required field

Towards devising a Web page where people might come and read particular texts, this is a … map of one critical edition (i.e., an edition that reports variant readings instead of providing only a reading text) because I became weary in meetings of not having an object lesson example. Click to see a larger version:

The arrows indicate where cross-reference is signaled explicitly; the reading text does not tell a reader where any part of the 78 pages of annotation is available. This text is fiction, and no footnote/endnote cues are visible. In addition to those 78 pp., the volume contains 320 pp. of textual commentary, mostly app. crit. In the print volume the reader knows to check for these things because the reader’s properly acculturated, or because there’s this fat wodge of pages past the words “The End.” Online, however, no one can hear me scream.

In its natural habitat this diagram comes with an internal-use essay I’ve written about baroque permutations of notes and apparatus entries (half to educate my tech-side colleagues, half so that my editing colleagues who made the volume in question can check me). Tomorrow I will begin discussing my several distinct yet flawed design scenarios with colleagues, then forming a plausible decision. Thus we will avoid shafting the unwary casual reader who just wants to read the damned story, as well as the unwary scholar who wants contextually usable forms of those 78 + 320 pp. of commentary. Yes. *headdesk*

(N.B. We’re not designing a whole interface around one text, but if the interface, already constrained somewhat by mumblecomplicated, can fit this text and one other, we’ll be in fantastically good shape for the remaining ones. If.)