Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Icons for IBIS

[Eric Armstrong <eric.armstrong@sun.com>]

Peter Jones wrote:    (01)

> This question is addressed to those folks out there implementing GUIs
> for IBIS.
> If I have a particular node in a discussion that is marked as a
> positive,
> and I then transclude that node into another discussion where I
> want it to play the part of a negative, how do I do that given that
> I want to maintain the identity of the node across the two discussions?
> Are the icons independent of node identity?    (02)

Yes, the icon must be independent of the node, for exactly that reason.
The "for/against" property is a property of the relationship, not a
property
of the node.    (03)

For example, the node:
       X costs $10,000 to buy    (04)

Is a negative response to the question:
       Q: Should we buy X or implement it ourselves?
            A: Purchase X
                 +: X costs $10,000 to buy
                 +: If we develop it, it will cost $100,000.    (05)

On the other hand, it's a positive if the question is:
      Q: What product should we buy?
            A: Purchase X
                 -: X costs $10,000
             A: Purchase Y
                 +: Y costs $1,000    (06)

Similary, if the question is whether to lease or buy,
that knowledge nugget / factoid could play a positive
or negative role.    (07)

Note:
This issue also brings up the issue of "scales" that we
visited a while a back. If there are three purchase
options, X, Y, and Z, and they cost different amounts,
then a price dimension exists, and each product has a
point on that scale.    (08)

Now, an IBIS discussion can be carried on without
reusing data. In such contexts, it makes sense to assign
positives and negatives to nodes. But when the IBIS
concept is extended to include access to reusable
"knowledge", using transclusion or some other mechanism,
then it is only the data which is transcluded, not the
+/_ relationship.    (09)

That leads me to think of invariant structure nodes that
cannot be moved reused, and maleable content nodes
that can be. The structure node may have the + attribute
then, because it is fixed in a hierarchy (it represents the
relationship). It would link to a content node which contains
the data "X costs $10,000". That content node could then
be reused in multiple locations, were it desirable to do so.    (010)