Jack Sondergaard: hi

Results Tiki: hello, I was surprised and pleased to see this event in time.

Jack Sondergaard: yes, I have been having these meetings off and on for a while

Jack Sondergaard: have you heard of Xanadu before?

Results Tiki: yes, I was a volunteer with Doug Engelbart for over a year.

Jack Sondergaard: great

Results Tiki: I just got into Second Life and am working on an IBIS implementation

Jack Sondergaard: do you know Alan Bomberger?

Results Tiki: The name doesn't ring a bell.

Jack Sondergaard: he was a beta tester of NLS

Results Tiki: oh yeah

Jack Sondergaard: and wrote a similar program called Thinker

Jack Sondergaard: I have been a beta tester of it since 1990

Results Tiki: nice, googling now

Jack Sondergaard: It is a hypertext outliner

Results Tiki: Nice

Jack Sondergaard: first on the Amiga, then Mac, then Windows, now Java

Results Tiki: I'll have to install the trial later.

Jack Sondergaard: what is IBIS?

Results Tiki gave you SL-IBIS Project Status.

Results Tiki: Jeff Conklin worked with Doug years ago

Results Tiki: He's a consultant now in California.

Results Tiki: Doug is in Meno Park. I live in the Bay Area too.

Jack Sondergaard: his name sounds familiar

Jack Sondergaard: I have been using several mindmappers lately

Jack Sondergaard: and was hoping someone could make one inside SL

Jack Sondergaard: I had a dream years ago of text in a library floating through the air, and all the links being text branches streaming off the sides of it

Jack Sondergaard: you could grab any of them and make them the main stream, backtrack, etc.

Results Tiki: That sounds nice. It's pretty easy to extrapolate a 3D implementation of what I've seen in 2D, and easy to think about ways to approach it. In building IBIS I'm working the APIs to try to actually get something usable implemented.

Jack Sondergaard: I'm also using a beta version of a metadata browser on my Mac

Jack Sondergaard: it's called Nucle, but is very fragile at this point

Results Tiki: I plan to get back on the Mac platform someday, I've been on Linux and Windows for too long.

Jack Sondergaard: but most of the mindmappers I have tried are static, which is OK for output to print or the web, but sort of limiting for large link sets

Results Tiki: I can imagine.

Jack Sondergaard: OSX is extremely stable, which is what I like best about it

Jack Sondergaard: my favorite mindmapper is OmniGraffle, which allows you to first add the nodes, then link them in any way, it's not strictly hierarchial

Jack Sondergaard: a related project of Xanadu is zigzag, which is sort of a dynamic n-dimensional linked structure

Jack Sondergaard: and a variant of it is called gzz

Jack Sondergaard: it's a lot of fun to play with

Results Tiki: ah yes, it's been awhile since I've been researching them. I'm dusting away the cobwebs about Udanax, ZigZag, etc.

Jack Sondergaard: the plan is to use zigzag to select sets of links, versions, formats, and views to display in Xanadu

Jack Sondergaard: the demo docs of Udanax Green code are very good, also the dissertation by Portia Sisley

Results Tiki: great, I forget what the demo was named but I played with a DOS or Linux version of ZigZag once.

Results Tiki: I think it was the demo diskette

Jack Sondergaard: yes, that was a primitive version of it, I ran it once from a floppy on a PC, it had linux on the floppy too

Jack Sondergaard: it was a good demo of the concept of n-dimensions, although it lacked the selectable views found in gzz

Jack Sondergaard: here's the other link I was looking for, that is a good intro to Xanadu: http://www.caplet.com/papers/open-media.html

Results Tiki: Nice, thank you.

Jack Sondergaard: I like the link type icons in the demo you mention: http://www.svpal.org/~grantbow/demo.jpg

Jack Sondergaard: that's an excellent way to show them

Results Tiki: Yes, that's a nice screenshot of Compendium's demo and something I'm working to replicate in-world.

Jack Sondergaard: I will definitely check it out

Jack Sondergaard: I work at WalMart and they certainly have some wicked problems with communication and resource allocation

Results Tiki: lol, I bet

Results Tiki: logistics issues are non-trivial

Jack Sondergaard: yes, before going to work there, I thought they would have things like that under control, but not so

Jack Sondergaard: I look forward to dialog mapping discussions in SL

Jack Sondergaard: in 3D

Results Tiki: I'm working on the scripts to do the linking now. I have demo objects talking and now I just need to figure the best way to work with the vectors in rezzing the arrow itself.

Results Tiki: Then I need to think about keeping that arrow updated somehow as objects move

Jack Sondergaard: one thing I have noticed that is lacking in all the mindmappers is nodes which include scrollable text

Results Tiki: good point

Jack Sondergaard: the closest thing I have seen to it is CosmicBook: http://xanadu.com/cosmicbook

Results Tiki: I want to address that in a couple ways in my project. First - floating titles with line breaks and second, access to more robust content.

