The XLitKit: Writing Objects
X-Literature is a fledgling XML format for electronic literature. It offers an object-oriented data model that completely separates content, format, interface elements, animation procedures, text-processing procedures, and content-traversal procedures (such as hypermedia linking) into distinct objects. This will not only provide resistance to software obsolescence and allow easier critical analysis of pieces, it will also let authors mix and match content and structural elements in unprecedented ways. The presentation will introduce an alpha version of the XLitKit, an X-Literature authoring system and Flash-based player, demonstrating how different structures can be mapped onto the same content. For example, by attaching different behaviors to content elements, a text can be transformed from a hypertext into a generated text or an animated text. This capability to easily remix even large, complex texts by globally altering their structural parameters will allow authors to take a work in many different alternative structural and presentational directions at any time. Readers could even be offered alternative interfaces and navigational methods to experience a work from different structural perspectives. |