xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (06/29/91)
/------------------------------------------------------\ | | | <xanthian-1> = xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG | | (Kent Paul Dolan) at Jun 28 00:24:47 | | <greg-1> = greg@hoss.unl.edu (Life...) | | at Jun 29 01:26:59 | | | | This is an example of what a "hot button" followup | | article might look like when first presented to the | | subscriber in a threaded newsgroup with a point and | | click user interface on a modern window architecture | | workstation or personal computer. | | | | <xanthian-1> | | | | Kent was so full of hot air as to be | | incomprehensible in the first half of his posting, | | which here is presumed by default to be still in the | | reader's mind, as s/he is reading a threaded | | newsgroup and just finished reading the context of | | this article, which is the just prior article. | | | | <xanthian-1> | | | | Luckily, he pulls a miracle in the second half and | | seems to make a miniscule amount of sense. The | | second half is also still in the reader's mind, but | | in the non-default case, where the material was read | | in a prior session and is no longer fresh in the | | mind, the user could point at the hot button | | "<xanthian-1>" just above, and have the | | corresponding text appear in a separate window, for | | speed, or interpolated at the hot button site, for | | readability. | | | | <greg-1> | | | | Luckily, in a followup article, Greg makes the | | cogent and telling points above that pull the whole | | idea together; I just think he could have been | | gentler with the old mental cripple, from kindness' | | sake. | | | \------------------------------------------------------/ Pointing to the first "<xanthian-1>" and clicking would pop this up in a window, or interpolate it inline, depending on design: /------------------------------------------------------\ | | | Up until someone got a little too clever installing | | facist options in inews, there was a common | | agreement on the net that a leading ">" (or several) | | indicated included material, so reserving a marker | | seems the right thing to do. The Thinker(tm) | | hypertext package encloses words which are hypertext | | link hotbuttons in "<", ">" pairs. Mix this with a | | message id, start byte, end byte contents (which | | need not be displayed that way to the user) and you | | have the essence of a hypertext link, done in | | printable ASCII. | | | \------------------------------------------------------/ While pointing to the second "<xanthian-1>" and clicking would pop this up: /------------------------------------------------------\ | | | I'd prefer that the display to the user in the hot | | button show the user-id of the author of the | | included material, with a level number in case the | | thread contains quotes from that author from more | | than one prior article. So what the user sees would | | look like "<xanthian-1>" to indicate a most recent | | level quote from me had been included by the present | | article's author. | | | | We could continue the convention of keeping this | | left adjusted on a line alone, or tag it on the end | | of the previous paragraph to save space if our news | | displayer did real time paragraph flowing and worked | | in meaningful (SGML) units of text. | | | \------------------------------------------------------/ Notice that the above is _not_ the way the original article was subdivided; the person writing the followup has chosen to break the first paragraph in two and associate the second half of the first paragraph, and the second paragraph, with the second comment and its hypertext hotbutten link. Naturally, the hypertext paradigm allows a lot more flexibility than this, but this is a simple example. Even this does imply that behind the second "<xanthian-1>" hides a _list_ of begin end hyperlink pointer pairs. Note also that by including context from two articles back as quoted one article back (and perhaps trimmed down further), the user has forced considerable sophistication on the hypertext inheritance/reference mechanism. If even the most recent context were forgotten, clicking on the third, "<greg-1>" hotbutton would have popped up the query that motivated this followup: /------------------------------------------------------\ | | | As one who loathes FidoNET-style inclusion, could | | you send me a reply which conforms to this inclusion | | method, in the form ideally presented to the user, | | and then some documentation on what does what | | afterward. I'd like to see what it would be like | | before I voice my opinions on it. | | | \------------------------------------------------------/ I'm not about to present a complete design, my talents lie elsewhere; this is just a suggestion fleshed out a bit. Note that the biggest problem with this method is to decide what to do about expiring articles that still have existing links, which means that the link base must flag bidirectionally, or, alternately, to decide what to display when the linked article expires, which only requires one way links. "Sorry, Charlie, you were too slow" appeals to me, but there is an obvious tradeoff of volume savings and reading convenience against persistent context with this whole idea, since the original hypertext mechanism did not contemplate the source article for a reference vanishing out from under the link. [Note that the reading convenience can still be had by structuring the context material as copied into the followup article, but not displayed by the news displayer by default, and the hot buttons used as above to pull it forward. The volume savings of true hypertext are then lost, but as a tradeoff the context now persists while the article using it does, and the briefer display is gained.] Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> -- Convener, rec.arts.sf.* grand reorganization.
shaunc@gold.gvg.tek.com (Shaun Case) (06/30/91)
Something else to ponder is how to handle nested quotes. That makes expiry a bit more interesting as a programming problem. I like the idea of expiring all non-referenced parts of an article, and moving the referenced parts into a single large indexed file. (Large is probably equal to "real big.") As long as it is indexed, each section could be compressed using something simple like backpointers or Huffman, or even mappings to /usr/dict/words (if you have it.) This would make following links slower, but that's ok, since it would probably not be the common case (IMHO.) You couldn't grep expired articles, but you can't now, either. grepping new articles would be faster, due to reduced size. -- shaunc@gold.gvg.tek.com -- 100,000, perhaps 200,000 or more Iraqis died in a "Turkey Shoot" inappropriately called a "war." -- Michael Albert The above work is in the public domain, unless it is a piece of email.