Re: [unrev-II] Re: Towards an atomic data structure

From: Sandy Klausner (klausner@cubicon.com)
Date: Thu Apr 27 2000 - 13:32:38 PDT

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    Henry van Eyken
    "I question the usefulness of a Simon-pure object-oriented approach. A
    top-down approach, it seems to me, is bridling the unbridable, a tool that
    communicates a hard-to-discipline melange of logical order and emotions, of
    what wells from the conscious and the levels of the less-than-conscious."
    "I think, that the kind of text Eric writes about is not natural language,
    not even a transcript of natural thoughts. He is writing about formalized
    transcripts of some sort of culturally bridled thoughts. Among these are
    the, supposedly redundancy-free languages of mathematics and computer
    programming."
    "Quoting: Note that when the node is split, two objects exist where one did
    before. Every node must therefore be capable of being the root of a subtree.
    Although it may start out life as a simple node that contains or points to
    an item of text, it must also be capable of pointing to a list of text
    elements. (That list might also include markup elements, like HTML bold
    tags: <b>.) Since each item in that list may itself point to a list of
    subitems, the resulting structure is a tree."
    The following is a repeat of my Sunday, April 24 posting:
    The DKR team has identified two distinct levels of information abstraction
    that require development to achieve the group's goals. The underlying
    abstraction appears to be based upon a general system cognitive model based
    upon deterministic behavior that can machine execute. This technology model
    could be used as a foundation to design and implement "An interactive tool
    for discussion and deliberation* that records decisions and their
    rationales in a way that allows the knowledge gained in the process to be
    applied to future projects."
    To fully achieve the interactive tool goal, the fundamental capabilities in
    the underlying technology model must include a robust way to traverse, edit,
    read, and write untyped text. In addition, there needs to be a way to
    intelligently analyze the text in interesting ways to determine fundamental
    semantics in the symbolic patterns and link these patterns to other passages
    to anywhere in the web. This text may be linked to typed atomic data that
    may itself be composed into typed molecular data representing pictures,
    sounds, and other rich multimedia information. All this information may
    itself exist as part of a data structure within a domain object within a
    system.
    The SGML community has a long history of developing ways to markup documents
    to capture semantic knowledge embedded in strings. As processing
    requirements become more sophisticated, new ways of managing this complexity
    need to be developed. One possible solution is to move to a "clear document
    model." This model separates concerns by parsing the clear text from the
    markup information. The clear text is parsed into a collection of linked
    character nodes, while one or more composite structure processors maintain
    position and range links into the clear text collection. Each processor may
    have specialized behavior to analyze and hold semantic information on
    format, organization, navigation, narrative, reference, graphic control,
    publication, and filters. The model must be able to allow clear text editing
    while automatically maintaining the processor links into the clear text
    collection. Such a model would be able to manage the requirements for a
    robust DKR environment.
    New Posting
    Conventional markup language technology cannot effectively cope with the
    demands required for a robust DKR environment. The clear document model that
    we have developed has been successful applied to several domain-specific
    applications by others. We have generalized the mechanisms behind this model
    into a novel Graphical Language technology that can effectively manage this
    level of system complexity. Your right Henry, the conventional "Simon-pure
    object-oriented approach" will not be effective. But, any technology that
    can augment human intelligence must be based upon a concrete and
    deterministic computational model. Perhaps unrev-II should take a good look
    at what Cubicon has to offer the community.
    Sandy Klausner
    klausner@cubicon.com



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