Monday, January 29, 2007
Seeing and Writing, Hypertext, and Quark Express
Somehow, from a merging of this week's readings, I'm thinking "Quark Express" is the closest application that I've ever used allowing for links, varying typestyles, text, visual aids, etc. to be assembled in a non-linear fashion. Has anyone ever used Quark? But even this seems far from the early visions that Bush and others had in mind. Apparently, there are other programs or ways to accomplish these goals, and I am quite excited by the possibilities that this week's readings suggest. I must say that "Siren Shapes" offers an interesting platform for writing instruction, though I think that Mr. Joyce used a lot of parenthetical explanations when he could have just made his writing clear and to the point. But hey, that was the 80s, right? (big hair-- big words:D)
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3 comments:
It's interesting that you note Quark XPress but not the WWW as an example of a technology that allows for this non-linear writing. Does this say something about how the web has evolved or how we have come to use it? It was intended to be a true hypertext, but perhaps has been used primarily in other ways? It might be interesting to look in class at examples of web sites or web "spaces" that are *not* hypertextual, according to the definitions we read for this week.
I honestly noted Quark Xpress as a possible additional example of hypertext, though I'm still unclear as to how the web is hypertext in the extreme manner mentioned by our authors because the person using the web still has to somehow keep track of their trail in another application, folder, program, or whatever. While working in Quark, you bring all things together in one place, if I remember correctly. I'm sure that I am not fully explaining myself or understanding the concept, and that I will be properly informed Wednesday night--and I will look for the examples you mention above.
I really enjoy using Quark Xpress, but I'm not sure how it relates to hypertext either. It works like most layout programs (like InDesign and more recent versions of Pagemaker) in that the images that you drop into the layout aren't really present, they are only linked to the file. If you were to move the images or delete the originals, they would no longer appear in the Quark document. Is that what you mean?
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