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Tony Colston
Tony Colston

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lovely article about the web of documents

This article/opinion piece is great.

http://blog.danieljanus.pl/2019/10/07/web-of-documents/

It is interested that we have indeed ended up with a web of applications that look like documents.

Not that I think this is a good idea but it would be nice to have a web of PDFs instead of what we have. Or something like a PDF that is more or less fixed. You would have to take out the scripting options from PDF so that it would not morph into a web of PDF applications.

Or maybe a web of static/JAM sites.

It would be fun to have a set of sites that do use these ideas. And have them linked. In the early days of the web I think that concept was called a "web ring." I doubt any still remembers it... :(

Oldest comments (4)

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laserblue profile image
laserblue • Edited

Web rings were very linear and a lot like following a path through a forest with no idea what would be next but knowing only that it would be related to the other Web sites. At least with a search list of links one can see info on more than one site at a time.
I would even prefer a visual topic model/mindmap UI such as found in IRIS.ai or Brain.
Amazon links one to related books that is close to being a Web ring but Arxiv doesn't even have topic folders with human readable thumbnails or title lists.

NOET research application for the humanities
youtu.be/08DMfJDbqn8

James Burke's Knowledge Web
youtu.be/aBYDC9VaF4Y

Engines for Education Hyperbook
engines4ed.org/hyperbook/

Iris.AI
iris.ai/

Padlet on Education
padlet.com/spectramollisol/nz0zzxv...

Pearltrees

Pinterest Board on Education
pin.it/sl3udansu4gufe

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tonetheman profile image
Tony Colston

That is a great idea. A mindmap like GUI instead of a webring.

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Daniel Janus

Author here, thanks for recognition!

I'd have reposted it here but, with all the due respect, dev.to is an application, not a collection of documents.

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tonetheman profile image
Tony Colston

Heh. Super cool you commented.... and yup you are right. :) :) :)