Frangles Structure: 2x2 Nonlinear Reading Reading - (Sample Brick/Page)
Written 2/24/10

It was the very beginning of the Frangles brick format changes spawned from the completetion of its first nova, "Skip Square One" (frangles 13.1).  Because a nova's 7x7-brick structure (i.e. page structure) is a perfect square and the first of the frook (#13: Writer's Bricks), as well as the first formatted nova of all of Frangles, this allows the pun of "Skip Square One" (implying you really shouldn't be bothering with reading Frangles at all.)
                         This is the format of Frangles reading pages that you'll see soon, the next step up from just having "forward" and "back" links.  At the top you see four ways (up, down, left, right) of navigating whatever nova you're reading.  These four directions are very simple; they're most basic way to start getting you used to the idea of symetric nonlinear prose.  Reading a story as you would normally flip pages in a book is a linear page order, a 1 dimensional axis on (a line) on which you can progress left to right, or right to left.  The first step up in the nonlinear prose of Frangles is a second axis; an X by Y graph you're used to from high school, on which you can progress left to right, right to left, up, and down, when navigating either the X or the Y axis but not both.  (Moving along both would be a slanted line, such as moving up and right equally along a 45 degree angle.)  The idea of navigating this way is to get a fully coherent & standalone work whichever way you progress (that going down from page 111 to 121 then 131, etc, will give you just as meaningful and entertaining a story as progressing normally: 111 to 112 to 113, etc).  As this is a very unexplored writing technique, these orderings may have achieved this goal of being readable stories, or perhaps not.  Frangles is always a draft, and if things that are theorized to make sense in fact don't, that's simply something that needs work.
                         Even more difficult is making every possible story on higher dimensional structures also work well.  E.g. as Writer's Bricks continues, there will be a third dimension of 7 units: the 7 novas which each have a 2D, 7x7 brick structure, making the full frook Writer's bricks a 7x7x7 (or 7^3) readable structure, with which you would have six basic options to navigate (forward or backward on the x, y, or z axis).  The cold day in hell Frangles is complete, you would have 5 dimensions, creating 10 ways of progressing: forward or back on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th axis.  (In math this structure could be called a 5 dimensional hypercube or a [7][5] matrix (or array)).  As we start to get that far, the way of navigating those pages might be something like an up arrow above each brick digit and a down arrow below them, such as this:

Or, a little more elegant/compact but a little bit harder to use would be something like this:

Where you'd click the last '+' to go to the regular next page (increasing the last digit of 13.122), and the rightmost '-' digit, i.e. the fifth '-' from the left of the entire above expression.  If you think this might be confusing, remember that Frangles strives to be a friendly place for everyone, and a way of keeping things very simple at the same time is still to have a big friendly "NEXT" button at the bottom of each page, or have the obvious 1D back & forth reading order highlighted or in bold or something.
              Note one of the sample arrows above is grayed out.  Obviously as a section of Frangles is being written, there will be some ways you can progress and other ways you can't.  Fading the directions you can't go should make it very easy to navigate without hitting dead ends.  (As this is being written, the bricks/pages currently go back to the main brick map, so that to read in a nonstandard order, you have to click the page you want, go back, and click the next one, keeping in mind where you were and in what direction you were going for every brick read).
              It should be noted that better and better software will have to be written to organize Frangles reading material in this way.  As this is being written, each brick/page is saved in a simple text file, and the file is copied and pasted manually into each brick (html page).  There are many, many, many ways one could order this type of nonlinear structure, so this basic page writing has to extremely simple and standard for any written software to arrange, whether in editing software, reading software, etc.  Consider a basic brick in any structure of Frangles' type in its standard form (a basic .txt file) to be like a bitmap image that very complex art programs (such as Adobe or Gimp) can be written to manipulate, organize, etc etc.  With Frangles in particular, the three main things our software we'll need will, 1) organize these text files into readable html files postable on the internet (such as this page), which includes artwork, backgrounds, color schemes, fonts, etc etc; 2) create indexes / page maps to see/save/surf certain structures at a glance (there are many, many ones one might view a map of a given reading order of Frangles, and a freer might one to select a large story and be able to surf it without remembering every single page sequence); and 3) allow us to easily write & edit Frangles (such as using the navigation tools outlined on this page for writing in addition to reading).Where you'd click the last '+' to go to the regular next page (increasing the last digit of 13.122), and the rightmost '-' digit, i.e. the fifth '-' from the left of the entire above expression.  If you think this might be confusing, remember that Frangles strives to be a friendly place for everyone, and a way of keeping things very simple at the same time is still to have a big friendly "NEXT" button at the bottom of each page, or have the obvious 1D back & forth reading order highlighted or in bold or something.
              Note one of the sample arrows above is grayed out.  Obviously as a section of Frangles is being written, there will be some ways you can progress and other ways you can't.  Fading the directions you can't go should make it very easy to navigate without hitting dead ends.  (As this is being written, the bricks/pages currently go back to the main brick map, so that to read in a nonstandard order, you have to click the page you want, go back, and click the next one, keeping in mind where you were and in what direction you were going for every brick read).
              It should be noted that better and better software will have to be written to organize Frangles reading material in this way.  As this is being written, each brick/page is saved in a simple text file, and the file is copied and pasted manually into each brick (html page).  There are many, many, many ways one could order this type of nonlinear structure, so this basic page writing has to extremely simple and standard for any written software to arrange, whether in editing software, reading software, etc.  Consider a basic brick in any structure of Frangles' type in its standard form (a basic .txt file) to be like a bitmap image that very complex art programs (such as Adobe or Gimp) can be written to manipulate, organize, etc etc.  With Frangles in particular, the three main things our software we'll need will, 1) organize these text files into readable html files postable on the internet (such as this page), which includes artwork, backgrounds, color schemes, fonts, etc etc; 2) create indexes / page maps to see/save/surf certain structures at a glance (there are many, many ones one might view a map of a given reading order of Frangles, and a freer might one to select a large story and be able to surf it without remembering every single page sequence); and 3) allow us to easily write & edit Frangles (such as using the navigation tools outlined on this page for writing in addition to reading).
              Again, remember that you never have to bother with fancy nonlinear structures to read Frangles.  You simply need to click the big "next" and "back" buttons that we'll try to include on every brick/page.  (If we don't, at the worst you'll just have to know where those buttons are on the page if they're a little bit less noticable).
              If you'd like try exploring 2x2 already, you can progress up/down/left/right on nova 13.1, which is (as this is being written) unfinished, so you'll just get the basic idea until it's completed.
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