[tomboy-list] future ideas

[Thomas Zieg]

Speaking of Google Wave.... I have invitations to the preview if anyone
hasn't gotten one yet.  Just let me know.  I know that is a little off topic
for the current thread, but I thought I would throw it out.

Personally, I see Wave as more of a replacement/amalgamation for IRC and
Instant Messaging.  It takes a lot of the good aspects of those mediums and
makes it richer.

Sometimes, I just want to jot a note down or record something somewhere
other than a text file.  In those instances, Tomboy shines for me.

Just my two cents.

Thanks!
Thomas


On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Eric S. Johansson <esj at harvee.org> wrote:

> Pete Goodall wrote:
>
>  It is certainly an interesting idea, but I agree with Sandy.  As I
>> read your description I kept thinking in the back of my mind, "...this
>> is Google Wave".  However, coincidentally, I was thinking about Google
>> Wave this morning on the way to work.  I have yet to hear a whole
>> heartedly positive review of Google Wave because most (if any) people
>> don't fully get it.  It may be that Google Wave is just ahead of its
>> time.
>>
>
> I agree that looks a lot like Google wave. I think I take the documentation
> stream in a different direction which is radically different and I think
> more useful in the real world. This is one of the "benefits" of being
> disabled and not be able to write code. I spent a lot of time working with
> mental models and paper scribbles all driven by extreme motivation to make
> user interface as simple and as hands free/not damaging as possible. :-)   I
> just wish I could find some way to make money building good, simple user
> interfaces. all the stuff I'm seeing around here seems use Microsoft Word as
> a UI model (all widgets on screen all the time).
>
> there is a lot of "ahead of its time" features to wave which I found rather
> useful and entertaining. But a bunch of us who are not exactly stupid, found
> it aimed at the ADHD set. I try really really hard to block out all
> interruptions in 25 minute chunks. I need a communications tool that
> supports that. That's not  this incarnation of wave.
>
>
>
>
>> The beauty of Tomboy has always been in it's simplicity and a lot of
>> ideas come across this list for more advanced functionality.
>> Thankfully (imo) the Tomboy core devs have resisted many of the more
>> complicated ideas and accepted (imo) some great ones.
>>
>
>
> yes. I don't want to change the core I would just like to add the smart
> paper constructs as a plug-in or something and from that you can use it
> within other application frameworks.
>
>
>
>  That being said, I do think this idea has merit and maybe such a
>> system could use some of the underlying infrastructure of Tomboy
>> without actually altering the Tomboy front end.
>>
>
> okay, let's be clear. There are three concepts I'm talking about. First is
> the comp communications infrastructure which I'll deal with first. Second is
> the "active paper" model, and third is the two-dimensional method of looking
> at how communications and text changes. Think of it as a timeline with depth
> to indicate revisions.  I will admit the last one might be more appropriate
> to a word processor but, that could be an interesting discussion as well.
>
>
>   As an example I
>> believe the base of F-Spot is being rolled into Banshee.  These two
>> applications are related and maybe should share some functionality
>> (like Banshe displaying photos and F-Spot creating slideshows set to
>> music), but the UIs remain distinct.  In this way you don't distract
>> the applications from their core functionality, but you also don't
>> reinvent the wheel (to coin a phrase).
>>
>> You mentioned that you don't want to rely on a central service for
>> this because you don't want your information sitting on someone else's
>> server.  So do you envision this being a peer-to-peer model?  Maybe
>> integration with Telepathy?  If you don't have a central server, then
>> how to do you queue messages?
>>
>
> the current working model for communications is based on the assumption of
> end and completeness for communications. In other words, this would totally
> piss off most ISPs. an end users node would look something like a client and
> a relay node. Relay nodes talk to each other and clients talk to relay
> nodes.  the only push data is a notification message. The notification
> message triggers the fetch of data from senders relay node. The reason for
> this model is that it makes it easier to apply a reputation filter and keep
> out unwanted communications. Spammers can't just push information to you the
> way they do today. The notification assigned, it can be used to query
> various reputation databases owned by people you normally communicate with
> and you can decide for yourself whether or not to accept the rest of the
> message. Another way of thinking of this is that the first message is slow
> as hell because you're trying to see if they are known or if they have a
> good reputation anywhere. Once they have a good reputation with you, then
> the notifications are unhindered.
>
> So to answer your question, you queue your messages on your own server.
>  that server can access to your desktop, laptop, or in colo facility
> somewhere. My goal is to make the relay server as simple as possible so that
> you can use your five dollar a month hosting service as a relay.
>
> remember, this is just rough broadbrush ideas. I've been thinking about
> things like using instant messenger as the fundamental notification
> structure and things of that nature if it's possible to disguise the content
> of that notification message from evil, corporate/government eyes.
>
>
> The second model of active paper means that you do things on paper and have
> them perform actions. I think this will mean a shadow sheet containing the
> notation for the actions.. For example, let's say even a page which records
> your daily log for consulting tasks. I should be able to click an icon on
> the page have it add an active region which lets me enter in data like
> customer and a log entry and the number of hours spent on different tasks.
> Then I should be able to have a second piece of active paper which takes
> each task's hours, sum them up and make an invoice which can be
> exported/cut-and-paste/whatever. Then if I go back and change an entry, all
> of those changes ripple through. Yes, it sounds like a glorified spreadsheet
> but, if the first significant departure from the frame oriented model the
> spreadsheet and this change would make people see things in a different
> light. Another example would be a graphing widget where an application can
> be gathering data in the background, stuffing it into a tomboy page and then
> kicking the "render" button.
>
> I'm sure I can come up with other examples but the basic idea is to create
> a flexible piece of paper that lets you do what you want simply and easily.
> It's motivated by my experience with building the akasha web framework. I
> did it because you can't speak HTML. It is unbelievably miserable and likely
> to ruin my throat to the point where I can't speak. So I took somebody
> else's tools, recast them into the form I could speak and now, I can create
> webpages by a very simple notation that has nice little escapes for the
> complicated stuff. A side effect is that these escapes are the canary in the
> coal mine telling me when I screwed up and I need to go do page things in a
> different way. I did such a good job of making really simple and functional
> that when a friend of mine redid a website in moin, he told me he really
> missed working in akasha because it was simpler and more flexible than the
> traditional wiki markup.
>
> I built a framework that you could learn in the morning and use it to get
> your job done in an afternoon. You could forget everything you knew and
> start over again in a couple days and it wouldn't matter because it was just
> a simple. Contrast this with HTML, SQL, XUL, etc. which are fundamentally
> jobs programs for geeks. They are a career and when they become careers, it
> is much more difficult to throw them away when they are found lacking.
>
> just as I built this framework for web development, I would like to build a
> similarly easy to use active paper framework for tomboy. Yes I'll need help
> because I know never see all the problems and collaboration is a good thing.
> The product gets better if you do it right. I also can't write a whole lot
> of code with my hands being like they are but I can do some Python by voice.
>
> the third model is simple complicated. Unfortunately, a lot of time and
> I'll talk about this later but. It's way cool.
>
> --- eric
>
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