Shasha, D: When Does Non-Linear Text Help? (Classic Reprint) -

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Résumé :
Excerpt from When Does Non-Linear Text Help?

Now, suppose you sit down for a night of reading short stories. You may not want to read them in the order specified by the table of contents, but you are likely to read any story you choose in the order it is written. In this case, a non-linear text system provides no benefit over linear text. There is no need for more than one arrangement.

These examples illustrate that the need for a non-linear text system is not inherent in the text, but in the questions or choices the reader may make. When you pick up a book of stories, you will usually either read a story through or read a prefix of the story. When you pick up a guidebook, you may have one of many questions in mind. Some of the questions are incompatible with one another in the sense that a book optimized to answer one kind of question (e. G. About visual art museums) may be difficult to use to answer another (e. G. About museums in one neighborhood).

The next section formalizes the question of when and how much an application needs non-linear text. Section 3 formalizes the contrast between linear and non-linear text systems and considers normal forms for non-linear text. Mon 4 discusses open questions and the limitations of our model.

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