Links

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Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Oct 26, 2007 at 08:47 AM

“A link has two ends, called anchors, and a direction. The link starts at the source anchor and points to the destination anchor. A link from one domain to another is said to be outbound from its source anchor and inbound to its target.” - Wikipedia

So a link does have direction, which I guess should have been obvious from the procedures in making hyperlinks. Actually, when I use hyperlinks, say in OneNote, I usually want a directionless connection. So, I have to make two hyperlinks.

So it must be false that programs with “linking” avoid posing a choice about subordination-superordination. A wiki is completely isoomorphic with an outline with cloning. Or is there some distinction I’m missing?

Posted by quant
Oct 26, 2007 at 09:35 AM

In general, you have a graph as the underlying structure in your outliner.

From graph theory, there are directional and undirected graphs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_graph_theory#Direction

Most often, outliners provide only trees - a connected graph with no loops.

UltraRecall, for example, provides “logical linking”, which means undirected connection.
Hyperlinks (in UltraRecall called internal links), provide directed connection

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 26, 2007 at 01:30 PM

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>So a
>link does have direction, which I guess should have been obvious from the procedures
>in making hyperlinks. Actually, when I use hyperlinks, say in OneNote, I usually want
>a directionless connection. So, I have to make two hyperlinks.
> >So it must be false
>that programs with “linking” avoid posing a choice about
>subordination-superordination. A wiki is completely isoomorphic with an outline
>with cloning. Or is there some distinction I’m missing?
> I don’t think I agree with this statement completely. I can see how this does blur the lines a little. However, the purpose of an outline, even one with cloning, is to impose a hierarchy of ideas—without this hierarchy an outline becomes somewhat meaningless. In a wiki, links (though they may be directional) are not necessarily intended to create superiority or subordination. For instance, I can have a link from item A to item B and from item B to item C and from item C to item A.

I guess, what this boils down to for me is what the user is intending. I see the links in a wiki not as a way to impose structure, but as a convenient method for creating and navigating to related topics. There is no logical reason a program couldn’t provide both a rigid hierarchical categorization and have wiki linking—you would just need to select a parent topic when creating the linked item. In fact, I believe this is exactly the way Wikidpad works.

Steve Z.

Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Oct 26, 2007 at 04:14 PM

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>guess, what this boils down to for me is what the user is intending. I see the links in a
>wiki not as a way to impose structure, but as a convenient method for creating and
>navigating to related topics. There is no logical reason a program couldn’t provide
>both a rigid hierarchical categorization and have wiki linking—you would just need
>to select a parent topic when creating the linked item. In fact, I believe this is
>exactly the way Wikidpad works.

Or someone could even use a non-wiki quasi-outliner for navigation. At least this is possibel in Ultra Recall, whose users often subordinate one Infoitem (i.e., a note) to another for that purpose. (See Quant, above.)

If navigation is generally the preferred use of links in a program like Connected Text, the overlapping parts of the network will have a different character than where you use connections based on commonalities or resemblence. But I would be _more_ surprised to find deeper meaningful patterns in a structure designed for navigation as apposed to categorization, because navigational convenience is so task-specific.

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