Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Global Outliner?

Author:Rob Bender
Posted:6/23/2000; 9:42:02 AM
Topic:Global Outliner?
Msg #:18031
Prev/Next:18030 / 18032

Isn't the power of the web that its a web, not a hierarchy? (Tim Berners Lee has said so himself)

Sometimes it is useful to organize things into hierarchies, but the majority of human thought is organized as webs of ideas interconnected with many other ideas. A regular hierarchy is too restrictive for most people, that's why not-tech people don't make much use if their computer's filesystem. (Ever see those desktops just full of icons?)

The next-generation OS should make it simple to jump around data and documents based on arbitrary relationships (either explicitly defined or discovered by the computer). An outliner says you have to first climb up two levels, then down three more to get to something else that may be related.

But as long as most data in computers is organized hierarchally, a global outliner (ala Windows Explorer) would be useful for us tech-folk.

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