Re: [ba-ohs-talk] Node Sequencing [Was: **** Instant Outlining !!! ***]
Murray Altheim wrote: (01)
> ...
> >>Eric Armstrong wrote:
> >>
> >>>... there will always be two ways to look at the
> >>>content in such a system. One is TouchGraph / Tinderbox
> >>>mechanism, with graphs. The other will be a hierchical
> >>>projection of the underlying data. ...
>
> Yes, this was what I'd come to last year, ...
> But I don't think characterizing that second view as "hierarchical"
> is quite right. One of the things quite obvious to us in "everyday"
> reality is that there's a *lot* of things going on simultaneously.
> I think a truly representational hypertext system (and the systems
> that store such content) should be able to represent the richness
> of that everyday reality. (02)
I think that is an astute observation. I suspect you are right, and that
a single-hiearchy at a time will be way to restrictive. (03)
At some point, we want multi-media kinds of things going on, with
dynamically animated systems (Forrester coming to life) showing
the effects we have in mind. Plus maybe speeches, animated
graphics, pictures, and a more maleable, graph-like display, with
I don't know, maybe some kind of hierarchies in the nodes, or
maybe a multi-dimensional hierarchy display. (04)
I was playing with the "hierarchical matrix" concept for a while
(matrix = 2 dimensions, with hiearchies in each cell, and with
matrices as hierarchy elements -- but the complexity overwhelmed
my ability to reason about it. And I've been a big fan of dynamic
models (simulations) as an argument technique, so you could show
stuff. (05)
And the emphasis on letting the reader put new things together, as well
as making it possible for the author to put stuff together is important,
because then the reading and authoring process becomes a single,
unifed undertaking. (06)
But I settled on hierarchies as something understandable that was
readily modeled on a computer screen. Of course, that was back
when the incredible pixel densities we now take for granted were
only a gleam in the eye of a CAD system developer. (07)
Probably I'm aiming too low, at this point in time. But mostly I've
been focused on getting something we could carry on a productive
discussion with -- something that improved on email just enough
that we could begin collaborating effectively on bigger, better
systems. (08)