Translating and Visualising Storyspace Classics for the Web. A User-Friendly Framework

GOAL: The workshop is directed towards authors and translators of hypertext fiction and poetry created in Storyspace. We demonstrate the future direction of the in-house development environment used for translation and migration of Michael Joyce’s afternoon.a story (2011) and Twilight. A Symphony (2015) into browser/online ports. The framework has been recently updated to its third edition which – apart from its support for guard fields, roadmaps, link scripting – introduces form-based import layer and a mobile friendly visualizations of Storyspace Map Views based on D3.js JavaScript library. During the workshop a workflow of importing the work, processing its metadata, and preparing the linking system for the visualization module will be demonstrated and analysed. The hypertexts used during the workshop are: Izme Pass by C. Guyer, M. Joyce, and M. Petry; WOE by M. Joyce, and The Life of Geronimo Sandoval by S. Ersinghaus. Participants will prepare an html export from Storyspace and be able to then upload these files on a server for further processing in order to prepare an online, mobile friendly version of a Storyspace work. BACKGROUND: More than 20 years after their publication web-based hypertexts such as Hegirascope or The Unknown are available, read and viewed just as intended on their publication date. “Html and a bit of Javascript” or “Javascript and a bit of html”, in case of Web based text generators such as Taroko Gorge, seem to constitute the best formula for creating long-lasting e-literature. Any platform, old or new, which supports exporting to html improves not only the longevity of the work, but can also bring it new life on platforms of the future. Important platforms, most notably Flash, did not follow this path. Some platforms, including Storyspace, did. In spite of being a paid software and the popular perception of it as a platform for commercial circulation of e-literature, Storyspace managed to preserve its path to open formats in form of its html export functionality (although by default in limited form).