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Doug Engelbart's I N V I S I B L E R E V O L U T I O N

Blog Dev Blog Archive

Thursday 3rd

ViewSpecs & 'Perma' links
Frode Hegland

There is an issue of linking with Viewspecs and alone.

When linking to an item which can exist by itself naturally, such as a document or a blog, it's is natural to have a URL to it, such as: http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/document.html

However, we see blogs as being continually and intrinsically bound to it's environment, mostly other blogs, and we prioritize the flexible view specifications. Which is why we have designed, based on listening to Doug many years ago describing how ViewSpecs (Doug's term for view specifications, of view settings) work in NLS and Augment, that the viewspec should be an integral part of the URL.

Originally we just discussed slapping them on at the end of a single, traditional document which needed some flexible layout options, such as automatic outlining and such.

In this way you could have a URL something like this... http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/document.html:first=true

...where the colon towards the end signifies the end of the addressing and the start of the ViewSpec. One one ViewSpec is shown here, first line only is active, giving a simple and effective outline.

So far all is well in cyberdocument land.

But what happens when the ViewSpec no longer defines separate, discrete documents one at a time? What happens when we are aggregating many documents, or document-lets (to make a pun of blogs not really being complete documents in the traditional sense)? Trouble. That's what happens.

Have a look at this URL. It's a real, live URL from our current blog system. Click on it to see what happens.

http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/page/ blog.jsp?blog=13&&date=1054678635928&msg=51&first_only=

It shows some kind of a combination of blogs with some blog entry automatically scrolled down to. It is within the confines of a single month (June) as that is the general convention for breaking up blogs on a page. And the first sentence only option may or may not be active. It's hard to tell from looking at the URL.

If we want to have a URL to this blog entry completely isolated from its environment, completely naked and alone, we are SOL.

This has occurred to pre HyperScope types as well, giving rise to the perma-link. A weird little beast, it is a link associated with the blog entry which is often features on the regular blog page for people to copy as a fool-proof way to be able to always get to the blog. This is useful, as the blog itself continuously changes. It's weird because, well, it just is.

This is a Hypertext issue of Nelsonian proportions. What to do? Provide a URL with a ViewSpec the way we do now, in the browser itself, through the users changes in ViewSpec? And tag on an ugly duckling perma-link? Maybe.

Doug as a sideways take on all this. He doesn't talk much about links. He talks about addressing and movement (though he prefers the term 'jumping'). In such a world you can send something somewhere much like in real life, by providing a URL (bit like a post-code) or directions ('take the first Starbucks on your left' and in computer terms 'follow the link in the fourth paragraph'). As long as you can address something (sir, madam, red house) then you can use it as a navigational element. In Doug's world, everything should be directly addressable, directly and indirectly (URL and directions and more). So the perma-link seems a bit too obvious. And a bit too retro.

Maybe. Maybe we'll have to stoop to the level of not letting the subject be a link to itself in the blog, but actually having buttons/functions with [copy link to blog separately] and [copy link to blog in context]. These are the 'useability' issues we have to tackle.

So far, I just dunno.

Re: :zz,vlit,cpdm: Hi, been away | Progress on all fronts
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To: Ted Nelson
Cc: marlene@xanadu.net, xanni@xanadu.net, eharter@din.or.jp, jeremyalansmith@freeola.com, visko38@aol.com, frankf@okstate.edu, fleur@invisiblerevolution.net, blog-blog@invisiblerevolution.net, Douglas Engelbart
Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 13:30:54 +0100
Subject: Re: :zz,vlit,cpdm: Hi, been away | Progress on all fronts
-----------------------------------

So, one important issue: what is a blog?

There are many answers. Chief among them are the social and the technical. Socially, blogs are at least seen as being an easily published online 'diary'.

Technically, they are simple HTML pages laid out chronologically, most often from newest at the top to oldest. To be a 'real' blog these days you pretty much have to publish your blog via an XML dialect called RSS. The history of RSS is long and colorful, spanning Apple's HotSauce project and Netscape's channels and such as well as attempts at rich mark-up in various ways. The acronym itself has changed too, it now means Really Simple Syndication.

So what is a blog? It's whatever you want it to be. It's nothing inside a database/server though. There we can do whatever we want...

