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Thanks. As time permits I will plan to look at what you've said. I'd like to balance that with my desire for an "outline" so I can have large amounts of easil

by lcall 8y ago

Thanks. As time permits I will plan to look at what you've said. I'd like to balance that with my desire for an "outline" so I can have large amounts of easily-navigable info without creating huge pages. I see what you mean about the text file: I just haven't evolved it into a web page yet, so I can shorten the lines easily enough, but not sure how to integrate it best into my organizer software beyond that. One idea is that, I can export content with the software into single-page (text) outlines of selected subsets of the content, showing the outline structure with indentation (just using white-space for indentation, like org-mode, only farther in, currently 6 space characters per level) or 1.1, 1.1.1, 2.1.3 -style numbering with some indentation, down to N levels at a time. Perhaps sometime I could automate linking pages to/from such text outlines (they are 80-columns by default), when I generate the site. At selected places, or through out. Hmm. If I drop off here for a while or you want to continue conversation later, feel to email per the bottom of each page. Thanks again for the suggestions. Edit: Another way to put the problem is this: I have enough content, with much more probably to come, that I want to make it useful while avoiding the whole "TL/DR" syncrome for someone who would only want to read some. And let them easily choose which "some", while skimming or skipping others, thus my thinking in terms of outline-like structure. I hope that makes sense.

graeme 8y ago
You could massively improve the outline simply by making the hierarchy visible. You can nest lists under lists. Right now it's unclear how many layers one has to go through to reach an actual article.
- lcall 8y ago
  I have to think about what you are saying. We are coming to the info with different expectations. I'm not immediately sure how to make the hierarchy more visible with this data. The source data has no single entrypoint except arbitrarily chosen, and can be (or seem, practically) infinite in all directions, with arbitrary relationships at any point -- maybe something like a very large wiki with a different internal structure (more at http//:onemodel.org ). A structure could maybe be chosen for presentation purposes though. But the "article" you refer to was made as an exception and is not the way information in my ~"knowledge base" is typically structured. Each page I see as not a document but as an entity with properties and also a set of references to whatever else relates. More about my outline comments elsewhere in this discussion, where I can export chunks of it as individual outline documents, to some # of levels from any point, but conceptually it does not lend itself to paragraphs or documents, as much as ideas and relations. I'm not explaining it as well as I'd like -- again, there is more at that web site about the intentions of my software that this comes from. It's like a big mind map (with future plans to hang more data and code, on all the nodes.) Or maybe each page could be seen as a paragraph, broken into bullets which each can link to details on that thing, if someone is interested. Or it is a set of topic sentences, with contents underneath each sentence or link being the full paragraph, for the interested -- like where I wrote in this discussion about enabling skimming. I don't want to stifle discussion, if you have questions or more suggestions that can in some way account for the above, or improve on it... Thanks.
- lcall 8y ago
  Actually, there is no single hierarchy, just an artificial one created by my top page that makes it seem like one. Maybe there should be one or more real hierarchies made as entrypoints to a large data set that can go in all directions without limit, in order to better meet reader expectations (but pls read on for more). With a possible exception of the very first page of the site, the things you are seeing as navigation, I have intended to be content first, and navigation second. (The document you found is an exception that I hope is temporary.) Almost all entries, things with bullets, are part of the content, even if it is also a link to more content directly related to that sentence. The situation might have been confused by the fact that at the entry level (~ top level, but really any point I consider an entry point in a way), some of the bullets really are navigational titles. My intent is that the size of the content (the number of pages and things I have to say about each thing, present and future) neither prevents reading the key points, nor prevents drilling down into more parts of interest. Again, to get the point across, and provide details, but to avoid "TL;DR" syndrome. So, maybe I should have a note at the top of many pages like "HOW TO READ CONTENT AT THIS SITE:" which links to a page that says "Every sentence is a sentence first and a link secondarily (or sometimes a title). So, to digest the information, read a page completely, then click on links of interest to read more about those statements." I tried to put something like that in a few places, but it describes it more in terms of skimming. So, there could be a need to better bridge the gap between typical expectations of web pages as documents, and the fact that I think of each page on the site as both navigation and content, almost like an app. There is so much content that to put it into a set of documents means choosing, somewhat arbitrarily, which content goes together, when in reality, it all goes together at every level, with an allowance for seemingly infinite amount of related content in all directions. (In fact, in the original system where these are stored, prior to being exported as html, each page and each entry on a page is an entity in an intended object model of reality including of thoughts, where each entity can have attributes including numbers & dates etc, code, and references to other data, trying to represent knowledge at an atomic level, considering documents as merely one type of expression of that knowledge. More at http://onemodel.org http://onemodel.org .) So, maybe I need to meet reader expectations by one or more of: - making (somehow auto-generating?) many entrypoints each with clear a hierarchy, - creating documents that are really data exports in outline form, to N levels. - finding a UX designer who understands the issues well and can suggest presentation techniques for this system, - or at least that I use the "HOW TO READ CONTENT AT THIS SITE" idea noted above. Ideas welcome. Thanks much for considering it to this point.

