fwd: reply to some questions by the great Ken Knowlton [resend]

[Ted Nelson <ted@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ken--

>What I hadn't
>figured out how to ask you in time was:  just how general is it -- e.g. can
>you easily 
>build a partially ordered structure (as in a page layout program, can you
have
>a relation COMPLETELY-LEFT-OF, where things that overlap horizontally DON'T 
>have this link, many others do, like a diagonal mesh with lots of links
>missing). 

I think so, definitely.  

One of the things I want to do with this is create
 edit programs where you have access to cellular
 components (like paragraphs, embedded database items)
 and then it projects outward to "page" visualizations.

>Also, if the display is more than alphanumeric, do you have a freer display
>so, 
>for example, the same node need not have multiple appearances but instead
>appears just once, with the connections appropriately twisted around? 

That's a display routine you could write.
 One of the forms of extensibility is New Views.

>It's clear that it would be fun to build lots of things.  I think of it as
>somewhat in the
>spirit of my L6, but with a slightly more focused purpose.

Well, the purpose isn't exactly focused, but
 the structure is very specific!

=======================================
Ken Knowlton, one of the pioneers of computer graphics,
 was making computer movies in the early nineteen-sixties
 at Bell Labs.  One of his projects was L6 (Labs' Lower-Level
 List Language).  I believe this was a set of macro routines
 for for batch processing which did list threading and
 added definable data structures.  



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 Ted Nelson, 1997.