Literature and computer support

Nowadays it often speaks about electronic book, though the publishing market continues giving to the light every day the highest number of works in paper.

At the same time we state the notable advance of the technologies of the communication: Internet. The philologists, as specialists dedicated to the analysis of the language and its uses, are necessary at the moment of facing up to the numerous challenges that imply these innovations.

The literature has entered in this worldas well, and writers and readers are served by the computers, the cd-roms and the communications in  the net. The computer science makes possible to combine the word with the image and the sound. So we speak about multimedia.

Users and understood affirm that the computer concerns the structure of the paragraphs and the syntax. The possibility of changing, of modifying when one wants the already written thing provokes sometimes the trend the constant alteration, other times it favors the rapidity in draft. Another aspect is the idea of navigation. It is a question of moving giving jumps, across links that take to us from a function to other one of the program, of a web page, of a text, or to an image, or to a new menu from which to return to jump.

The new support makes possible that the message is the combination of text, image and sound. To separate it from the printed book, it has been coined the term “hypertext“, which base is the beginning of association and not linearity. It consists of the connection of a few texts with others, that related by electronic links, they give place to diverse and alternative tours, according to the taste or the interests of the user. When they connect, besides texts, images and sounds we speak about hypermedia.

With the employment of the “hipertextualidad” in computer support we have the electronic book, which can present in two ways:

• As digital static edition: in the shape of file recorded in a disc of computer. The limits of the static edition are in the file that reads the computer.
• As dynamic edition: when to the electronic book you accede across Internet, so that the computer is connected with the net of the nets of the information. It increases the potential number of users and it gives entry to their collaboration. In the editions of hypertextual literature, the author or initial authors can invite the readers to send new contributions to be connected or they take part in a forum of debate.

Nowadays, there are two positions about these relations literature – computer science: people who turn this relation down and people who receive it with great optimism.

Sources:

• Teoría de la Literatura.Unidad 4: Literatura y soporte informático.