fw,xu: Re: Am I correctly understanding [Floating World] ZX?

[Ted Nelson <ted@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jack-- 

Thank you so much for this note.  You certainly understand the
 overall objectives of the Xanadu project and its new open-source design
 on top of Gzigzag, Floating World.

I will be quoting your excellent summaries of the Xanadu concepts below.

I do not know what Rebol refers to but will try to look at the sites cited
 in the next few weeks.

Best wishes, Ted


At 04:53 AM 8/27/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Ted: I am the moderator of the Rebol_New mailing list and wanting to
>interest some Rebol programmers in writing some front end software
>for Xanadu/ZX. I'm working on a message to submit to the that list
>and also the Rebol list, and also to put on my web page. Does the 
>following accurately reflect the design of ZX?  I'm not sure about 
>the bit level addressing. Also, in a message a few months ago, I 
>mentioned the book "Mirror Worlds". You asked me to summarize it. 
>This article I wrote does that:
>http://home.earthlink.net/~jackseay/jack/2techs.html      
>
>-----
> 
>I have been spending the last month trying to learn to create web
>pages with Dreamweaver and Fireworks. While both of these are
>incredible in many ways, they also show up the defects in the
>HTML-Javascript-Flash-Shockwave-CSS-CGI way of creating things. The
>tools are huge, complex beasts. You have to understand the
>compromises needed to target various versions of different browsers
>on different OS's. HTML is user hostile for attempting to create a
>page layout. It requires endless plug-ins to make up for its'
>deficiencies. The users don't generally get to edit anything you
>create to produce their own versions and add comments, etc.
> 
>Rebol could help create better tools to edit web pages as interim
>projects, but the ultimate goal should be to replace the Internet as
>it exists today with something better: a stable data pool interacting
>with multi-dimentional browser-editor-camera-microphones. Rebol is a
>new generation language, being hardware independent, incredibly small
>(and thus fast, easily upgraded, and nearly bug-free), easy to learn
>(yet powerful), and has an interactive programming environment. It
>also has built-in graphics, including image processing.
> 
>What programming projects are likely candidates for major coordinated
>efforts?
> 
>Start with simple data structures that have no built-in limitations
>as to: 1. the type or amount of information they can contain or: 2.
>the types of manipulation and interaction with user/creators.
> 
>Something like Xanadu could add the ability for anyone to edit
>anything produced by anybody. The original version of a
>document-picture-audio-video would still be available, the original
>owner would automatically get paid royalties for all quotations and
>revised versions. Nothing would get lost: not links, documents,
>versions, or addresses. An infinite number of document ID's are
>available, thanks to an ingenious addressing scheme. Basically, the
>whole universe of information is treated as if it were all one
>document, and every single character, pixel, movement, edit, and
>sound can be addressed. Normally you would address either a full
>document or segment (span), but it is possible to get more specific,
>down to the bit level. It is also multidimensional, not just 3-D, but
>n-D. The dimensions could replace a lot of programming. Just show the
>"person's name" dimension as "x", the date as "y", pick out a
>specific message, then look at it's dimensions to edit the text in
>the editor dimension (using any available tool), now shown in "x",
>and the grapic editor dimension, now in "y", then roll into the
>animation and sound dimensions (with their own dimensions for each
>action they can perform), etc. until you are finished. Move to
>another dimension and select "send". So instead of writing a program
>that will perform these 15 things to a set of documents or images,
>just select the items in all the needed dimensions, and take a
>snapshot. Then hit "Play", sit back and watch. By selecting a set of
>dimensions and choosing operations performed in them, you've created
>a program without looking at any hyroglyphics. It is up to the
>presentation program to determine whether the user sees
>multi-dimensions, an outline, a grid, a 3-d environment, or just a
>plain page. The same information could be viewed any of these and
>other ways.
> 
>No need to load 4 huge programs, using only 1% of the code or less in
>each one. That obsolete methodology is similar to the HTML defect of
>loading only whole pages even when only a small part is needed.
>Xanadu (in it's newest form, called ZX or Floating World) follows the
>model of both Rebol and Amiga/Elate of loading only what is actually
>used into memory, and loading it only once.
> 
>Another possibility for a programming project would be something like
>Lifestreams. It has it's own unusual data storage design: throw
>everything in one big data ocean, then send out many agent programs
>to find everthing matching a set of requirements. The Lifestreams
>(Mirror Worlds) type of interface could also be a frontend to the
>Xanadu database, since it is also multi-dimensional. Jini, and Java
>Spaces use this technology. The Lifestreams website has a Flash
>presentation worth looking at: http://www.lifestreams.com/
> 
>I've often heard that for a new technology to take over, it must be
>10 times better than the previous one. I believe we are beginning to
>see that happen in languages; operating systems; user environments;
>and data storage, retreival, and analysis models. These previously
>distinct domains are in some cases merging as new tools are depeloped
>to handle several or all these tasks.
> 
>Related web sites: 
>
>Lifestreams: 
>http://home.earthlink.net/~jackseay/jack/2techs.html ;
>
>Amiga, Lifestreams and Xanadu:
>http://home.earthlink.net/~jackseay/jack/AmigaNew.html ;
>
>Xanadu: 
>http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/FWdesign99/ZXfrontpage.html
>http://www.timecastle.net/v/xanatalk/FrontPage ;
>
>Xanadu Mirror Worlds mailing list:
>http://www.egroups.com/group/Xanadu_MirrorWorlds
> 
>
>
>*#*#*#*#*#*#
>To design the new structures of writing for screens is a profound 
>issue of literary structure.  It is important to provide the best 
>literary structure that we can, for hypertext, as the literature of 
>tomorrow, determines in part the new structure of civilization. 
>Civilization is in large part about, and around, what is written.  
>This is what we call literature. Literature is an endless river, 
>connected, like water, in all directions.  Document connections go 
>forward and backward in time, and sideways between documents.  
>Scholarship and fiction, political speeches and criticism, 
>advertising, journalism and technical reports-- all affect each other 
>and evolve in a constant flow of ideas and writings. ... Ted Nelson...
>
>Jack Seay jackseay@xxxxxxx
>
>
_________________________________________
Theodor Holm Nelson              
Project Professor, Keio University SFC Campus, Fujisawa, Japan
Visiting Professor, University of Southampton, England
 ?  e-mail: ted@xxxxxxxxxx   ?  world-wide fax 1/415/332-0136
 ?  http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/    ?  http://www.xanadu.net
 ? Coordinates in USA      Tel. 415/ 331-4422
  Project Xanadu, 3020 Bridgeway #295, Sausalito CA 94965
_________________________________________