information about SGML.] This is almost never the case with color documents formatted to be displayed on particular computer monitors.
Don't make the decision to implement a text-only or multimedia hypertext up front. Define the problem you want to solve. Design the solution to the problem. If it has pictures, sounds or motion in it, it may become a hypermedia application. If it has just a few stills in it, call it a text-only hypertext and be proud. After all, the world's most influential literary masterpieces are all text-only documents.
About the Author
Emily Berk is co-editor of this handbook. She has been a designer and program mer of interactive hyper- and multimedia since 1980. Some of her recent multimedia meanderings have taken her to work as Project Leader on the DVI-based Words in the Neighborhood application at RCA Sarnoff Labs and as chief instigator of the Zoo Project, a HyperCard-based mapping program.
References
Devlin, J. (1991). "Standards for Hypertext," Hypertext/Hypermedia Handbook, Emily Berk and Joseph Devlin (Eds.), McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
Lucky, R. (1989). "Silicon Dreams: Information, Man and Machine," St. Martin's Press, New York, NY.
Rearick, T. (1991). "Automating the Conversion of Text into Hypertext," Hypertext/Hypermedia Handbook, Emily Berk and Joseph Devlin (Eds.), McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.