|
|
|
|
|
|
| ________ | ||||
| The
Downtown Writers Network is a resource for independent writers in central
Ohio. |
A Writer's Guide to E-PublishingPart 1 -- The TechnologyHypertext / HTML
Its interactivity makes HTML an ideal format for textbooks, white papers, instruction manuals or any sort of training document. It's also produced an intriguing new literary genre, alternately called "hyperfiction" and "cybertext." Using hypertext, fiction writers are not only creating multimedia documents with sound and animation, but are dismantling the traditional linear story line. Hypertext novels and short stories overturn the Aristotelian notions of beginning, middle and end. Instead of leading readers from page one to page two, hyperfiction lets them experience the story in alternative sequences through hyperlinks to various facets of the tale they can select at random. The reader can delve more deeply into any character, episode or subplot of the novel that particularly interests them, or even revisit scenes and re-live them from alternate points of view. Potentially, every reader's experience of a hyperfiction book or short story is unique because of the choices he or she made during the reading. Whether hyperfiction turns out to be a lasting literary form or a passing fad, hypertext itself is a robust publication tool with extremely practical applications. In fact, most of the plans for a standard e-book protocol are based on HTML and a related markup language called XML ("Extensible Markup Language"). XML is a topic to itself, another publishing industry revolution that you can learn more about in a future article in this series. Far from being replaced by new e-publishing technology, markup languages like HTML will become even more necessary than they are today . Software companies offer a host of HTML authoring programs (some especially designed for writers), and other excellent ones are available for free download. Any writer who is interested in e-publishing needs one of these programs, but should invest the time in learning the basics of HTML. For a printer friendly version of this article, click here. Contents of this
article
|
Books have been published on the
internet for years. The "Project Gutenberg" electronic archive, for example,
offers thousands of classic titles in the public domain for downloading as text
documents. Other online resources, including Bibliomania and a number of
universities, have made hypertext versions of classic literature available in
HTML format. Hypertext is extraordinarily flexible and interactive. With HTML,
an author can enhance any document with illustrations, animation, audio files,
and hyperlinks to supporting documentation such as glossaries, footnotes and
internet sites.