I find it useful though for the following reasons:

It's simple. It's not messy HTML with CSS and JavaScript and whatever! It's all over the place. It's popular. It's not just for little thoughts, Blogs can take big thoughts, articles and such. With a strong versioning, it should be a legal statement, as no-one can change the blog without it being stamped with 'edited' and a date. (this is in the future of course, but you blog it, and you're connented with it).

This means it's a great place to start fiddling with some HyperScope concepts and functionality.

Internally, we just have a db. It's all discussed in detail on the site. But you know, replacing it with Ted Stuff?would be just wonderful! I don't care about the internal structure. I know too little about it. I just want complete, liquid flexibility. And as far as I can tell, Ted Stuff?solves this better than anything.

What we have. And what we are working on. Is purely a prototype, which even Doug thinks is OK. The bootstrapping will come from using what we learn user interface wise.

You see, content adds itself. This email is auto-blogged, which I hope you're cool with. Now we can see how we can HyperScope this. And by HyperScope I mean it literally; get a better look at it.

When you and I were kayaking in Sausalito (!what an amazing time!!) one of the things we discussed was the nature of a document/page/folder/word etc. and all that in a computer. Clearly the computer doesn't care. You pointed this out very elegantly. So with this whole blogging situation it's become very useful (I think) to think of the blog as the smallest common element. Of course, it can be internally addressed and manipulated, but we have a unit of agreed scope. We can add tags to it (dimensions) and have a whale of a time. Internally, trying to get into your world. Externally, whatever.

Are we still oceans apart? :-)

On Wednesday, July 2, 2003, at 08:29 pm, Ted Nelson wrote:

> Hi Frode--
> > Well, we're back in the UK till September, we think. Incredibly
> intense last two weeks, big progress on both ZigZag and VLIT.
> I believe we'll
> have some exciting things to show and give away by the hypertext
> conference in August. (Please put it on your calendar, especially
> my keynote at 9 am 27 July and the ZigZag|Hyperstructure workshop
> all day on Sat the 30th.
> http://www.ht03.org/programme.html
> > As to your suggestion about Weblogs:
>> Why not do another one, on a specific subject; Blogs! Yes,
>> a discussion about Web Logs by the Hypertext man himself!
>
>> What do you think?
> Puh-leeze! I have much more important stuff to do. Like showing > you what's going on !-)
>
>> Why there? We are building some of the HyperScope functionality
>> onto blogs.
>
> It's possible to graft the functionalities that ought to be intrinsic
> into various crannies of today's (ahem) crap, but not worth doing.
> Blogs! Webrings! XML! Annotation sites! These are trivial and
> ineffective feints to change what cannot be changed, like those tacky
> posters in the sixties and seventies about "the revolution" that you
> would see on street-lamps and garbage cans.
>
> I prefer to start over with clean structures, and I think we now have
> critical mass on two of them, both ZigZag and VLIT.
>
> Looking forward to showing you, T
>
>
> From Frode > Subject: Hello
> Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 20:00:44 +0100
> From: Frode Hegland
> To: Ted Nelson
> CC: Marlene Mallicoat, fleur@invisiblerevolution.net
>
>
> Fleur & I just had a great idea. It was fun and useful doing the video
> last summer. Some of it's on www.invisiblerevolution.net btw.
>
> Why not do another one, on a specific subject; Blogs! Yes, a discussion
> about Web Logs by the Hypertext man himself! What do you think?
>
> The thought is this, we put it on the www.invisiblerevolution.net site
> in support of the HyperScope project. Why there? We are building some
> of the HyperScope functionality onto blogs.
> > We also plan to ask you questions about assertions other bloggers and
> writers have made, to later email them about the video and hopefully
> they will want to link to it prominently to generate some traffic.
>
> What do you think? We could come and film it all in an afternoon, after
> going through questions over the phone first.
> > And we can both, you and us, use this for promotional purposes. We'll
> even be putting on the right format for mobile phones which is kinda
> neat :-)
> > Sorry, just got excited here. Look forward to seeing you guys soon!
>

Monday 7th

meta-where?
Frode Hegland

Where to keep the meta data. Local to the original 'file' or aggregated in a db?