Jack Sondergaard: yes, OmniGraffle has multiline nodes and even tables

Jack Sondergaard: It can output image maps for publishing on the web, although I would like to see Flash output too

Jack Sondergaard: I have spent a lot of time trying to learn Flash, but it is quite difficult, probably because I have used much better animation software in the past

Results Tiki: Hehe, have you worked with SL animation yet?

Jack Sondergaard: I looked at LSL a bit, but never really learned it

Jack Sondergaard: I'm trying to learn Python now

Jack Sondergaard: when it comes to programming, I am a slow learner

Jack Sondergaard: I started trying to learn C, C++, assembly, Java, all those eluded me

Jack Sondergaard: but I think I can learn Python and Rebol

Results Tiki: Python is a great language IMHO.

Results Tiki: I've used about a dozen languages professionally so picking up LSL is pretty quick for the amount of time I've invested. Workin in 3D is a new challenge.

Jack Sondergaard: yes, I love doing 3D animation, I learned Lightwave a long time ago, and Cinema 4D, but have forgotten how to use them, since I haven't done it regularly

Jack Sondergaard: I would like to see some more advanced 3D modeling tools in SL

Jack Sondergaard: nurbs, etc.

Results Tiki: the animations in this furniture is quite nice

Results Tiki: *are

Jack Sondergaard: yes, I noticed that

Jack Sondergaard: there is a 3D modeler I downloaded that can create objects and animations for SL, but I haven't used it yet. It's now open source, som maybe some of it could be incorporated into SL itself

Jack Sondergaard: Results, have you found a way to connect objects in SL with some kind of visible lines that stay connected when the objects move?

Results Tiki: that's the part of my discussion mapping project I'm working on now.

Jack Sondergaard: I'm wondering if flexible prims would work

Results Tiki: I don't know yet, I'm working with standard prims so far.

Jack Sondergaard: I would also like to see some mathematics visualization in SL

Jack Sondergaard: I saw a video years ago called "Only Zooms" that had a lot of 3D fractal animations

Results Tiki: Interesting, I haven't seen that. I did read about the graphing calculator project at Apple. It's quite a story how that software was created.

Results Tiki: Actually I saw a talk by the developer on video.google.com

Jack Sondergaard: and animation of hypercubes and n-dimensional mathetical structures

Jack Sondergaard: yes

Jack Sondergaard: it's quite a story and quite a program

Jack Sondergaard: I have used the Amiga a lot, and was a software developer on it, so I have seen some real pioneering work done in 3D

Results Tiki: The Amiga was a great machine.

Jack Sondergaard: some of the programs and hardware for it still amaze me

Results Tiki: Like some of the ideas from Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart and others still haven't truly been realized.

Jack Sondergaard: yes, they were all ahead of their time in many ways

Results Tiki: It takes alot of skill to actually implement something in those directions.

Jack Sondergaard: definitely, I know that from working so much testing Thinker

Results Tiki: A challenge of being interested in these things is the plethora of point solutions to learn about.

Jack Sondergaard: what are point solutions?

Results Tiki: partial implementations that address only an aspect or two of the big issues.

Jack Sondergaard: oh, yes

Jack Sondergaard: that's the hard part, getting all the key features put together and working

Jack Sondergaard: but it takes time, and the development of better tools

Jack Sondergaard: like what Babbage was trying to do, but the technology wasn't up to his conceptual requirements yet

Results Tiki: Yes, I can get frustrated in waiting for better solutions in part because I understand some of the problems pretty well.

Jack Sondergaard: yes, one thing I see lacking in languages, is easier ways of integrating text editing into programs

Jack Sondergaard: it's now easy to lay out an interface, but to make it do the really useful transformations of text and other media is still hard

Results Tiki: There's a nice tool in python to help with that... one sec

Jack Sondergaard: yes, I haven't gotten far enough into Python yet to know what all it can do

Jack Sondergaard: I'm slowly working my way through "Core Python" now

Results Tiki: Have you seen http://sourceforge.net/projects/boa-constructor/ ?

Jack Sondergaard: I will look into that, I have used some programs that use wxpython

Jack Sondergaard: one problem I found was that some python programs expect an exact version of Python or WX, and if you have the latest versions of those installed, you are out of luck

Jack Sondergaard: I tried to get SPE running, but I was too up to date to run it

Results Tiki: yes, it's a huge headache. I had to have a couple different machines running simultaneously to be effective when I was deep into it.

Jack Sondergaard: one of the things I like about Rebol is it's ease of installation

Jack Sondergaard: you download one file, and you are good to go

Jack Sondergaard: but I have sometimes spent days downloading and installing all the parts of Python I needed for something

Jack Sondergaard: although I love the language itself

Results Tiki: Yeah

Jack Sondergaard: that seems to be the biggest problem with open source, is keeping all the parts of a project coordinated

Results Tiki: Yes, the packaging systems go a very long way, but there are still problems. I worked with SuSE for a few years before they were bought by Novell. I am also a retired Debian Developer.

