General Introduction

1. INTRODUCTION TO
POLYFOILS
Did you start Stephen Hawking's 'A
Brief History of Time,' enjoy the
beginning, but stopped somewhere in
Chapter 3? Thomas Picketty's 'Capital
in the 21st Century' may be the book
readers penetrate least. Most close it
after the introduction and 1/2 a
chapter. We're habituated to books
that tell linear stories, one chapter's
consequence the next chapter's
cause. Since reality's causes and
consequances interweave and tangle,
and nonfiction reflects reality, non-
fiction isn't really linear.

2. Have you ever written an article,
paper, book, or report, and found you
wrote more than could possibly fit?
Most journalists, scholars, lawyers,
and scientists experience this. They
may rely on editors to decide what to
keep and what to cut. More often they
guess, and compare theirs to similar
work. But published writers write for an
audience, not an individual. Audiences
contain different people, with different
needs. There is no one right version.
Polyfoils begin with pages one after
the other, like any document. Being
digital, writers and readers usually
scroll vertically. To the sides, Polyfoil
panels can egress - departing from a

3. core page - either in flat (orthogonal)
view, or tilted back (precessed). They
can also be almost hidden, if the page
is really a cube's surface. Specialized
polyfoils can fan out, cross behind
pages, or appear side by side to each
other.
Now you can read Hawking, Picketty,
and other great nonfiction authors as
they were written, with central ideas
uppermost in the mind of the evidence
hunter. An entire book can be as long
(or short) as its introduction. As the
writer cruises through placing each
puzzle piece into overall position,
Polyfoil panels to the side contain
chapters of evidence. As Picketty

4. describes changing economic models,
he pauses to introduce each era,
which he later elaborates on in a
chapter. Now the elaboration
immediately egresses as a Polyfoil.
The reader spins the page to follow
the oP (a cyclical Polyfoil sequence.)
She can jump back to the core at will.
Then, when following a later oP's
chapter, Picketty's team, or other
scholars and students, can include
bridge sequences between chapters.
Flattened out, this almost resembles a
crossword puzzle.
Readers construct their own version,
following evidence as they wish,
completing interconnections chosen.

5. They never lose touch with the
overarching ideas, collected in the
core, the original introduction.
Writers can use Polyfoils as a
template, shooting off tangents,
wrapping them back around core
pages. As they cut material, they need
not paste it akwardly. Instead they
deposit it on a Polyfoil. Ideas spread
out from a common core page, to
show alternative, supporting, or
contradictory concepts. A writer's first
draft may seem long, but instead of
just cutting it, she provides a short-cut
route. Math equations can be hidden
on Polyfoils, as can math explanations
that might insult the intelligence of

6. specialists. Writers put maps and
diagrams, photographs and restricted
material, anything that's not part of the
basic core sequence, on suitable
Polyfoils. Articles and books become
more more than one sequence; they
contain many.
Polyfoil shapes and sequence patterns
express the architecture of ideas. oPs
that rotate around the core reinforce it.
Sequences off to the side which
bifurcate further present complexity.
Parralel sequences can be used for
dual explanations.
Do you read digital books on iPads or
Kindles? If so, you may notice they

7. rarely have footnotes, only endnotes. I
learned this reading Al Franken's "Lies
and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them."1
Some of his liars claim they use
footnotes, when they use endnotes.
These are very different things.
Readers ignore endnotes, but
footnotes are easy to refer to. I looked
into books that use endnotes and
found that most digital ones do. All that
are "reflowable," which means that
when you zoom in or out, making the
text larger or smaller, the book
repaginates. Stuff gets pushed down
to later pages, or pulled closer.
Footnotes can't stomach this roller-
1 This is a hyperlink footnote

8. coaster, as they bump against each
other, or get separated from the text
they refer to.
This has it's greatest impact on legal
texts, which use footnotes for their
most important stuff. Some devote
more space to footnotes than ordinary
text. So legal journals aren't reflowable
if published digitally, and aren't
accessible on tablet reading platforms.
All serious stuff, and even funny
material like Franken's, are limited by
the endnote factor. You can't check up
the text's references in real time.
Polyfoils permit, not footnotes, but
armnotes. A default Polyfoil display

9. has panels to the core's side, in partial
view, precessed so that extra content
is visible (at an angle.) These are
often empty. A writer anchors an
armnote to a sentence in the core, and
saves it to the side panel. It's readable
at an angle. Interested readers click
on it, to open an orthogonal surface
with the armnote. When the digital
document reflows, the armnote reflows
alongside, anchored to the core text.
Armnotes are more accessible than
footnotes, since they remain on the
eye plane of the sentence anchor.
This just brushes Polyfoil potential.
Slide sequences on this website
explain, with illustrations, many more.

10. They also show how Polyfoil software
constructs these new sequences. An
important issue is readability. The
typical computer generated 3D
surface, with text on it, requires heavy
processing, and is uncomfortable to
read. I thoroughly deconstructed
software functions and human optical
processing. Then I rebuilt text-bearing
panel rotations and other transforms.
Reading Polyfoils is comfortable,
compelling, nimble, responsive, and
fast.
A Polyfoil version of this introduction is
rendered next. (the first page only.) As
you scroll, side panels appear to rotate
into view.

17. Brian Coyle