[poletopole]

This may sound half-baked, but I personally plan on exploring how far I can take the ideal and form of a "book" oriented UX/UI, in a least one future project--but is a subject I've written about almost too much.

If this sounds silly for software, then what exactly is the UX/UI of a spreadsheet application, and why is it so universally useful? At first, I thought this was by virtue of its tabular UI/UX, but books are nothing but rows and columns of text, are they not? At least Awk thinks so. What is the difference between a cell and a sheet in a relational sense? I see no difference, or that is, its design is isomorphic.

A book is a collection of sheets, where a sheet consists of other sheets or views, where a view is any given selection and dimension of text. Sheets can be stacked, ordered, sorted, and indexed into new books, just as words can--and as linguists say, into an infinite set of sentences (views). This design cannot be reduced in a hyper-grammatical sense.

This is to suggest that a "book" UX/UI would require a new way on how we approach language not only within the context of software but language--it's a direct spit in the face of Chomsky himself (although he would have more to say about this than I), but hasn't this been a long ways in coming? It seems as if textual communication is the long term trend, but comes at no surprise to any of us, here whom work remotely. So really when I say "book" based UX/UI, I mean just that, but really--it is augmented natural grammar--a subject beyond the scope of this discussion.

All good UX solves a problem, so what is the problem here? It's increasing the transmission capacity of information over text, or that is, expanding what and how we can express as information with language, without monumental standards. But no language is without communication and therefore the crux of the problem lies in the future of higher level network protocols (if you believe in such a thing).

[Someone]

> A book is a collection of sheets, where a sheet consists of other sheets or views, where a view is any given selection and dimension of text.

I would think a book is an ordered collection of chapters, a chapter an ordered collection of paragraphs, etc.

The pages are there solely to force the book into a physical form, just as one can ‘project’ a spreadsheet onto pages. Scrolls are an alternative physical form.