How to Read this Thesis
My thesis consists of two documents titled ‘Exegesis’ and ‘Captive Down Under’. Both documents
are presented in a rich web-like format that I have named Hyperbook.
The detailed description of Hyperbooks is in the technical section of the exegesis (‘All about
Hyperbooks’). What follows is a brief summary of what is necessary to know in order to read them.
Hyperbooks are available in three formats:
•
As an HTML document with associated style sheet and client-side scripts. Once the folder
containing the Hyperbook is stored on the reader’s computer, the document is read in a web
browser (other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer) by opening (i.e., double-clicking) the file
hbook.html .
Currently, this is the only format that supports the full functionality of Hyperbooks.
When the user clicks on the blue band that appears on the left-hand side, s/he gains access to
the menu bar that makes possible to hide and show the different types of links. Although the
menu bar is not in itself a navigation tool, it lets the user access the Table of Contents, which
provides hyperlinks to all sections of the hyperbook. You will find a practical guide to this
format of hyperbooks at the end of this document.
•
As a PDF.
When a Hyperbook is read in PDF format, the notes are all located at the end of the document
instead of being displayed in pop-ups. Furthermore, notes and hyperlinks cannot be hidden
(one of the key features of Hyperbooks) and going back to the main document after reading a
note or following an internal hyperlink is cumbersome.
The two documents that constitute this thesis are only included because Hyperbooks in HTML
format do not support annotations. The best way of reading this thesis is to keep both formats
open, read the HTML format, and, if necessary, add comments to the corresponding PDF.
•
As a web application.
I initially developed the Hyperbooks as web applications residing on the web server I maintain
at home in Canberra (Australia). Therefore, this format only supports a subset of the current
Hyperbook functionality. In particular, the notes appear in a fixed location of the browser
window rather than in pop-ups and the Resume Reading button only works for the main
document. As there is no logical reason to read older versions of Hyperbooks, I have currently
disabled online access to them. But the Exegesis describes the software that generates and
supports the web applications in the section with heading ‘Hyperbook: Web-based’.
For reasons that will become clear after reading the section ‘All about Hyperbooks’ of the exegesis,
each Hyperbook currently consists of a single HTML document. This means that, although the various
sections are accessed via hyperlinks as if they were different documents, it is also possible to read
them sequentially by scrolling down the browser window. In other words, the multidimensional
network of documents that constitutes a Hyperbook has been flattened out by going through the nodes
of the network and merging the corresponding documents into a single one. Only by keeping in mind
the Hyperbook’s virtual structure it is possible to make sense of its physical one. For example, the root
section (i.e., the main body) of the exegesis ends with the section ‘Discussion and Conclusions’, but
that is not at the end of the physical, flattened document. Instead, it is followed by the hyperlinked
sections of the exegesis. To help the readers along the way, I have inserted in the text diagrams that
illustrate how the sections fit within the structure of the exegesis.
The position of the cursor in the next screen shot shows how the menu bar is revealed by clicking on
the blue bar that runs along the lefthand side of all hyperbooks.
Hyperlinks take precedence over the blue bar, so that, for example, clicking on the word “Hyperbooks”
underlined in red would display the linked page that explains hyperbooks rather than make the menu
bar visible.
The following screen shot shows how the menu bar is superimposed to the text when the blue bar is
clicked as shown in the previous screen shot:
In the screen shot the cursor is positioned over the Hide bibliography button. It is important to note
that the paragraph immediately below the menu bar includes two bibliographic-note markers
(numbered 1 and 2) in the same colour of the button text.
When the Hide bibliography button is clicked on, the two markers disappear from the text, as shown in
the following screen-shot.
Additionally, the button’s text has now changed to Show bibliography. By clicking the button, the
bibliographic-note markers can be made visible again. The same mechanism applies to all five tipes of
hyperlinks contained in the menu bar:
 Documents for which the hyperbook software automatically creates analytical indices
(highlighted with a red underline, like the word Hyperbooks, which appears three times in the
screen shot),
 other hyperlinked documents (blue underline),
 source code (orange text), and
 author’s comments (green superscript).
A mouse click on the marker of either an author’s comment or a bibliographic note causes the content
of the notes to be made visible in a small pop-up window positioned immediately below the note
marker. For example, clicking on the author’s coment number 2 will display the following pop-up:
As shown in the screen shot, notes can contain other notes, and the two arrows in the top-right corner
of the pop-up let the reader revisit the most reacently displayed notes. Note pop-ups can also include
hyperlinks, which cause the current page to be replaced with the hyperlinked one.
Abbreviations are not highlighted in any way, but they are all clickable:
The button “TOC” of the menu scroll the hyperbook to its Table Of Contents, which include
hyperlinks to all documents and main sections of the hyperbook.
Whenever the reader clicks on a hyperlinked page that belongs to the same hyperbook, the text of the
button “Set return point” is replaced with “Resume Reading”:
By clicking on “Resume reading” the reader immediately returns to the paragraph s/he was reading
when s/he clicked away from it. This mechanism works regardless of how many hyperlinks the reader
has followed before deciding to resume reading the hyperbook sequentially.
The original button “Set return point” lets the reader change it to “Resume reading” without clicking
on a hyperlink. This makes possible for the reader to return to the original paragraph with a single click
after freely scrolling through the document.