Alphabetical list of stories

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It's been a while since I've been able to find it, but at one time there was an alphabetical list of stories on this site, a vast multipage listing that listed everything, by chapter (yes, skipping past Bike took forever). What happened to it? Too resource hogging? It was handy if one remembered the title, but couldn't remember the author. It was also nice for just browsing.

I'm not hallucinating, right? Does anyone else remember this as being here?

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Alpha list of stories

erin's picture

That was part of our SOLR search engine which is due to be restored sometime soon. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Alpha list of stories is great

But I have a suggestion that might make it even more manageable, at least for the reader.
Is it possible to build in some 'binary chop'-type mechanism which would speed paging through it?

There are currently 291 pages of entries. (Call it 292 to make it easier to divide by 2 !)

But actually call it 300, or better 320.

So when it comes up give the option to spring to half-way, to spring to page 146, being half-way between the beginning and the end.

(But if using the rounded figures, then half-way would be either 150 or 160. But calculating a mid-point is easy to do and wouldn't really need pre-set figures)

Then from there have a half-way point to both the beginning and end.

So springs to pages 73 and 219 would be provided from page 146, being the mid-points between the mid-point and the beginning or end.

Then from page 73, springs to 36 and 109 (which is easily calculated by working out the jump distance from 73 to the beginning and halving it, giving 36. 73 plus 36 = 109,( round it up to 110 ???)

Then from 36 to 18 and 54, and so on.

Obviously the page numbers would differ for each level that you're at, so the 219 would then provide 183 and 255.

And they would provide further jumps of 18 page distances..

Another level would then provide jumps of 9 page distances.

I think once down to that level, then the existing ability to jump 4 pages at a time would be sufficient.

It would be simple to code.

Just take the existing step value, halve it, then add or subtract that new step value from the current location.

Anyhoo, just a thought.

I am fully aware you have many other demands upon your time.

And, again, thank you for working so hard.

Julia.

Jumping

I think it would be simpler to be able to jump by the initial letter of the story - so you have links a-z

Alfastories tweaks

erin's picture

There will be improvements to the alfastories listing as we go. For now, I just put up what I could easily do in ten minutes at the keyboard. When SOLR and a few other modules come back on line, we will be able to improve alfastories. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Initial letters iffy

LibraryGeek's picture

The problem with just dividing by initial letter, is Bike, at well over two thousand entries, it really hogs the real estate in the alpha list. So, maybe going initial letter for first sort, then adding second letter for a further breakdown, but that would still have the vastness of Bike; but it really helps being able to drill down to chapters in the alpha list, especially if one is trying to read through, you guessed it, Bike (or SEE, for that matter).

I'm not sure how tricky it would be to combine the two ideas, diving into the list by initial letter, then dividing the pages into halves recursively, but that might be the way to deal with Bike, and the other humongous serials.

If one divided by first letter, then drilled down to second letter divided into equal numbered blocks of pages, we'd get a lot of as-as as a selection option, but it would make it possible to skip past Bike pretty fast, and also zero in on segments of Bike rapidly. Something like how ArkivMusic has their listings organized http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/main.jsp

Yours,

John Robert Mead