2003-08-28 Browsing Intricately Interconnected Paths http://www.ht03.org/papers/pdfs/13.pdf structure: - hypertext paths - what is path-centric browsing - walden's paths [<-- sounds like an interesting project] - path framework - path engine prototype - future work * paths in hypertext taking some stuff and ordering it in some way long history... bush's trials created by users, the system, specific path authors (maybe the domain expert) [lots of people talking about paths, we're aspiring to something. having to build it on top of the web. that implies that the 'next thing' will have paths baked in, first class] browsers are either graph-centric or node-centric... this doesn't include path browsers which don't fit in either paradigm Zellweger- "path centric browsing should be a first-class citizen of hypertext" examples... graph-centric: display overviews of the directed graphs of nodes and links [completely non local] -- good at context, but can't present large info sets node-centric: like web browsers [completely local with no sense of context, *utterly* embedded, but no supersenses] -- can only interact with reachable nodes, no context, no extraneous data (although these latter ones are simulated with compound documents) path-centric: underlying concept of path, display occludes unrelated nodes, easy to comprehend network. path elements explicitly ordered, clear navigational directive [so there's an idea of locality and vision here, although it only has a dimension of *concept*. generalise this and it's more like zigzag. graph is a terrain, node is a room: path is rooms and *road*. see also: my notes about that last month embedded in the cyber_reader notes. more like the real world and distance, hey we're solving the same problems.] Walden's Paths: - easy to create linear paths - unfortunately things rarely correlate in only a single dimension (timelines [which are parallel documents], subway route maps versus line maps) think of how the problem is solved with the tube map: graph centric as opposed to node browsing (which would be useless), and there's path-browsing too: they show a line map *aswell*. collapse the info to a single dimension for certain purposes. there are many narratives in every topic. different ways of talking about movie actors. not just intersecting but complex... interpretation variable upon order reuse of path fragments, subpaths, Bernstein's hypertext patterns (literary hypertexts) so they've introduced a new thing: - a "Stop" - represents a single concept - embodied by a resource and an annotation - not just web pages, but many resources: AV version, easy reading version links join stops together. can span stops on different paths or same path. in some cases, link is hierarchical = "tell me more". move people between different paths. (different lines on the tube map) there's a demo: Path Engine Prototype future work: - branching paths? path fragments? (they've found that people don't make long paths) - dynamic stops - new authoring behaviours