[Trac] Tags

[Muness Alrubaie]

Nicola,

You're very welcome.  I am glad you took the time to read the paper. 
I too felt constrained by hierarchies.  You know what's amazing about
the paper to me.  Look at the publishing history, listed at the end of
the article:

Originally published in:
Architectural Forum, Vol 122, No 1, April 1965, pp 58-62 (Part I),
Vol 122, No 2, May 1965, pp 58-62 (Part II)

Also published in :
Design, No 206, February 1966, pp46-55
Ekistics, Vol 23, pp 344 - 348, June 1967
Bell, G & Tyrwhitt, J(eds) Human Identity in the Urban Environment,
Harmondsworth, UK, Penguin Books, 1972

This version taken from:
Thackara, J. (ed.) (1988), Design After Modernism: Beyond the Object,
Thames and Hudson, London, pp. 67-84.


1965!  And published several times since.  But I've never heard of it
mentioned in the context of computer science.  (Or any other for that
matter.)  Especially given that Alexander's work on Pattern Languages
is well accepted in the field, this is very dissapointing.  Anyway,
enough of my rant.

I hope that now that you've read the paper, you'll also look at the
tagging implementation I put together.  Every day I use it, I am
amazed at how powerful and convenient it is.  Many have gotten used to
del.icio.us and gmail quickly, but I strongly believe that shedding
the constraints of hierarchies in wikis is far more compelling.  Let
me know what you think.

Muness

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 00:06:52 +0100, Nicola Larosa <nico at teknico.net> wrote:
> > One of the papers I think is very useful to seeing this is Christopher
> > Alexander's A City is Not a Tree, available at
> > http://www.rudi.net/bookshelf/classics/city/alexander/alexander1.shtml
> > .  It outlines the difficulties and shortcomings of using hierarchies.
> 
> Sir,
> having read said paper, I feel the need to express my gratitude to you
> for having mentioned it. The paper admirably describes the limitations
> of the hierarchical tree structure (a.k.a. DAG, direct acyclic graph),
> limitations I have felt for a long time, but could not accurately pinpoint.
> 
> It looks like some study of the properties of the semilattice structure
> is in order. Thanks again.
> 
> --
> Nicola Larosa - nico at tekNico.net
> 
> ...this book does not recommend exercises such as Hanon and Czerny, that
> are not meant to be memorized and performed; by the same token, the
> Chopin Etudes are recommended. Practicing something that wasn't meant to
> be performed is not only a waste of time, but also degrades any sense of
> music you originally had. -- Chuan C. Chang, Fundamentals of Piano
> Practice, 2nd Edition - http://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm
> 
> 


-- 
See my blog at http://muness.blogspot.com