[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] Indexes: Main | Date | Thread | Author

Re: [ba-ohs-talk] new version of graph model paper posted


The perception represents a change in thinking that is always
astounding the first time it is encountered. I had a similar insight
driving back from one of the colloqium sessions one evening.
I shared that insight in a subsequent message to the group --
that a "document" was really a collection of nodes (although
"2-D projection of a multi-dimensional network" is more
accurate).    (01)

The recognition helped us to clarify the role of the underlying
repository as what Nicholas termed a "node soup".    (02)

As a very intelligent man I was acquainted once said, "It takes
just as much intelligence (insight, what have you), to conceive
a thing the second time, as it did the first time."    (03)

I suspect I'm not doing full justice to Eugene's breakthrough,
here, and that more of it will surface in the paper.    (04)

However, what is "old hat" to some is always exciting and new
to others. I think it is only good form to congratulate someone
on a conceptual breakthrough. It represents a springboard from
which they may leap in an entirely new and unexpected direction.    (05)

Murray Altheim wrote:    (06)

> Eric Armstrong wrote:
>
> > Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Thanks to the great feedback I received, I think I'm nearing a conceptual
> >>breakthrough as to how to think about the OHS. ...
> >>
> >>The term that I settled on was "hyperdocument." ...
> >>
> >>A hyperdocument, as I express it, expresses data and their
> >>relationships with each other.  Documents are simply two-dimensional views
> >>of a hyperdocument.
> >
> > YES!!!!
> > Brilliant.
>
> I hate to sound kinda daft, but what are you two on about? Isn't
> this pretty common knowledge? I'd hate to think I'd had this thing
> in my head for years and had somehow misunderstood the rest of
> technical culture's measure of the term. Not to deride Eugene's
> paper at all, which I think is quite valuable.
>
> For an example, if you check my KMi home page at
>
>     http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
>
> you'll see that I consider that a copy of Ceryle, loaded with an
> author's information, is itself (because it allow that author the
> ability to create, navigate and manipulate complex content via
> various types of links) a hyperdocument, such that any exported
> files (ie., documents) are themselves only lesser-dimensioned
> "views" of the Ceryle system as a hyperdocument. But honestly,
> while I thought this was a pretty cool concept I didn't think
> it was either entirely novel or especially brilliant. I mean,
> when back at NASA I developed a Mac HyperCard-based HTML authoring
> tool that had built-in entity management (each card was a document,
> and any document could be used as an entity in any other, so you
> could manage headers and footers, and &currentDate;, etc.), it
> had the ability to update via ftp the entire web site contained
> within it, and I gave it away. It was called "HTML.edit" and it
> got favourable reviews. But this was quite a long time ago.
>
> Then again, I guess Doug was doing some of this before I was
> born.
>
> So wassup?
>
> Murray
>
> ......................................................................
> Murray Altheim                         <mailto:m.altheim @ open.ac.uk>
> Knowledge Media Institute
> The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK
>
>       In the evening
>       The rice leaves in the garden
>       Rustle in the autumn wind
>       That blows through my reed hut.  -- Minamoto no Tsunenobu    (07)