(10) How to … Present and Publish the thinking you’ve created in Thortspace (Part 1)
Part 1 is about how to create and view Journeys in Thortspace
Here’s an example I made a video of, of the kind of experience you can created with a Thortspace “Journey”. (There’s no sound on this video. It’s just for demo purposes.)
Contents:
A. Getting started with Present Mode
B. Adding items (ie. specific thorts or groups) as viewpoints
C. What gets stored in a journey step? — a viewpoint, the category set and the arrangement
A. Getting started with Present Mode
From the home screen, tap (or click) this button to go into “Present” mode.
Open the “Journeys” tab.
“Journeys” allow you to create an ordered series of Viewpoints.
Tap (or click) the “New” button to create a new Journey.
Give your Journey a name.
Tap the “Add View” button to add the current Viewpoint to the current Journey.
Give your viewpoint a name.
Add more viewpoints.
Tap on an item to go to that viewpoint.
Tap the “Play” button to play through the Journey.
The steps above are demonstrated in the video below:
B. Adding items (ie. Thorts or Groups) as viewpoints
Viewpoints can point at a specific Thort or Group, as well as at particular locations on spheres. See the articles below for a discussion of this.
C. What gets stored in a “Journey Step” also known as a “Viewpoint” ?
Essentially a journey step stores 5 things:
(1) The name and the description of the journey step
(2) A place to look from
(3) A thing to look at
(4) An applied category set
(5) An applied arrangement
Let’s consider each of these four things one at a time.
When you save or update a Journey Step (“Viewpoint”) in a Journey, all of the following get saved into the Viewpoint:
(1) The name and description of the journey step. Give names to journey steps (“viewpoints”) is discussed in section A. above. Adding Descriptions to journey steps (“viewpoints”) is discussed in more detail here:
(2) The location that you are looking from. This is sometimes called the “camera” position, although of course there isn’t really any camera. There is just you the viewer looking at the screen. The position that you are looking at your current sphere or sphere network from, including the zoom distance that you are looking at it from is perhaps the most significant aspect that gets saved into the journey step (“viewpoint”)
(3) The point or item on the current sphere that you are looking at. This is kind of another way of saying the same thing as (1). A viewpoint (ie. the journey step) essentially involves two things. I place to look from and a thing to look at. The thing to look at is either going to be a general view of some side of a sphere or sphere network, of something particular thing on a sphere — ie. a thort or a thortgroup (as mentioned in section B. just above).
(4) The currently applied category set. Whatever category set is being applied to the current sphere at the time you save or update your journey step (“viewpoint”) gets saved into the journey step. When the journey is played or stepped through, this category set gets reapplied, if it isn’t already applying. More information about Categories and Category sets is here:
(5) The currently applied “arrangement”. Arrangements are a slightly “advanced” aspect of using Thortspace, so if you haven’t come across them you don’t need to concern yourself. However if you do know what an arrangement is then you may be interested that the currently applied arrangement gets stored into the journey step, and it will also be reapplied when that step of the journey is played or visited. If you don’t know what an arrangement is and you would like to know, or if you would just like more information about arrangements, you can find that here:
In Part 2 of this mini series, we will look at how to Publish your Journeys to the web.
Also have a look at the next article in the main Starting Out series which this article is also a part of:
