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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] Synth, comments, etc

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  • From: Bear K <bear@ursine-design.com>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] Synth, comments, etc
  • Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:38:59 -0800

This relates to the levels of zoom I just asked about - zooms like
lenses, a spectrum from a microscope to human eye scale (and further
perhaps) - ya dig?
Certainly. Now, to the technical part.....me thinks there's a bit of work involved in that.
(Note, we're still talking Front-End, though collapsing searches are back-end, and all this talk is probably for version 5.0). It's something I haven't been able to solve for a while now, admittedly I haven't sat down and really tried to crunch it. Have you seen Groxis? It's an app which sorts Google results into a hierarchy while you can then tunnel through. They use circles inside circles to represent the levels, which gives is a much different feel from your standard Windows Explorer, Mac Finder file/folder view. Thing is, the algorithm still sorts and creates a hierarchy, which is real handy for zooming in at different scales. What we'd be trying to do is to collapse a _network_ down as if it was a hierarchy. It means you'd probably need a way to discover the subnetworks within the network, and lump the subnetworks together.

Bear also wrote, "There was a semantic network project I was looking at
once. The nodes consisted of words. A large number of people were given a
random pairing of words, and asked to rank how similar or different they
were. This information weighted the connections between the nodes, which
when arranged using Elastic Interval Geometry (the rubber-band networks
that TouchGraph[?] et al use), would lump into related clusters of words.
I wonder the "Interaction Matrix of Two Species" (table 3.5 page 62 of
the DM) could be used for a system like that. Would it just require a 1
to 1 table with columns for the rankings? You'd need another to store
the individual rank, source, and comments that are averaged into the
main table."

Beautiful again. Ecological networks aren't flat democracies. Things *
are* weighted. Just tough when we have to assign the weights ourselves,
but perhaps if we create algorithms (using Elastic Interval Geometry -
wow, what is that?) it will be easier and more meaningful?

I think TouchGraph uses it. It's a front-end thing. Imagine a network of nodes. Nodes are connected to other nodes, and each connection has an optimal distance. The connections behave like springs, pushing the nodes back and forth on the graph, until all the nodes finally self-assemble into an optimal arrangement. It's fun to watch actually. I'm developing something right now, though it's in RealBasic (Mac only), though a friend will be porting it over to C. I may be able to develop a front-end for this back-end, given enough relationship info.

What platform is everyone on?

Cheers,
Bear
OpenPermaculture.com
Ursine-Design.com





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