Re: ZigZag thots

[Ted Nelson <ted@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Steve--

Rushy replies to hanging-fire emails
 such as yerz--

>It was good to see you.  I had a couple ZigZag thoughts:
>
>1) There's Perl-Tk.  I pretty sure it's available for PCs (& Macs).
>
>2) You could display an entire ZigZag universe (at least, what is available
>   in the current two dimensions) on a flat screen with a fisheye view.
>   The following is just first unedited thoughts.
>
>   Put the current location at the center.
>   The four closest neighbors are each 1/4 screen width or height from the
>   center.
>   The three other neighbors of each of those are each 1/8 width or height 
>   away, etc.
>   This produces a fractal diamond pattern in the limit.  A slight 
>   adjustment would produce an elipse.
>
>   Moving and splicing could produce fisheye rotation/panning effects,
>   increasing the sense of continuity (both of the movement and the
>   world itself).

Having thought about this, I really lik it !-)


>   There are tricks you could do if you recognized that two cells were
>   really the same.  

In the foreseeable generation of implementations,
 this is a problem.  But I'll stay with you...

>Say up-left was the same as left-up.  Then you could
>   put the center, left, up and left-up cells in a more compact and
>   regular arrangement.  Or say up-left = left-Left-up.  Then you could
>   distort things so those became one:
>               [  ]------------[  ]-----
>                 |              |
>               [  ]----[  ]---[[  ]]----
>
>
>   However, since there can be
>   an infinite number of such equivalences, and connecting some visually
>   would conflict with connecting others, you'd need a rule to arbitrate
>   (probably part of the same algorithm that decides which parts
>   of the infinite display to update first).  

Right!  As long as we're omniscient about the equivs,
 anyway, which is a big sticking point.

>A nice property would be
>   if it kept the same arrangement even as you moved around.
>
>   Ignoring such tricks or in situations where they weren't applicable,
>   any cycles would appear as fractal patterns.

Wow!

>   There are all sorts of variations on this.  You could make a knob that
>   would shift between the style you have and the fractal fisheye gradually.
>   You could abbreviate the fractal by having the edges shade into clouds
>   or mist (actually your existing display could show discontinutity that
>   way...or by shading that looked like woven wicker)...

Or one of the Windows background patterns...

>   Perhaps this fisheye view would work best if you shrunk the cells to
>   dots and used it as a long-range-sensor view, where you would just
>   navigate by pattern.  You could make recently- or frequently-visited
>   points look "hotter" or give them more magnification...

Love it.

>I'll stop daydreaming now.

NOoooo!  Don't!  I don't want to wake up!
 I don't want to w--

ChrzT


At 05:06 PM 6/3/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi, Ted!
>
>It was good to see you.  I had a couple ZigZag thoughts:
>
>1) There's Perl-Tk.  I pretty sure it's available for PCs (& Macs).
>
>2) You could display an entire ZigZag universe (at least, what is available
>   in the current two dimensions) on a flat screen with a fisheye view.
>   The following is just first unedited thoughts.
>
>   Put the current location at the center.
>   The four closest neighbors are each 1/4 screen width or height from the
>   center.
>   The three other neighbors of each of those are each 1/8 width or height 
>   away, etc.
>   This produces a fractal diamond pattern in the limit.  A slight 
>   adjustment would produce an elipse.
>
>   Moving and splicing could produce fisheye rotation/panning effects,
>   increasing the sense of continuity (both of the movement and the
>   world itself).
>
>   There are tricks you could do if you recognized that two cells were
>   really the same.  Say up-left was the same as left-up.  Then you could
>   put the center, left, up and left-up cells in a more compact and
>   regular arrangement.  Or say up-left = left-Left-up.  Then you could
>   distort things so those became one:
>               [  ]------------[  ]-----
>                 |              |
>               [  ]----[  ]---[[  ]]----
>
>
>   However, since there can be
>   an infinite number of such equivalences, and connecting some visually
>   would conflict with connecting others, you'd need a rule to arbitrate
>   (probably part of the same algorithm that decides which parts
>   of the infinite display to update first).  A nice property would be
>   if it kept the same arrangement even as you moved around.
>
>   Ignoring such tricks or in situations where they weren't applicable,
>   any cycles would appear as fractal patterns.
>
>   There are all sorts of variations on this.  You could make a knob that
>   would shift between the style you have and the fractal fisheye gradually.
>   You could abbreviate the fractal by having the edges shade into clouds
>   or mist (actually your existing display could show discontinutity that
>   way...or by shading that looked like woven wicker)...
>
>   Perhaps this fisheye view would work best if you shrunk the cells to
>   dots and used it as a long-range-sensor view, where you would just
>   navigate by pattern.  You could make recently- or frequently-visited
>   points look "hotter" or give them more magnification...
>
>I'll stop daydreaming now.
>
> --Steve
>
>
________________________________________________________
Theodor Holm Nelson, Visiting Professor of Environmental Information
 Keio University, Shonan Fujisawa Campus, Fujisawa, Japan
http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/    PERMANENT E-MAIL: ted@xxxxxxxxxx
 Home Fax: 0466-46-7368  From USA: 011-81-466-46-7368
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Quotation of the day, 98.07.22:
"More than two goals is no goals."  Lynda Obst, *Hello, He Lied*.