Even though DITA pays my checks, I've always been apprehensive about functionality like `conref`[1] in a general-purpose document. You can only fuss with natural language for so long before you're not a document anymore, and if you're not a document . . well, what are you doing? Why are we here? You've built a conceptual box that's better done in an actual programming language.
But no one's going to argue about the utility of headings (hmm except for the DITA architects, who have disposed of it in favor of a nested transclusion of `topicrefs`). This sort of article is always fascinating, although it is just as concerned with fiction prose.
Off topic, the following would prove darkly prophetic:
Early modern intellectuals like Robert Boyle and John Locke would even rail against Biblical chaptering: Boyle complained of its ‘inconvenient Distinction’, which ‘hath sometimes Sever’d Matters that should have been left United’; Locke for his part despaired that the system of chapter-and-verse left scripture ‘so chop’d and minc’d […] so broken and divided’ that not only do the ‘Common People take the Verses usually for distinct aphorisms’, but even the educated have their powers of memory enfeebled.
[1] I'm calling out DITA but it's also mechanisms in S1000D and DocBook, and you can do the same in Asciidoc (include directive to region) or ReStructuredText (same). The XML specs are clunkier, but the basic concept is the same.
How else could I deep-link to a total banger line like Matthew 25:40?
This comes across as sloppy work from someone in an English department who didn't have the language skills to work outside English but decided to try anyway.
I'm not sure why "language skills" are necessary for this piece - these questions are fundamentally about what the words inscribed on a document are, not what those words mean. It could easily be true that Latin scrolls started labeling something "capitulum" while Greek scrolls called the same thing "kephalaia".
lqet•14h ago
That may all be true. But many authors of that era (e.g. Dickens and Dostoevsky) published their work mainly in monthly installments. Chapters are then, exactly like TV show episodes, simply a technical necessity.
ldmosquera•12h ago
You're constantly yanked out of the narrative in service of ads even if you never see them, which has disfigured the medium.
NoMoreNicksLeft•12h ago
If it is on a broadcast tv network, it's not really worth watching. Sure, there are the one or two exceptional shows, but with so much premium content, why would you want to watch that?
red369•8h ago
Surely there's a huge list of old broadcast TV network shows that are worth watching, and that still suffer from the ad-break problem to various degrees.
Obviously I'm pulling from a wide time-period, and I'll probably get some of these wrong because I'm not in the the US and don't quite grok the network/cable divide, but off the top of my head, I think these are/were all worth watching: Seinfeld, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Community, Schitt's Creek, The Office, The X-Files, various Star Trek series, Cheers
That list could be easily improved on, but I assume it's missing your point anyway if you were only talking about current broadcast network TV (if it exists :) )
thaumasiotes•7h ago
Almost all of those are broadcast shows. I strongly suspect that all of them are, but I don't have personal knowledge of the entire list.
As far as I can tell, the divide is pretty straightforward:
Cable: nudity
Broadcast: everything else
In theory there's no requirement for a cable show to have nudity, but since they're allowed to, they all do.
crazygringo•11h ago
That was the hallmark of old TV, on networks. Since the start of TV in the 50's.
There are tons of modern TV shows that don't do anything you're talking about because they're made for streamers or paid TV without ads.
It sounds like you watch different shows than I do, but I watch a lot of TV and haven't seen what you're talking about in many, many years. Not with Squid Game or Stranger Things on Netflix, or Andor on Disney+, or White Lotus on HBO, or Severance on Apple TV+, or even something like Alien: Earth currently on FX/Hulu.
You might want to find better places for watching TV...
pests•7h ago
One thing I do notice more and appreciate from streaming (sense8 in particular) is that shows are more varied in their runtime. Episodes being 40 minutes to 75 in length just depending on the needs of the plot, not even finale related or anything
esseph•2h ago
red369•8h ago
I find that laugh-tracks are the aspect of older shows which I find harder to ignore. Still worth bearing with for some old shows though, especially as I gradually stop hearing them.
bdunks•12h ago
In the preface to the 4th or 5th book (which were written 30+ years after the “original” trilogy) he discussed how the originals parts of the trilogy were published as a set of short stories in a SciFi publication over 8 years, and later compiled into the books.
I was astonished.
Perhaps everyone else already knew this. But such a clear narrative through line to be written in discrete short stories. Very impressive.
It sounds like this may have been common prior to this era as well.
hinkley•11h ago
Edit: looked it up. Dickens and Dumas preceded Jules Verne in serials being turned into novels.
soneca•11h ago
andrewflnr•7h ago
d_sem•6h ago
Regarding psychohistory: It's worth considering the era in which the books where written. The 1st half of the 20th century saw massive innovations in economic theory, physics, and information theory. It was not a big leap to predict that in 500 years time, humans would further advance macro economics. Personally I felt the books did a great job setting limits in the capabilities of the theory, and using its inherit flaws to drive interesting plot lines.
KineticLensman•1h ago
esperent•5h ago
I reread it last year and I needed to give it a lot of grace, mostly from it's treatment of women. To Asimov's credit, there's no overt sexism - he manages to bypass that by having almost no female characters at all. There's a single female character who has no agency, every other character is white and male. I understand it's a product of it's time, and avoid judgment. However, the lack of women feels weird and makes it hard to enjoy.
To be fair, the later books in the series which were written in the 70s are much better in this regard.
dotancohen•4h ago
watwut•1h ago
dotancohen•1h ago
watwut•23m ago
Much of it do have women in it. As I go through them in my head, almost everything has some women in it, at least existing in larger world. Except "Old Man and the Sea" one character against the world kind of things. Hemingway has women in other books tho.
ImaCake•10h ago
Maybe its only now that we are less constrained by technology that we have to really focus on our mental faculties as the limiting factor for writing.
galaxyLogic•7h ago
andrewflnr•7h ago
throw245433•6h ago
With all the colonization and cultural exchange going on during that period, they should've been familiar with it.
novosel•4h ago
dotancohen•4h ago
I tried not writing in chapters, but I find that the chapters helped me compartmentalize different times and places and specific subjects. It may be that I'm simply used to chapters from reading other books, but no matter what the book I find that some sort of compartmentalization is beneficial and often necessary.
madaxe_again•3h ago
Seems to fit stream of consciousness stuff better.
Although this does remind me of sitting on a plane as a kid with finnegan’s wake, and an older American leans over and reassures me that I’ll be able to move on to “chapter books” soon. To this day I remain unsure if he was being ironic or if he thought I was reading “Spot The Dog”.
dotancohen•2h ago