Wise-man Ian says whenever date is structured something is lost. My rhetoric teacher at Syracuse said "truth subverts creativity" that is, when something is stamped as being 'true' there can be no trial for new avenues. I agree.

This is why I am strongly for keeping data as separate as possible, only bunching it up where it is natural, such as the time a picture was taken and the location, if known, but leaving out such things as any other time based information, including the knowledge from the calendar as to what the meeting was about and such.

The related philosophy is that the data should be easily comparable. "Show me all pictures taken of David" should show the ones where I have manually included him in the file name, but it should also allow me to quickly see all the pictures where according to my diary I am with David.

Comments? Intense disagreements?

Saturday 12th

Pop
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To: Mikhail Seliverstov
Cc: accounts@speakingassistant.com, blog-blog@invisiblerevolution.net
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 14:23:00 +0100
Subject: Pop
-----------------------------------

OK, I think it would be useful for Mikhail #2 to submit a bid on the pop-up menu: The user points to a word, chooses a pop-up command. That command is sent back to the server. The server acts on the command and re-sends the page, changing the URL to reflect the change, if appropriate.

It should be able to point to any word which is in a separate (single to start, multiple at some point) glossary document.

It should have a hierarchical menu if possible.

It will need to work on Mac, PC & Explorer and Netscape as well as Safari (Mozilla).

The menu item commands should be taken from a commands glossary (there will be multiple, see below). This way it's easy for me to add, remove and reorder commands. They should be easy to understand; I give them the text which is going to be in the menu and you can name the function. So it'll be a bit like LiSA's relationship list.

The tricky bit is of course the actual commands, but all I know now is this: they will have to work on the blogs and the pages of http://www.invisiblerevolution.net Please advise on the complexity of supporting both. Maybe you recommend one first?

With the blogs, the commands will have to be 'native' to the blogging system, so that is presents the blogging system with requests to do what it can do.

Different kinds of documents (hyperblog, regular text html and timeline/tables) will have to be marked in the header (html being marked now as PageMill created and tables will have to have a manual tag) so that the menus will have appropriate commands for each kind of document.

Please suggest that he put together a scoped down proposal, so that we have something like the old hyperscope demo you put together Mikhail, if this is of interest. I can see a small initial budget, but we will have to see how it all goes :-)

August 2003

Wednesday 6th

Re: refers to date
Mikhail Seliverstov
From: "Mikhail Seliverstov"
To: "Frode Hegland"
Cc:
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 23:18:39 +0400
Subject: Re: refers to date
-----------------------------------

Hi Frode.

I think this functionality can be added rather easily.

BTW, I forget to mention that I've implemented the link naming feature as
you've proposed earlier. I.e. if you'll post a message with the following
link description: Hyper Popup you'll see the link named "Hyper Popup" pointing to the appropriate URL.

- Mikhail

----- Original Message -----
From: Frode Hegland To: Mikhail Seliverstov Cc: Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 6:31 PM
Subject: refers to date

> I just had to re-post a few blogs. Which is OK. However, one of the
> things I had in the original spec was for the addition of a 'refers to
> date' which I have somehow managed to delete. This function would be
> very useful with re-posting and such, keeping things chronological.
> Would that be an easy add-on for you before the new team hacks on it or
> a big redesign with db work and such?
>
> It would work like this: The Subject of a message would contain the
> date it refers to, like
>
> refersto: yesterday or refersto: 090603
>
> which would be very, very useful as I often blog in the morning about
> yesterday. It would automatically include this text in the intro to the
> blog: [posted Tuesday, August 5th]
>

Re: refers to date
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To: "Mikhail Seliverstov"
Cc:
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 13:04:50 -0700
Subject: Re: refers to date
-----------------------------------

Cool, please add :-)

And thanks for the hypertext addition!

