I keep lurking in thy shadows’ thread and I always want to add a thought and I never do… It’s been soem time since dabbling in Tbx and I feel I can make a more objective analysis of this subjective argument…I will not use the term Alias here as to not fall in teh technical “rebuttal” trap; I will use the term Clone instead. A Clone is a container that appears in more than one place in the Tbx document - Outline, Chart view, etc. Unlike an alias, a clone is not a real container pointing to another container (usually the original); rather it is a second entry in the table of contents for the very same container. Consequently, there is no original; when you clone a container you’ll end up with two. It is essentially a tag; a multiple sublevel “group tag”… Even NeO, an oudated ouliner, has this concept as well. Prototypes can give me exactly what I want, conceptually and what i don’t want objectively – cost of data size. A 100kb single container prototyped will turn into a 200kb Tbx document.
KEEP IN MIND THE ARGUMENT HERE REALTES ONLY AND ONLY WITH THE IDEA OF CLONES AND DATA SIZE EFFICIENCY IN MIND!!! PLEASE DON’T GO FAULT-FINDING AT EVERY SINGLE PHRASE (there are plenty analogies out of the ass, I know) AND COMMENT ON THE OVERALL THEME, AFTERALL, THIS IS A DISCUSSION. THIS HAS BEEN A VERY DIFFICULT TOPIC FOR ME TO PUT INTO WORDS. I AM IN A VERY SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THIS THING YOU CALL TINDERBOX AND I ONLY WANT TO HELP IN ITS EVOLUTION OTHERWISE, WHY THE EFFORT?
For Instance a vehicle has a roof, chasis, and tires in that order when going top to bottom. However, the roof is part of the chasis/framework (same “substance” component) and a tire has rubber all around it and metal in between (same abstract object but different “substance” component"). While anyone is free to create their own methods and taxonomic “melodramas” categorizing and naming all of these concepts, abstaractions, objects… - think WordNet, Roget’s Thesaurus - one needs to reacreate that exact same object (our vehicle in our case) in order to grasp how that object can be improved or reinvented from ground up. Aliasing alows you to see multiple versions of the same container (vehicle) as many times you’d like. But it can only allow you to go as deep as seeing only the paint color of the roof, the shape of the body and the shine of it’s tires. Attributes in the Attributes browser is limited in the very same way. Accessing information in the attribute browser is nontheless brilliant. Buidling information to accurately present it in the AB requires deep hierarchial analysis.
The vehicle scenario is a case of creativity and the inevitable escape of a hierarchical system. But also think of this scenario. I have 10 sources on the same topic. I want to compare and contrast those sources for reliability of factual information, and that topic, structures knowledge and all of its branches with all of its concepts - let’s assume 15 levels only. I want to have a category named: “10 sources on same topic requiring analysis for accuracy” and I want to clone each source within its category but I also want a category named “references by its original source”. Prototypes can do that but they will also double the size of data each time a note inherits it prototype. Imagine having that category in 50 different places (before you’d figure out it needs only live in 4 places). Analytical processing is the step before the final presentation and delivery of information; and I feel that objects such as the A. Browser and concepts such as aliasing are limiting in the sense that it only alows you to present taht final information or process taht information from the view of somone with a specific expertise.
Chart view alows horizontal and vertical view of information at the same time, by definition that’s it’s pupose. Outlien view allows grouping of topic & whatever information. A good way to view an Article besides viewing it on the same page. Attribute Browser alows horizontal and vertical view of categorized -minimal level -container information arranged in special ways.
If I live in 4 seperate countries throughout the year, the taxman will bill me once and only once, it will not tax my investment income in all 4 different regions. A clone will alow me to view the same information while taxing me 100kb vs 400kb of data size.
It’s very easy to doom the need of hierachial structure of information when somone’s expertise is very specific. For instance, an accountant, a doctorate student studying the behavior of automated process behavior of ceratain social websites , or somone doing an analysis on the upcoming elections. The structure, teh form, and the level of knowledge is not as dense and as complicated compared to somone working on a taxonomic system based on the whole world of knowledge while considering all ontologies and all its components e.g., think WordNet, Roget’s Thesaurus (40 years to complete), LOC, Wikipedia (millions working on it) ; i.e. knowledge structure on a differrent dimension.
While Tinderbox alows me to fiddle with “nuclear” size information in so many and better ways than any other product out there, I believe, it’s also important that Tinderbox alow me do so in the most eficient way, the CLONE and the MARKDOWN (to be discussed some other time) way