Jack Sondergaard: yes, Apple has done a great job of hiding the details of Unix from end users, although developers still have to know them

Results Tiki: I'm looking forward to playing with my first OSX machine. I've been away from the Mac for too long.

Jack Sondergaard: OSX is a lot different than the older versions of the system, very stable, but I still don't like the Dock

Jack Sondergaard: it gets in my way, no matter which side I put it on

Results Tiki: hehe

Jack Sondergaard: I prefer the OS9 way of accessing programs from a drop down menu

Jack Sondergaard: I have a program to do that on OSX installed, but the dock is still there too

Jack Sondergaard: but I often go for months without rebooting, and then only for major upgrades of the OS or security

Results Tiki: Nice. I just noticed that Thinker was last updated 02/26/03. I don't think I will install it.

Jack Sondergaard: the Java version is newer than that

Jack Sondergaard: but the newest version might not be on the website

Jack Sondergaard: since it is still in beta

Results Tiki: ah

Jack Sondergaard: try emailing Alan Bomberger if you want a newer version

Jack Sondergaard: I just noticed that in my inventory I have a skyscraper

Results Tiki: lol

Results Tiki: I noticed this page just now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

Jack Sondergaard: yes, I used to draw mindmaps on paper back in the early 70's

Jack Sondergaard: they were called cluster diagrams then

Jack Sondergaard: that's how I took all my notes, I still have thousands of them on tiny Rolodex cards

Jack Sondergaard: in nearly microscopic writing

Results Tiki: hehe

Results Tiki: so you have these meetings regularly?

Jack Sondergaard: I have been having them nearly every Saturday lately

Jack Sondergaard: and sometimes on Mondays or Wednesdays, since I have those days off

Results Tiki: Would you like to see my static IBIS demo?

Jack Sondergaard: definitely

Results Tiki: ok

Results Tiki gave you Bylot (65, 3, 96).

Results Tiki: sorry about the permissions thing, I'm borrowing this land

Results Tiki: the demo is right over here

SL-IBIS Project

Can't enter parcel, not on access list.

Jack Sondergaard: very nice

Results Tiki: it's the same demo from Compendium

Results Tiki: that wood box and ball are my attempt at the dynamic linking, I just got the chat going so far.

Jack Sondergaard: what kind of scripting does it have?

Results Tiki: the static demo has none

Results Tiki gave you ts.

Results Tiki gave you bs.

Results Tiki: that should be the target script and base script :)

Results Tiki: for the ball and box respectively

Results Tiki: The other work I did was to get one object to turn into several.

Jack Sondergaard: that is interesting

Results Tiki: I just change the size of one prim and rez/derez the children

Results Tiki: the communications can be tricky

Results Tiki: try clicking it, I haven't had any testers yet :)

Results Tiki: lol

Jack Sondergaard: I derezzed it

Results Tiki: try the Node submenu

Results Tiki: cool

Jack Sondergaard: that is impressive

Results Tiki: thanks, I've been on the lslwiki alot lately :)

Jack Sondergaard: you could make some really big diagrams in SL

Results Tiki: I think you should be able to take a copy of this to play with

Results Tiki: There are limits due to chat distances and such

Jack Sondergaard: yes

Results Tiki: and the 10 meter prim rez distance limit for the links

Jack Sondergaard: is it alright with you if I post the chat log on the hyperworlds website?

Results Tiki: I need to get the renaming down so all nodes don't rename at the same time, lol

Results Tiki: uh...

Results Tiki: I guess so. That's a surprise

Jack Sondergaard: sorry, I should have asked at the beginning instead

Results Tiki: where do you post them?

Jack Sondergaard: hyperworlds.org, the website I maintain about Xanadu (mostly)

Results Tiki: Yeah, but it's a big site and I didn't see a place for transcripts anywhere

Jack Sondergaard: hyperworlds.org/index.html#jackseay

Jack Sondergaard: down from there about 10 lines

Results Tiki: fyi, in your FAQ I ran it gave me a dialog box saying you didn't paste all of the code.

Jack Sondergaard: Oh, I probably have a link to a different web host my faq used to be on

Jack Sondergaard: I will look at it

Results Tiki: I see the transcripts

Jack Sondergaard: OK, I see the popup about the Faq, it does refer to an old domain I had before

Results Tiki: k, cool

Jack Sondergaard: I will probably just remove it, since I think it is all said elsewhere on the website

Results Tiki: ok. Oops, I left in a debug message

Jack Sondergaard: well, I better get a little more rest before work

Results Tiki: alright, thanks for having the meeting, I enjoyed it.

Jack Sondergaard: thanks for coming, I will schedule one for next Saturday too

Results Tiki: ok

Jack Sondergaard: I will download the Compendium software Monday, it's not available until then