On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 12:18 pm, Mikhail Seliverstov wrote:

> Hi Frode.
>
> I think this functionality can be added rather easily.
>
> BTW, I forget to mention that I've implemented the link naming feature
> as
> you've proposed earlier. I.e. if you'll post a message with the
> following
> link description:
> Hyper Popup > you'll see the link named "Hyper Popup" pointing to the appropriate
> URL.
>
> - Mikhail
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Frode Hegland > To: Mikhail Seliverstov > Cc: > Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 6:31 PM
> Subject: refers to date
>
>
>> I just had to re-post a few blogs. Which is OK. However, one of the
>> things I had in the original spec was for the addition of a 'refers to
>> date' which I have somehow managed to delete. This function would be
>> very useful with re-posting and such, keeping things chronological.
>> Would that be an easy add-on for you before the new team hacks on it
>> or
>> a big redesign with db work and such?
>>
>> It would work like this: The Subject of a message would contain the
>> date it refers to, like
>>
>> refersto: yesterday or refersto: 090603
>>
>> which would be very, very useful as I often blog in the morning about
>> yesterday. It would automatically include this text in the intro to
>> the
>> blog: [posted Tuesday, August 5th]
>>
>
>
>

Re: Blog Stage 2: Project Start
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To: "Steve Schmidt"
Cc: "Francisco Millarch - Voxel"
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 13:17:15 -0700
Subject: Re: Blog Stage 2: Project Start
-----------------------------------

Fantastic!

And we're off to a great start. Steve and I just had coffee at
Starbucks in Palo Alto, where we went through all the different Doug
components and such. I had to apologize to him then, I will apologize
to you now Francisco; this is a bit of a messy 'far-out-research'
project. I have tried to spec it all out beforehand, but as Mikhail
will tell you (while shaking his head), I will sometimes add all kinds
of feature requests. Please understand the emphasis is on 'request'.
When I email you all excited asking for a new feature or a change, I am
relying on your expertise as professional: Please tell me if what I am
asking for is a trivial thing to implement or if it's a huge deal or
even if it's a stupid request. I value the dialog and have little
understanding of what goes on inside the box ;-)

I went through the project with Doug yesterday and he thinks it's a
very valuable way to experiment with what the main HyperScope will be
able to do and to be. As is said elsewhere on the site, most electronic
communications have been been about sending out stuff, 'talking' if you
will, adding to the body of electronic information. The HyperScope and
the HyperBlog is about listening. We can take what was originally a
very dynamic medium (text on a computer on a network) which got
'frozen' again with the web and make it dynamic yet again: We can make
it easier to listen. To look through the body of work. To study, to
understand. How cool is that! :-)

On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 12:58 pm, Steve Schmidt wrote:

> Frode: Please welcome Francisco & the Voxel team to the Blog project!
> As I've mentioned, they are big fans of Doug's and are excited about
> the
> project. They've already gotten familiar with some of the code, and
> will
> summarize their status and plans in an email. Regarding schedule,
> they've signed up to complete stage 2 (as defined in the spec a few
> weeks ago) within 8 weeks, but will work towards getting a first
> version
> out much sooner.
>
> Mikhail: Francisco understands that you will update the server with
> releases from them. I know you've made some recent improvements to the
> blog system, so please make sure they have your latest & greatest code
> so we can do a smooth handoff.
>
> Francisco: Welcome to the team! Regarding email distributions: For now
> it's probably best to include Mikhail in your discussions with Frode
> (until Mikhail says to stop); Frode probably won't be interested in
> your
> technical discussions with Mikhail (unless he says otherwise); and
> please cc me on everything (because I live for email :).
>
> Let the project begin!
>
> -Steve
>
> --------------------------------------
> Steve Schmidt at eJobShop.com
>
>
>

Thursday 7th

Re: First round of questions
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To:
Cc: "'Mikhail Seliverstov'"
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 18:52:30 -0700
Subject: Re: First round of questions
-----------------------------------

Good questions, made me scratch my head a few times and pester Fleur...
Answers inline:

On Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 01:37 pm, Francisco Millarch - Voxel
wrote:

> LAYOUT AND VISUALIZATION PARAMETERS
> - When the user wants to see the current month AND the latest message,
> we
> assume it is the last message of the month, correct?

I think so.

> - If the user selects "current" we will assume that he is asking to
> visualize the first day of the month, is this correct?

Current month, but scrolled (anchor) to the most recent post.

> - Can a user access a blog without sending any parameters, or should
> the
> links to the blogs always have parameters (such as date).

No, no parameters should be an option.

> - Will there be a second font option, in case the user does not have
> Georgia
> installed? If not specified, the browser will use the standard font,
> normally Times New Roman on Windows OS.

Sure.

> - Please define how will the layout look like when a date period is
> selected.

