Position and Stretching
The original idea of stretchtext was to make it simple, as readers never would
In written stretchtext, the length of a text segment is always visible, so when it becomes longer or shorter, the change will normally be noticeable. Visual clues are also often added to highlight this further (see Zellweger, Mangen, and Newman
for some elaborate examples).
Similarly, to be certain that viewers of a stretchfilm understand its structure, it is necessary to visualize that a stretch or a shrink is taking place. If the film has a footnote structure, it is also necessary to indicate where the segment that is included or left out begins and ends, and preferably its length.
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A stretchtext's structure is very similar to a known structure: that of a succession of pages (or a long scroll in a browser window). You can always see where the place you just read is when you access new information, and you always know where to navigate next, as the text continues. You always have the context of what you are reading at hand: namely above the current paragraph. (If the text is written that way, that is.)
When text is either one long page or a succession of pages, its structure is visible. This structure is not visible in a film. The linear structure of a film is a temporal structure, not a spatial structure. When a reader stretches a stretchfilm, the point of departure is not visible, and the relation between the current moment in the film and the previous moment before the stretch must be made in memory. Furthermore, it is not possible to see how much is added or subtracted from the film surface alone.
This calls for a visualization of the stretchfilm structure, an extra interface device to fill the function of the visual stretching of lines of text and aid the understanding of where one is.
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Several different solutions to this have been developed in earlier hyperfilm work.