by lcall 8y ago

graeme 8y ago

You could massively improve the outline simply by making the hierarchy visible. You can nest lists under lists. Right now it's unclear how many layers one has to go through to reach an actual article.

lcall 8y ago
I have to think about what you are saying. We are coming to the info with different expectations. I'm not immediately sure how to make the hierarchy more visible with this data. The source data has no single entrypoint except arbitrarily chosen, and can be (or seem, practically) infinite in all directions, with arbitrary relationships at any point -- maybe something like a very large wiki with a different internal structure (more at http//:onemodel.org ). A structure could maybe be chosen for presentation purposes though. But the "article" you refer to was made as an exception and is not the way information in my ~"knowledge base" is typically structured. Each page I see as not a document but as an entity with properties and also a set of references to whatever else relates. More about my outline comments elsewhere in this discussion, where I can export chunks of it as individual outline documents, to some # of levels from any point, but conceptually it does not lend itself to paragraphs or documents, as much as ideas and relations. I'm not explaining it as well as I'd like -- again, there is more at that web site about the intentions of my software that this comes from. It's like a big mind map (with future plans to hang more data and code, on all the nodes.) Or maybe each page could be seen as a paragraph, broken into bullets which each can link to details on that thing, if someone is interested. Or it is a set of topic sentences, with contents underneath each sentence or link being the full paragraph, for the interested -- like where I wrote in this discussion about enabling skimming. I don't want to stifle discussion, if you have questions or more suggestions that can in some way account for the above, or improve on it... Thanks.
lcall 8y ago
Actually, there is no single hierarchy, just an artificial one created by my top page that makes it seem like one. Maybe there should be one or more real hierarchies made as entrypoints to a large data set that can go in all directions without limit, in order to better meet reader expectations (but pls read on for more). With a possible exception of the very first page of the site, the things you are seeing as navigation, I have intended to be content first, and navigation second. (The document you found is an exception that I hope is temporary.) Almost all entries, things with bullets, are part of the content, even if it is also a link to more content directly related to that sentence. The situation might have been confused by the fact that at the entry level (~ top level, but really any point I consider an entry point in a way), some of the bullets really are navigational titles. My intent is that the size of the content (the number of pages and things I have to say about each thing, present and future) neither prevents reading the key points, nor prevents drilling down into more parts of interest. Again, to get the point across, and provide details, but to avoid "TL;DR" syndrome. So, maybe I should have a note at the top of many pages like "HOW TO READ CONTENT AT THIS SITE:" which links to a page that says "Every sentence is a sentence first and a link secondarily (or sometimes a title). So, to digest the information, read a page completely, then click on links of interest to read more about those statements." I tried to put something like that in a few places, but it describes it more in terms of skimming. So, there could be a need to better bridge the gap between typical expectations of web pages as documents, and the fact that I think of each page on the site as both navigation and content, almost like an app. There is so much content that to put it into a set of documents means choosing, somewhat arbitrarily, which content goes together, when in reality, it all goes together at every level, with an allowance for seemingly infinite amount of related content in all directions. (In fact, in the original system where these are stored, prior to being exported as html, each page and each entry on a page is an entity in an intended object model of reality including of thoughts, where each entity can have attributes including numbers & dates etc, code, and references to other data, trying to represent knowledge at an atomic level, considering documents as merely one type of expression of that knowledge. More at http://onemodel.org http://onemodel.org .) So, maybe I need to meet reader expectations by one or more of: - making (somehow auto-generating?) many entrypoints each with clear a hierarchy, - creating documents that are really data exports in outline form, to N levels. - finding a UX designer who understands the issues well and can suggest presentation techniques for this system, - or at least that I use the "HOW TO READ CONTENT AT THIS SITE" idea noted above. Ideas welcome. Thanks much for considering it to this point.