I would suggest the regular date format, specifying the start date then
a tilde followed by end date. Is this OK with you?

> - In the top left menu there is a month navigation menu. How will the
> navigation work? When the user visualizes a date period, will the month
> navigation still be available?

Good question. Not thought of this one. What do you suggest? I can
think it would make sense to see 'Month1 to Month2' where there is more
than one month

> - How will the months in the left menu and in the main frame be split?
>
> Month 1
> Day 1
> Day 2
> Month 2
> Day 1
> ...

This one's good. (above)

> or
>
> Month 1, Day 1
> Month 1, Day 2
> Month 2, Day 1...
>
> or another format...
>
> SIMPLE SEARCH
>
> - In the spec you mentioned that the search should be done "with" or
> "without" certain words. We would like to know if you also want to
> search
> expressions or phrases such as "this is the search phrase".

Search expressions within quotes should be allowed.

> - If the search includes the words "table", "chair" should we search
> 'AND'
> or 'OR'.

I think we should do AND by default. The user types OR manually. That
is our gut feeling. Suggestions gratefully received :-) Sould we
maybe copy Google's advanced search?

> - When the user selects "First Sentence Only", the system will look
> for the
> first "." in a text string larger than 10 characters. In some cases
> this may
> cause problems, as the code will find a dot inside a link (.com, for
> instance). The HTML will be cropped as in this example:
> http://voxel.c ...
> This may damage the page visualization.

Good point. What do you suggest?

> - According to the spec, the user will be able to fill the "Highlight" > field. What formatting should be used to highlight text? Bold?

For now, red and bold. Good question. Embarrassed I haven't thought about it a lot. Other suggestion?

> - What in which fields should the search run on? Only on the main > text, or > other fields such as "author"?

Ideally, full text.

> - Will the search (filter) be accessed only through the blog?

Yes, for now.

> URL FORMAT > > As per the spec, the URL format needs to be changed from > "blog=1&blog=2&blog=3" to "blog=name1&name2&name3=". > On the site, there is a dropdown box, where the user can select one or > more > blogs to visualize but, as the dropdown menu is in HTML, the > parameters will > have to follow the HTML standard, not the spec2 format. > The way to work around this is using Javascript. Every time the user > submits > the data on the form, we'll convert the URL to the new spec2 format. > Having > said this, there are some implications we all should be aware of: > > - We need to keep Javascript code on the client side, which may > eventually > cause incompatibility problems with some browser versions. > - The system will run slower > - And the page will be more complex. > > Please consider the real benefits of this change and let us now if we > should > proceed.

Hmm... please wait on this.

.........

Sorry these are not all hard answers, this is a really valuable part of the whole process, starting some dialog to figure these things out. All your suggestions are gratefully received.

best, Frode Hegland

Have you ever used a mouse? Have you followed a link on a web page? Sent an email? Used a window on a computer? Used video teleconferencing? Then you live in Doug's world. He changed our world and no-one noticed. This is the story of his invisible revolution.
<P>http://www.invisiblerevolution.net

Friday 15th

Test
Mikhail Seliverstov

Test

Sunday 17th

Re: PS & Comment Subject
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To: francisco@vo...
Cc: smike@pe...>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 11:53:34 -0700
Subject: Re: PS & Comment Subject
-----------------------------------

OK, sorry this has taken so long, the filming has been pretty much
non-stop.

On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 12:03 pm, Francisco Millarch - Voxel
wrote:

> 1) It was not clear to us how the PS: command in the subject line
> should
> work...
>
> Here's who it is written on the spec:
>
> "The subject, which becomes the subject of the post OR will have
> commands,
> as in the date (yesterday:) which will add the post at the end of the
> last
> day, subject having "PS:" In front, with the date in pop-up, as usual.
> Another commend is the 'introtext:' command which takes the main body
> and
> uses it in the users intro page."

PS: means Post Script and is to tell the server to list the blog entry
in another date than the current date.

The user types 'PS:' and then a date, maybe like '18:8:2003' for today
if you agree with the formating. 'PS:' followed by 'yesterday' should
also work, posting the blog entry in the day before. This would be in
front of a normal text string which would be the subject as usual.

This is why the 'refers to' field is useful in the db.

