Re: :zz: Peter's: oooo...kay: various answers.

[Peter Barus <ViPr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ted,

>> You shd repost this to the ZZ groop-- T <<

Riposte? Ok, but I'll be sorry. This buisness of my lengthy messages has me
really concerned. I can't help myself, but that doesn't mean it's
appropriate here. I might be babbling on about horsies and duckys to a lot
of equestrians and ornithologists. It's hard to tell. The old Compuserve
"forums" are very useful for sorting this out.

Your remarks on "rotating" to another dimension clunked for me thus. I can
move along a row, then use it like an axis. I'm seeing Rollodexes strung
together like one of those Jacob's Ladder toys where you flip the top block
in a chain, and the next one flops, and the one below that flips, etc. This
still has me thinking in cubes, but I understand that Zigzag is
multidimensional. I can't quite get my head around that, but maybe geodesic
or polyhedral figures offer a clue. Or soap bubbles. Remember
Hexaflexigons?

This gave me an idea that a linkage could be graphically represented by
fading in images of the next screen, in the way that some windows (Mac for
instance) appear to grow from or shrink to their icons. If I "rolled" into
another dimension, the screen would briefly suggest the new screen rotating
into place, hinging on one side or another, or along the current cell/axis;
or "forward" and "back" movement. On a typical screen, this would seem to
be limited to x or y -axis rotation, but I suppose if one were clever it
could be represented along diagonals too. Some way would be needed to deal
with jumps to cells that were not strung together this way; I mean, just
because my head likes to fold and intersect stuff doesn't mean Zigzag has
to work that way.

This suggests itself to me because we have these mental maps, we talk of
"this space" all the time. I worked in a hospital pushing gurneys, and had
a mental image of the buildings, but only from the inside of the corridors
and rooms. [In my nightmares, the floors were not level anymore, and there
were rivers to cross, and hostile gangs hanging on the corners, and all the
patients were late. In both senses.] In the same way, I have a mental image
of where I'm "going" when I move around in an application, even though it's
just a succession of flat screens. Parts of the apps I write seem to be to
the left, or up, or behind me, etc. I think this is why Windows has
succeeded so well in capturing the markets it has, even as clumsy as the
file metaphor may be. It's just the traditional triumph of mediocrity, no
big deal. But to be intuitive to more users, Zigzag needs an implementation
with a visually-presented metaphor. One difference from Windows, to my
mind, is that in Zigzag, we are inside the space, maybe looking at the
walls (or sky), not looking at "documents" from a "file" on a "desktop".

It seems to me that Zigzag isn't going to escape the imposition of some
metaphor, so working up a good comprehensive one would be good to do before
it just evolves. If you want to be sure it is transclusive.

Also I can see where this kind of thinking could be added to my latest
database work, which is all hierarchies now. Would you find that
interesting?

Peter


At 04:49 PM 6/29/98 -0400, you [I] wrote:
>Ted,
>
>>> Hope you haven't
> lost interest in the meantime. <<
> 
>That's a hoot. This is worse than drugs.
>
>"Object" is indeed philosophical. In my work I've had to invent "OOP" for
>myself, not seeing any other way to find out what it is. The languages I
>use haven't had things like "inheritance" or "types" or the neat stuff I
>read about in C docs. But I can usually make the thing dance to a tune
like
>that somehow.
>
>I can see that a cell is the irreducible unit, and that the corresponding
>ones (with inches, it's feet, yards, etc.) may actually be obsolete when
>dealing with microchips.
>
>Using just text in a cell, can I make the screen draw pictures? Would I
put
>programming code in a cell, or just functions, and string the cells
>together to make programs? Or both? What's a "PARC" window? Since we have
>to communicate through a screen, how do you do without them?
>
>I've noticed that when doing martial arts training (old, old Japanese
>style) it's like applied behaviorism, in that the information flows into
me
>from behavior patterns, and comes back out when needed in a different
>format. It is rarely if ever about combat in the physical sense. The
>important point is that I change myself by these peculiar motions, when I
>always thought I must change first, then the appropriate behaviors would
>arise. So it flows in both directions, both "fake it till you make it" and
>"the source is within". If you see what I mean.
>
>So, I have a road map software with a GPS satellite link, and the little
>arrow follows my car on the map as I drive. But I could just as well be
>drawing a new road onto the map, as following one that is already there.
>
>I forget where I was going with this, but "lost interest" I have certainly
>not, you are stuck with this boy...
>
>Peter
>
>
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