| JohnCartan: |
Soooo. Have any Alexander news to report?
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| P King Duk: |
Spent some time on Alexander this weekend:
minor but difficult compatibliity problems between Think C v4 & v5.
I.E., the thing won't even compile.
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| JohnCartan: |
My feeling is that trying to tackle entire project at once is too overwhelming,
but it does seem reasonable to get a working continent generator by the end of the summer.
What do you think about that as a working goal?
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| P King Duk: |
I like it a lot. Assuming smoothing is part of the job.
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| JohnCartan: |
Smoothing is part of the job.
Any guesses as to when you'll be able to ship genesis version 1.0000001?
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| P King Duk: |
June. That's June iff I can get this Mac to Tempe; rental is just TOO expensive.
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| JohnCartan: |
:) It would be NICE though if genesis could give me a text file of 1s and 2s
so I can test smoothing. Possible?
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| P King Duk: |
Sounds quite possible.
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| JohnCartan: |
I have also been thinking about revised Alexander journal...
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| P King Duk: |
What are your thoughts?
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| JohnCartan: |
Would be nice to come up with a general purpose over-the-modem team project kind of gadget.
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| P King Duk: |
Using HyperCard?
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| JohnCartan: |
Yes, using HyperCard. I keep trying various ideas in my head, trying to
achieve simplicity and flexibility. One idea for journal: 3 types of
cards - history cards, idea cards, and relationship cards.
History cards just keep track of converations like this one.
Idea cards are where all the meat lands.
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| P King Duk: |
Relationship cards?
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| JohnCartan: |
Relationship cards are created to show how idea cards interrelate.
Essentially card with links to idea cards. What do you think?
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| P King Duk: |
Well I don't know. How does this differ from what we're doing now?
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| JohnCartan: |
In looking at current journal I discover that it's already getting
out of hand, complexity-wise. Perhaps we need more flexible ways
to tying different ideas together.
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| P King Duk: |
And how would this design address that problem?
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| JohnCartan: |
Ideally, relationship cards would help us "clump" and analyze the idea cards.
A simple index of all idea cards quickly gets out of hand.
Hard to find all needles in the haystack.
With this scheme we could turn out idea cards quick
and dirty and worry about how to organize them later.
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| P King Duk: |
But we've already been doing that, really.
I rather like the current hierarchy capability; would that be possible?
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| JohnCartan: |
Hmmmm. I don't see why not. Relationship cards
could have links to other relationship cards.
But one thing I don't like about the current scheme
is that we are sometimes forced too deep into existing hierarchies.
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| P King Duk: |
How about arranging as a book, but hyperlinks where appropriate?
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| JohnCartan: |
What do you mean "as a book?"
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| P King Duk: |
With pages, chapters, table of contents, and printable.
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| JohnCartan: |
Problem with chapters is WHEN do you divide stuff into chapters?
As you write it? Afterwards?
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| P King Duk: |
Yes - either/or
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| JohnCartan: |
And what if there's more than one way to divide material?
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| P King Duk: |
Make an arbitrary decision, and use a hyperlink for the loser.
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| JohnCartan: |
And how do you keep track of the flurry of modifications without getting confused.
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| P King Duk: |
Same way as any other system. Pick a comfortable
level of granularity, and protect there & below.
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| JohnCartan: |
When does modifications to one idea turn into new and different idea?
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| P King Duk: |
Up to the author.
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| JohnCartan: |
After last conference I agree that one contributer must be designated as editor.
I was hoping that relationship cards would be a way of chopping up same ideas
into different chapters whenever we need to. That way things stay fluid.
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| P King Duk: |
Well, maybe we're not that far apart. You work on that; I'll work on code.
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| JohnCartan: |
Agreed.
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| P King Duk: |
Any bets on who shows results first?
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| JohnCartan: |
Depends how you define results ;)
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| P King Duk: |
MY definition.
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| JohnCartan: |
Great! Well, I guess I'll see you Friday at six in the lobby of the
downtown Holiday Inn.
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| P King Duk: |
OK; I'll be there. Bye.
|
| JohnCartan: |
Good night!
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