In the blog, any message will be listed with PS: in front of the
Subject and in brackets, (post script. posted 26th of July) as shown
below.
.....................

PS: Filming
Frode Hegland
(post script. posted 26th of July)

.....................

Now that you have pointed out operational issues with this, I'd like to
add a second term, 'repost' which will work the same, except this is
when people feel like editing an old post. The user would re-send an
old post from their 'sent' messages in their email program. Edit it any
way they want. Add 'Repost: 14:8:2003' in front of the subject and it
would appear as below.

Does this sound like it makes sense?

.....................

Repost: Shopping
Frode Hegland
(edited. originally posted 26th of July)
.....................

On Friday, August 15, 2003, at 12:03 pm, Francisco Millarch - Voxel
wrote:
>
> 2) In order to clarify things, could you send an example of how it
> would
> look like the subject line when the user clicks on [Add Comment]? We
> are
> assuming that the subject line will have the message title followed by
> the
> URL. Is this correct?
> (taken from http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/comment.html) >

This is really for you to decide. The only really important thing is
that it should have enough info for the system to know what post is
referred to. Funnily enough, the UI rule here might be the opposite of
the way we are working for the URL being readable. If the Subject looks
like a technical string of numbers, not a friendly word or something,
the user will hopefully understand he is not to tinker with it! Makes
sense or silly?

HyperPop-Up
Frode Hegland

From Mikhail:

From: "Mikhail Seliverstov" Date: Wed Aug 13, 2003 2:50:42 pm US/Pacific To: "Frode Hegland" Cc: "Steve Schmidt" Subject: Hyperpopup

Hi Frode.

I've deployed the first prototype of hyperpopup project on Liquid server.
<P>http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/hs_svr/index.jsp

I've tried to point it to http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/pitch-prod-co.html and that's worked. Mike has told me that the prototype has some limitations. So, probably you'll find some things which have to be fixed. Please report all of them.

- Mikhail

Hyperpopup
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To: blog-blog@in...
Cc: Mikhail Seliverstov
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 18:02:39 -0700
Subject: Hyperpopup
-----------------------------------

It's pretty darn impressive. I have put up a series of screenshots for posterity so we can track the changes:

http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/hs1-intro-page.jpg showing the intro page - http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/hs1-with-page.jpg showing a parsed page - http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/hs1-popup.jpg with the popup

Comments are as follows:

Intro Page

The intro page should not be there in the deployed version of course, users will just get this functionality automatically on all pages on the site. But as a test page, it's perfectly laid out.

Layout

In the Safari browser, the type goes all over the place. I tried it on Explorer so I know it's not the code's fault, but we need to do whatever to make it look right on Safari. http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/hs1-with-page.jpg shows the problems.

The green is great for testing, but should not be there for the final version.

Glossary words should not become live if they are a part of a longer word, like 'document' should not become a pop-up for the 'document' part of 'documentary'.

The control strip on the top of the page should not be there, though cool it is. The functionality it provides should be in the pop-up menu. Ie; 'Show only paragraphs' is already there (and yes, this means that only paragraphs in the glossary can be used) and 'First sentence' should be added to the end of the pop-up, after a break, as it does not relate to the word it is on.

Pop-Up Menu

One more command needs to be added to the end of the popup: 'Show

Please remove the - in the pop-up menu. The colors are very cool, but this is not necessary. Also, please make the menu items white.

Make the the title of the open pop-up 'HyperPop-Up Menu'.

Please make 'Show glossary entry' open in a new, smaller window. Ideally 400 by 700 or so, with no browser controls. If that is not a big deal to add. If it is, please make it just open in a new window.

Glossary Window

Please remove the title on the page 'Glossary Entry', make the glossary word bold, remove the --- and make the definition come right after the glossary entry word.

Bugs

Please check it on pages inside invisiblerevolution.net like http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/main-docu.html which does not work at all in Safari or Explorer on Mac.

If possible, it would be great if it could also work on http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/engelbart-timelines.html but it's seriously table heavy so I understand if it chokes.

In summary. It is amazing to see it working, now comes the polishing part. I am very grateful that this is being built, especially built this elegantly.

