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Re: list posts rec'd all at once



[I received a large # of zigzag list posts all at once after none for
several weeks. To save time, I'm responding to excepts from them all in
this single message even though the below were written by several
individuals. - Laurie Spiegel]

| 3.  Hierarchies are generally spurious as mappings of reality
| (biology the interesting exception...

Yes - especially interesting because it temps us to compare how organisms
evolve with how thoughts evolve.

| there's also a niche market
| for brilliant generalists.

Oh yeh? Where can I find it??? ;-)

| >6.  Editing.
| >   Easy - just put the left cursor on the cell that says "#Edit", and
| >   the right one on the cell you want to edit, and press enter.
| >
| >   When you exit the editor, you'll be back with the cell updated.

Isn't "Editing" a bit too big-and-app-like a conglomerate function? Don't
you really want a batch of little modules like insert, del, swap, respell,
ethat would also be less modal - not to be entered and exited, but just
invoked for 1 instance of use (local to data window cursor position)? Are
you working on a set of editing primitives (i.e. "edit pebbles"?)?

| These are data types, in principle to be viewed
|  in their own cells (which may in turn be included
|  in larger documents/objects) and edited by
|  cells set up to do so.
|
| But "applications" in the sense of activity and
|  data traps, too big, indivisible, and with only
|  the options **they** allow-- we wish to eliminate.

For those familiar with Mac, Apple's OpenDoc and Cyberdog may furnish
examples of related thinking, and for others more familiar with music
technology, the modular analog synthesis architectures of the 1960s versus
the complex "Sequencer" "applications" of today could illustrate the point.

| >4. Minimal functions required include:

Methodology after my own heart! (Does any one else remember "Ocham" -
Oxford Univ's elegantly simple language for distributed transputer networks
a couple decades back?)


| This is a partial reply to ZigZag-relevant elements
| in one of Peter Barus's brilliant rambling letters.
|
| Please let me know if such things are considered
| relevant to this mailing list.

I vote yes - interesting (IMHO) ideas, associations, questions came to mind
as I read it, for example:

| >The code collapses at
| >certain points, into much smaller forms that do twice as much

Are unified field theories of software design realistic goals, or just
Quixoticisms we share with each other?

- laurie
http://Retiary.Org
http://www.dorsai.org/~spiegel