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Re: [zigzag] captivated and confused



Hi Chuck,

I've just noticed nobody seems to have answered to your mail so far.
Sorry about this.

You wrote:
> In some ways it feels like object from outerspace that I dont understand how
> to take advantage of.

In some ways, it is. :-/

The thing is, GZigZag is still *very* much under development. You can
actually use it for some things -- I'm doing so -- but currently it's
best used to demo it, not for real work. ;o} I use it for storing notes.
And I try to make programming in it possible. But, as so many things
with GZZ, "that's not quite there yet."

Sometimes pushing the developers (including me) to do things helps,
especially when things are relatively easy to do (some things are, most
aren't, but strangely the things that are easy would be very hard in
other systems).

> I'd love to be able to:
> do math functions across cells like a funky "3d spreadsheet"

I've been working on that, but it's not quite there. Hang on. (Like, two
months or so. I HOPE then you'll be able to do that.)

> sort

There is an alphabetical sorting mechanism that sorts ranks; you can
invoke it by pressing F3 and a direction. But it doesn't seem to work
too well. What exactly would you like to do? This could be an easy one
to do.

> import data into predefined "schemas" or I guess "factories" are how you
> guys refer to them

No, we don't. But anyway. ;) I know there has been a demo for using GZZ
in interfacing to databases. Could you explain which kind of data, in
which format, you would like to import into which kind of schema? Maybe
we can figure something out, but I don't want to promise anything.

> have a way to print or export structures in "flat" views

I don't think anyone is currently working on anything like that. You can
copy&paste text from PUIs (Ted Nelson's word for PUIs, in case you don't
know ;) ), but not much else. The problem is that such "flat" views
would have to be figured out first, something I thing nobody wants to
work on right now.

> and long term
> sync my pilot to a address book structure.

GZZ has actually been ported to a PDA for demoing. Don't think it's easy
to install, though: as I understand it, that PDA works with Linux, so
it's probably QUITE hard to install. But Sun has announced a Java VM for
the Palm, so we will probably try to make GZZ compatible to that.

> use gzigzag in a true 3d space, any OPENGL programmers out there?

There was some work on OpenGL, but on 2D drawing currently, I think.
This is really a long term thing.

> Are other people using zigzag or gzigzag on a regular basis for anything?

I do for making notes, and I'm looking forward to using it for writing
and programming "sometime soon."

- Benja