September 2003

Friday 12th

Re: Connection
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To:
Cc: "'Steve Schmidt'"
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 21:31:20 +0100
Subject: Re: Connection
-----------------------------------

Cool. OK, comments and questions before Mikhail puts it onto the server
and launches it into the stratosphere:

The [top] feature is nice but not in the spec. I feel such a feature is
not necessary as it is a view spec which is not in the URL (small
detail, I know scrolling is not either). Please tell me why it's there,
this is kind kind of discussion I love! :-)

The subjects are supposed to be links to their own locations, not to
the date.

Paragraphs seem to be very far apart, not sure why.

Please have a look at the manually created blog for the trip to film
'Conversations with Doug' and tell me if you think adding the next and
previous arrows would be a big deal.

Will the old content from the old blogs be 'imported' into this new
blog?

What's the deal with the pop-up menu interaction? How would you like to
provide Mike with ways' to 'bolt' the pop-up on top of the blog?

And I think that's it :-)

On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 02:13 pm, Francisco Millarch - Voxel
wrote:

> We've setup another way to access the BLOG. Just go to
>
> www.voxel.com.br/blog.asp
>
> which will redirect more efficiently to our development server. It
> should always work unless the ADSL connection is down (which may -
> unfortunatelly - happen...)
>
> -francisco
>

Re: Connection
Mikhail Seliverstov
From: "Mikhail Seliverstov"
To:
Cc: "'Steve Schmidt'"
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 00:47:45 +0400
Subject: Re: Connection
-----------------------------------

Hi Frode.

I think there is no problem with the pop-up menu
interaction because it will just process the blog contents and produce
the resulting document with the pop-up functionality.

- Mikhail

----- Original Message -----
From: Frode Hegland
To: Ffrancisco@voxel.com.br
Cc: Steve@ejobshop.com, Mikhail Seliverstov'
Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2003 12:31 AM
Subject: Re: Connection

Cool. OK, comments and questions before Mikhail puts it onto the server and launches it into the stratosphere:

The [top] feature is nice but not in the spec. I feel such a feature is not necessary as it is a view spec which is not in the URL (small detail, I know scrolling is not either). Please tell me why it's there, this is kind kind of discussion I love! :-)

The subjects are supposed to be links to their own locations, not to the date.

Paragraphs seem to be very far apart, not sure why.

Please have a look at the manually created blog for the trip to film 'Conversations with Doug' and tell me if you think adding the next and previous arrows would be a big deal.

Will the old content from the old blogs be 'imported' into this new blog?

What's the deal with the pop-up menu interaction? How would you like to provide Mike with ways' to 'bolt' the pop-up on top of the blog?

And I think that's it :-)

On
Friday, September 5, 2003, at 02:13 pm, Francisco Millarch - Voxel
wrote:

We've setup another way to access the BLOG. Just go to

www.voxel.com.br/blog.asp

which will redirect more efficiently to our development server. It should always work unless the ADSL connection is down (which may - unfortunatelly - happen...)

-francisco

Re: Connection
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To: "Mikhail Seliverstov"
Cc:
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 22:51:24 +0100
Subject: Re: Connection
-----------------------------------

Could you please (when you have some time) explain exactly how that will happen, in tech terms? It's still somewhat abstract for me :-)

On Friday, September 12, 2003, at 09:47 pm, Mikhail Seliverstov wrote:

> I think there is no problem with the pop-up menu interaction because
> it will just process the blog contents and produce the resulting
> document with the pop-up functionality.

Re: Final Beta Changes (was: RE: Connection)
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To:
Cc: "'Steve Schmidt'"
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 01:20:06 +0100
Subject: Re: Final Beta Changes (was: RE: Connection)
-----------------------------------

Great, my comments on your comments on the comments inline, with
unnecessary text deleted.. Really looking forward to your comments on
these comments before we move ahead btw:

> The [top] feature is nice but not in the spec. I feel such a feature
> is not necessary as it is a view spec which is not in the URL (small
> detail, I know scrolling is not either). Please tell me why it's
> there, this is kind kind of discussion I love! :-)
> In the page
> http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/email-2-rss-spec-2/email- > parse.html we found the following requirement:
> From the Main text: Double returns which become different objects,
> each addressable separately (anchors created and links to the anchors
> at the end of each paragraph.
> Thus, we understood that there should be something "clickable" at the
> end of each paragraph, that would link somewhere. We assumed it
> would be to the beginning of the paragraph. Are we wrong? How should
> we do it?

