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Re: Presentation on Xanalogical Data Structures



Jeff, definitely good stuff. As one who's been interested in Xanadu for quite a while, but never had occassion to get involved more deeply, I'm happy to see the concepts being made more publicly accessible.

In reply to:
Definitely magic stuff. One question - in explaining all of Xanadu, say in a book or presentation, would you start at the top and work down to the details, or start with the details and assemble the architecture piece by piece?

For a good presentation, you'll have to do both, and maybe some middle-out as well. Off the top of my head, I'd say start with the goals to be achieved, and how it's supposed to look/work at the interfaces (user, automated client, peer); then discuss the issues that arise, and the problems to be solved, as a lead-in to the architecture, algorithms and constructs that address the problems and issues (this provides a hook for discussing performance, open issues, TBDs, etc.). Then, work back toward the top (outer) level, showing by some examples (use cases) how it all hangs/works together.

FWIW,
--

Don Dwiggins			 I'm sorry for creating such a complex design,
d.l.dwiggins@xxxxxxxxxxxx         but I didn't have time to make a simple one.
                                 -- Hermann Püterschein