I'll bite. Several gopher folks have been talking about
breaking up text "into chunks of semantic ideas or
sentences."[1][2][3] I think the concept is fascinating.
Long-windedness is a challenge for me. I enjoy writing, and
while I try to be succinct when possible, I don't
necessarily strive to be brief. For me, the very act of
writing is pleasant, so I make no effort to curtail it.
As for the breaking up of text
in a purely visual or technical way
I'm not sold on the merits.
Mostly I'm worried
it is needlessly hard on the reader,
and imposes a learning curve
on an otherwise natural activity.
Then again,
as tomasino noted[2],
the activity of reading and writing
in this way
becomes easier as you practice it.
I suppose that is like anything,
and one should not expect
that it would be instantaneous.
At first I thought
this method of structured writing
would be useful
on my z80 computer.
On that machine
I have a line editor
for writing and editing
text files.
The constraints of that line editor
make it difficult to re-flow
text you've already written.
Perhaps breaking phrases up
at logical points
would make editing easier.
I can't say that I've tried it yet,
but I honestly can't imagine
that it would change much.
Maybe I'm wrong,
and it would change everything
if it was done correctly.
I think the biggest issue I face with the whole idea is lack
of a standard form. I'm not exactly clear on where I ought
to break things up, and I can't seem to formulate any rules
on the matter. Poetic forms- the closest thing I can think
of to this exercise- are often quite rigid. Part of me
wishes that I could try out the exercise with some rules.
Might I suggest
the Tomasino Method of Formatting
to be introduced on gopher
in the year 2018?
[1]
gopher://zelibertinegamer.me:70/0/phlog/2018-02-02_0159.txt
[2]:
gopher://sdf.org/1/users/tomasino/phlog/20180119-chunky-over-smooth
[3]:
gopher://sdf.org/0/users/yargo/glog/./t18118-gophertility.txt
