Hi Ted and all!
Funny that you should mention coplanar marking right now-- I had been
leaving through old zzdev mails just a few days ago and been pondering
it a bit.
Ted Nelson wrote:
> I thought
> I had a use for some second dimension of marking, but
> at the moment can't remember it.
Earlier, you wanted to use d.marklist or d.listmarks for the list of
marking-cells inside a mark (instead of d.1 in your present design).
(This is what I mentioned as d..mark-list in my other mail. Gzz 0.6 uses
this internally, by the way.)
> The headcell of a particular mark (on d.1) is probably the
> best one for referring to the entire mark. But we may
> want to have a reference token to take elsewhere to identify
> the mark.
I'd prefer to use the headcell of the mark, simply connecting it where
you need it. Especially when using d..mark-list instead of d.1, its
special connections would not get in the way.
> We would light up some particular mark and
> do on operation on the selected cells by-- let's say--
> - selecting one of these headcells with the left cursor;
> - this would light up the selection;
> - performing the operation with the right cursor,
> which then takes place with the whole bunch. (For instance,
> Hop would hop the whole bunch.
Hm, interesting! So far I had assumed there would be a ringrank of marks
and a current mark, as with the dimension and view lists.
An open question is the set of keyboard commands used for marking.
A few musings about key bindings (hopefully for implementation in Gzz
0.8)--
m: mark current cell in right arrowset
o m ("other mark"): mark current cell in left arrowset
<cell number> m: mark the cell identified by <cell number>
M <dir>: mark half-rank in direction
Ctrl-M: change to next mark set
Alt-M: change to previous mark set
[Note: proposed change of use for 'o' key: perform an action on the cell
in the *other* arrowset, e.g. 'o - l' would connect the cell in the left
arrowset to the right from the cell in the right arrowset; 'o G' would
make the left arrowset jump to the position of the right arrowset. The
current meaning of 'o,' "go to rootclone," could be assumed by the 'r'
key.]
On the mark list, there's always one mark that does not mark any cells
yet. To start a new mark, simply Ctrl-M on that mark and start marking
cells. Marking a cell in that mark creates a new empty mark on the list.
BTW, generally, I feel the currently active mark set should be one of a
number of options that can be configured to function keys (amongst
dimensions shown, cursor position, arrowset, active frame, and view).
Thus, I'd like to tell my computer quickly: "F4 is the current set of
dimensions (d.1, d.4, d.mark) and the current mark (m.7)." Then,
pressing F4, I want to change to these configurations (leaving all other
configurations what they were before). I think for me, this could ease
the task of navigating zzstructure considerably.
- Benja