Eidola news 2001/10/03
Status: Pre-Alpha
Brought to you by:
melquiades
Menu
▾
▴
Eidola news 2001/10/03
|
From: <eid...@li...> - 2001-10-04 04:34:24
|
EIDOLA NEWS -- Oct 3, 2001 http://eidola.org In this issue: * Notation prototypes from Matthijs Hollemans * New stuff in the Notation Gallery * Monitoring forums * Algorithmic semantics taking shape * (And an off-topic postscript on the DMCA) New/updated on the web: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/eidola/reefer-0.1.tar.gz http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/eidola/zoomola.tar.gz http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/uiphilosophy/minimalism.shtml http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/programs/sourcecode.shtml http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/eidola/layers.shtml http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/uiexamples/accel.shtml http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/eidola/pictorial.shtml http://eidola.org/semantics/Eidola-semantics.shtml Greetings, all! Once again, my life has pulled me away from my life -- I've spent much of the last couple of weeks starting a pleasant new job, and helping put together <www.againstrevenge.org>. But I've returned to planet Eidola for a for days, nudged it forward a bit, and caught up with some of the cool stuff you all have sent me. ______________________________________________________________________ NOTATION PROTOTYPES FROM MATTHIJS HOLLEMANS A few months ago when I sent out the 0.0.0 release, I suggested in the release notes that people try writing graphical notations. A friend saw me typing this, and said, "Paul, you realize that nobody's actually going to sit down and write a user interface, don't you?" I grdged a bit, but had to admit he was right. But Matthijs Hollemans proved us absolutely, totally wrong...completely out of the blue! (Or, more precisely, out of the Netherlands.) He implemented a small prototype of his zooming notation idea, which you can now download and try out: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/eidola/zoomola.tar.gz It is only a prototype, and it's neither fancy nor polished. But it actually works! I was thrilled, but Matthijs was not satisfied -- so he sat down and wrote a _second_ notation prototype. He's on a rampage! http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/eidola/reefer-0.1.tar.gz Eventually, I'd like to build a framework for implementing notations, but a prerequisite for this is knowing what it takes to implement them -- so prototypes like this are _exactly_ the right thing right now. Thanks, Matthijs! You definitely win the "Cool Eidola Contributor of the Month" award, two months running! ______________________________________________________________________ NEW STUFF IN THE NOTATION GALLERY There's some new stuff in the notation gallery, submitted by fine readers such as yourself. Ponder the ideas, and post your reaction in the forum. (Note the info below about monitoring others' posts through e-mail.) Many thanks to Joel Rod, who took some time pressure off me by putting together several of these pages. * Minimalism in Notation Design (Nick Weininger) What Edward Tufte says about turning data into images http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/uiphilosophy/minimalism.shtml * Good Old Source Code (addendum based on Jeff Putnam's post) New commentary on the strengths of plain text (scroll down) http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/programs/sourcecode.shtml * Semantic Layering (Nick Weininger) A notation idea inspired by Photoshop http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/eidola/layers.shtml * ACCEL's Circuit Board Designer (Michael Balloni) An interesting set of tools for electrical engineers http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/uiexamples/accel.shtml * Pictorial Metaphors (Tim Gilroy) Class as fish? http://eidola.org/notation/gallery/eidola/pictorial.shtml I am still looking for good notation ideas, especially **screen shots** of really excellent existing user interfaces. This is not limited to interfaces for programming tools -- I'm interested in really stellar or innovative user interfaces of all kinds. ______________________________________________________________________ MONITORING FORUMS I chose to host Eidola discussions on web discussion groups instead of a mailing list because I like (1) the navigable threading and (2) the creation of a readable historical record of the reasoning, and (3) I hate having my mailbox cluttered with threads I don't care about. The disadvantage of the web, however, is that you have to remember to keep checking it. But fear not! Sourceforge provides this nifty feature called "Monitor Forum" where you can have new posts in a particular forum mailed to you, so you can keep track of the discussion. I recommend turning this on if you're interested in contributing your thoughts, or just listening in on the discussion. I've provided links below to turn monitoring on/off; I _think_ that if you log in to your sourceforge account first, _then_ click on these links, it should conveniently turn monitoring on and off for you. It works for me ... but I use a weird browser (OmniWeb), so I don't know whether it will work for you. "Monitor this forum" links: * Project Meta-Issues https://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=68467 * Language / Semantics https://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=68469 * Kernel Implementation https://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=68470 * Notation Gallery https://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=98488 * Open Discussion https://sourceforge.net/forum/monitor.php?forum_id=67334 ______________________________________________________________________ ALGORITHMIC SEMANTICS TAKING SHAPE I have made substantial progress in the next great frontier for the language: algorithms. The semantics now include a good first draft of what goes on inside functions, which means that Eidola is on the verge of become a language in which one could actually write programs that run ... er, at least in a theoretical sense. I've also tried out a simplification to the tree structure, handling borrowing through a special element type instead of that wacky containment/ownership dichotomy. So, for the adventurous and mathematically savvy, the updated semantics is available -- and I'd appreciate your thoughts: http://eidola.org/semantics/Eidola-semantics.shtml ______________________________________________________________________ Keep sending me cool stuff! I'm struggling to keep up with my e-mail, so I may be slow to respond -- but it always makes me happy to see something about Eidola in my inbox. Cheers, Paul ______________________________________________________________________ (AN OFFTOPIC POSTSCRIPT ON THE DMCA) For those of you who are in Minnesota: There will be a lecture on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act at the U of M in Minneapolis tomorrow (Thurs Oct 4), at 7:00 PM in Amundson 124. The speaker is Dan Burk, a law prof specializing in intellectual property law. The DMCA is one of his pet issues, and it should be a really interesting talk. I encourage you to come if you can! The local anti-DMCA group is hosting several speakers in the coming weeks; here's our schedule as it currently stands: Thursday, October 4, 7 PM, Amundson 124 (confirmed): Dan Burk Wednesday, October 17: John Logie Thursday, November 8 (tentative): Bruce Schneier If you have missed all the hubub about Dmitri Sklyarov and the DMCA, here's some background: http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/US_v_Sklyarov/us_v_sklyarov_faq.html ______________________________________________________________________ Paul Cantrell pcantrell [at] rubby [dot] ducker [dot] org PGP/GPG public key: http://innig.org/ppc-pubkey.txt http://eidola.org/ppc-pubkey.txt http://slashdot.org/~melquiades/pubkey/ |