Ulysses — Method
Base document 00 · How this project is built Written at the point of carrying the work from documentation into build. Everything else in the project answers to this file.
The aim
A website and a presentation about Ulysses, built out of a first cover-to-cover reading (7–17 July 2026, Penguin Modern Classics / Kiberd).
The sequence has been deliberate and should stay that way: documentation first, design second. Base documents get built while the book is fresh; the look of the website and the shape of the presentation are not decided until the material is in hand. The documents are not notes toward the deliverables — they are the deliverables' source of truth, and they should be able to outlive any particular design.
THE FOUR REGISTERS
Every dimension we analyse gets output in up to four registers. They are distinct products, not four exports of one file. When a new dimension is picked, the first question is which registers does this one earn.
1 · HTML
Single-file, self-contained, no external dependencies. Interactive where interaction earns its place — a filter, a toggle, a tap-to-reveal that shows something static layout cannot.
Doubles as the build material for the website. Anything shipped here should be transplantable into the site without a rewrite.
2 · PDF reporting
The durable, portable, offline register. Hyperlinked and cross-linked: internal navigation (contents → section → back), cross-references between documents, and outbound links where a source deserves one. A reader should be able to move around inside a PDF the way they move around inside the site.
This is also the handoff register — the form the work travels in, to another session, another model, or another person.
3 · Presentation
Decks of image cards, published without explanations: the cards carry the material, and no commentary accompanies them on the site. The working material behind any deck — what a presenter speaks from — is part of the project's private repository and folders, not of the public site.
The craft rules, settled and not redesigned:
- Per-topic accent colour.
- A4. Page orientation follows the image, not the template.
- Deep-dives sit immediately after their topic, never collected at the end.
- Files stay small. These are screen documents, not print products; image quality can be traded for size without apology.
For Ulysses the "topic" unit is whatever the chosen dimension makes natural — an
episode, a character, a place, an object. Decide the unit before writing any slides.
The private working spec for the material behind the decks is
docs/presentation-working-notes.md in the repository, deliberately unrendered.
4 · Maps, images and diagrams
Standalone references in their own right, and components integrated into the PDF and HTML packages. Built once, at a quality that survives being pulled out of context.
The rule that has held so far: one signature device per document. The character map got the rings-of-the-day; the place-and-time document got the two routes and the time rail. The device should encode something true about the material, not decorate it.
The shared visual system
All four registers draw on the same tokens, so the set reads as one family.
Origin. Joyce specified the 1922 Shakespeare & Company cover as Greek-flag blue with white lettering — the Odyssey made into an object. The palette comes from the book's own first edition, not from a template.
| Token | Value | Use |
|---|---|---|
| deep | #081a35 |
ground |
| paper | #f4efe2 |
text on dark, warm white |
| gold | #dfa93f |
Bloom |
| ash | #a3c4e2 |
Stephen |
| rose | #cf6470 |
Molly |
Typography. A serif for people and prose; a monospace for the factual layer — hours, episode numbers, measurements. The pairing is not arbitrary: Ithaca turns the book into a catechism of facts and figures, so a data face for data is the book's own logic.
Print adaptation. On paper the ground inverts — white page, deep blue headings, gold
darkened to #A0701C for legibility. Same family, different medium.
Accessibility floor, non-negotiable in the HTML register: visible keyboard focus,
prefers-reduced-motion respected, responsive to a phone, real semantics on interactive
elements.
What exists
| # | Document | Registers built |
|---|---|---|
| 00 | Method (this file) | — |
| 01 | The Character Map | markdown · HTML |
| 02 | The World, the City, and the Day — Dublin 1904 | markdown |
| 03 | The Itinerary — place and hour, episode by episode | markdown · HTML (shared with 02) |
| — | Reading Companion — the full Q&A of the read, 117pp | |
| — | Masters session — which dimension next | markdown |
Gaps against the four registers (revised twice on 19 July 2026, and both revisions are kept because the pattern is the point). The original text said nothing existed in the presentation register; five decks had been built (catch C-25). The first revision then said the PDF was the standing gap and that no PDF had been built with the hyperlinking this register calls for — which was true when written and false within hours (catch C-38).
As of 19 July 2026 all four registers are in production. The presentation register carries an audience deck for every dimension that budgets one. The PDF register is built: every document in it is produced by the project's own pipeline, each carrying contents, back-links, cross-references that open the reading record at the cited page, and a bookmark outline, all verified at every build. How many there are is derived — see docs/STATE.md, which counts them from the files' own bytes; this file does not restate it. (Corrected 25 July 2026: this sentence said "seven hyperlinked documents". The register held six on the day the sentence was written and holds six now. The paragraph above records two earlier revisions of this same passage for exactly this reason, and the third one is a count in prose — which is L-22, in the sentence that documents L-22's own history.) The three linear PDFs under Reading remain what they always were — source material made outside this project, carrying no internal navigation — and they are no longer mistaken for the register.
Standing rules
Flag uncertainty rather than smoothing it. Where the text contradicts itself — Molly's age, Rudy's age in the vision — show the contradiction. Where a figure is approximate — Dublin's population — say so. The open-questions section at the end of a document is part of the document, not an admission.
Separate what the book says from what the schemas say. Joyce printed no episode titles. Telemachus, Calypso, Circe and the rest come from schemas he circulated privately and then contradicted between versions. Use them as scaffolding, and say that they are scaffolding, every time.
Distinguish present, remembered and hallucinated. Milly never walks on stage; Rudy appears once, as a vision; Martha exists as a letter. Any document that lists who is present must hold this distinction consistently.
Keep the reader's own material intact. The questions asked during the reading are reproduced as spoken, dictation slips included. Cleaning them up would quietly falsify the record of learning a difficult book.
Open
This section is kept as written and then answered, so the sequence of the project's own decisions stays visible (anchor A4). Answers added 19 July 2026.
- The next dimension. Ten candidates ranked by the masters; the top of the field is
the Object Museum, then the Women's Dublin, then the Governed City. The Homeric
concordance was vetoed twice and survives only as Cortázar's inversion — map the
places where Joyce refuses Homer. Awaiting the author's pick.
→ Answered. The Type-I cap (anchor A11) capped the inventories at three and the
chair's picks — 1, 2, 3 — are built. The Homeric inversion is dimension 9, and it is
built — shipped 24 July 2026 with its rows verified against the held 1922 text, and its
presentation slot closed as not-owed under A8 by the author's ruling (catch C-46). What is
built and what is not is derived:
docs/STATE.md. (Corrected 25 July 2026: this line read "is still to be built".) - Website and presentation design. Still deliberately deferred. → Answered, 18 July 2026. No longer deferred: the author commissioned design the day the architecture shipped, panel session 02 ratified it, and the record is base document 06. This line is left standing because A1's sequence — documentation first, design second — is the thing it was protecting, and that sequence held.
- The second-source pass. Reading questions also going to ChatGPT for an independent set of answers, to be merged with this material. → Not merged, and deliberately so. The parallel answer-set remains unadmitted and unread so the two builds stay comparable (anchor A17, as revised). An absence here is a decision, not a gap (learning L-10).
Base document 00. Update this file when a register, a token, or a standing rule changes — not when a document is added.