Ahhhh..... Yes. This is interesting. Forgot about this, I have to
admit, thought of it as a later stage part. Doug will LOVE to see this
in though. Just make it a few empty, non-breaking spaces which link to
the beginning of that paragraph if you can. So nothing will be seen,
unless the trained user points to the end of a paragraph, the underline
will show (CSS supplied, as now) and it will behave like subject links,
as discussed next.

> The subjects are supposed to be links to their own locations, not to
> the date.
> In the current live version, when one clicks on the title of the first
> message of a given day, the page aligns with the date. If the day has
> more than one title/message, and one clicks in any other title but the
> first one, nothing happens.
> We found this behaviour to be strange and we assumed it was a bug. So
> we made all the message titles consistent with the same behaviour as
> the first one. Should we change it?? What is the purpose of linking to
> itself? Maybe we should have no links at all?

That is a bug. The point here is that it should always refer to itself,
so that you can copy the link to the subject, email it to someone and
they will get to that specific blog entry. This is an old concept with
Doug and me, but with blogs now it's fashionable to call it a
'permalink' Ugh, hate that term!

> Paragraphs seem to be very far apart, not sure why.
> There is one line gap between paragraphs. We can remove that.

Thanks.

> Please have a look at the manually created blog for the trip to film
> 'Conversations with Doug' and tell me if you think adding the next and
> previous arrows would be a big deal.
> No big deal. We'll change that.

Brilliant!

> Will the old content from the old blogs be 'imported' into this new
> blog?
> We haven't changed neither the structure nor the relationship between
> the original tables. We just created new tables and relationships in
> the database.
> It will be very clear in the script Mikhail will execute in order to
> create the database, and he should run only the final part of it.
> We'll send instructions with the delivery.
> As for the JSP and servlets source code, they have been significantly
> changed. We strongly recommend to have a backup in place in case
> something goes wrong and we need to rollback the code.

Mikhail is that convenient, the backup?

> What's the deal with the pop-up menu interaction? How would you like
> to provide Mike with ways' to 'bolt' the pop-up on top of the blog?
> We did not look into it yet...

OK. I have asked Mikhail to look into the exact mechanics for this as
well.

> - A replace in the XML to the absolute path of the embedded links.
> - Add to the Admin the pages to allow inserting, deleting and editing
> Links relative to the blog. The links will be visualised below the
> introtext.
> - Put the texts (edited. Originally posted 5th...) under the subject.
> Believe us, to do this we had to create a whole new table and a lot of
> code so we would not interfere with the original tables. We'll talk
> again on Monday. Have a good weekend everyone !

That's cool.

Re: Final Beta Changes (was: RE: Connection)
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To:
Cc: "'Steve Schmidt'"
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 01:37:46 +0100
Subject: Re: Final Beta Changes (was: RE: Connection)
-----------------------------------

Great :-)

On Saturday, September 13, 2003, at 01:30 am, Francisco Millarch -
Voxel wrote:

> Thanks Frode! It's all clear now. Thanks!!
>
> Let's see how much we can get done by Tuesday. Please note we are 4
> hours
> behind you in London...
>
> We'll e-mail Mikhail on Monday with the latest version...

Sunday 14th

dates...
Frode Hegland
From: Frode Hegland
To: blog-blog@in...>
Cc: Mikhail Seliverstov
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 00:24:38 +0100
Subject: dates...
-----------------------------------

Hi guys. I am sitting here with David from Symbian discussing blogs. He is the one who introduced me to blogging and RSS and all that.

He points out I have made a fundamental mistake, something which has been bugging me but which I have refused to look at; the blog is delineated by months...

Therefore I have to ask you, as we have been working on different date variables anyway, can we (relatively easily) add a 'show last n blog posts' variable, option?... the 'n' number would be written straight out in the URL, so that the author or even the user could change it. Maybe you could combine the 'current' variable with 'date range' somehow, if we have them?

The blog would then not show the name of the month on the top left hand side, but: 'recent n blogs'.

Sorry about this, not expecting it done now by any means, but it would be a great addition. Is adding this an indecent proposal?...