Reflection: Multisequential Structures
Both the reader and writer of a document can map structures.1 Attaching links or metadata to documents to establish connections between them results in multisequential structures, or “interconnective structure[s]” (Nelson 1987). There may be an intended content-item-by-content-item sequence, in conventional terms, paragraph-by-paragraph, list-item-by-list-item, and so on. Several other structures also exist and can be (and usually are) mapped.
For example, in conventional terms, the order of a set of chapters and subchapters is the sequential order intended by the writer.
One chapter may be the last in one sequence (of chapters) and the second in (and adapted for) another sequence (of chapters). In this case — conceptualized as a chapter — it is the same set of points with some differences existing in two places (i.e., sequences). These two versions are inherently connected. Further, within that sequential order, there can be reused content items from other sources or other categories of information that point to internal or external content items (conventionally embedded and visually distinguished from the main text). Mapping those various connections results in an interconnective structure, offering multiple sequences of documents and content items.
It should be noted, furthermore, that while a novel on paper is far from being automatically linear, a hypertext is not necessarily nonlinear. The pages or segments may be rigorously sequential, forcing the reader to read them in a fixed order, one even more fixed than that of the pages of a book, because it is always possible to open a book to any page one wishes while a hypertext can be programmed to totally control the reader’s path. This said, hypertext by nature lends itself ideally to a variety of reading paths and to multisequential navigation. (Vandendorpe 2009)
The digital document system should allow arranging not only content items but also documents in sequential order, with the possibility of showing and hiding sequences. To that end, a third link type called seqlinks will be developed.2
The next entry further explores traversing documents in Zoomed-Out View and Zoomed-In View.
Sources
Vandendorpe C. From papyrus to hypertext: toward the universal digital library. Urbana: University of Illinois Press; 2009.