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 "Version" Aversion |
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Posted by Bob Perez on Fri Dec 15 16:59PM CST 1989
from the time travel services dept.
I've used "global identity" to refer to the kind of underlying
platonic expression you refer to, but after thinking about this
issue quite a bit (and discussing it with MarcS) I've concluded
that this only confuses the issue even more. As MarcS correctly
notes, what really drives the distinctions among the various
things that people call "documents" is their *intent* with respect
to those things.
Attempting to reduce the complexity of intent-driven document
creation and editing to a simple division between specific instances
and their relationship to a single underlying platonic expression
is far too simplistic for the real world, and anyway misses the
point that matters most to the community of users most interested
in any particular document: the purpose of that document.
I like to think of it as a strength of our system that it provides
direct support for this notion of intent-driven creation and
editing (e.g., by creating a new BertD for me when I want to workD
on a variation for a new audience), while providing no direct
representation for the "cloud document" or "global identity"
notions.
I like Ravi's "editionD" suggestion a lot, and plan to incorporate
it into my workD. And while "variation" doesn't deliver quite
the persusasive impact that "editionD" packs, I'm reasonably happy
with it in the absence of a better suggestion. However, I agree
with you that we should try and avoid using the term "version"
to reference both "editions" and "variations". I say "try" because
I have very little confidence in our ability to moderate the
habitual abuse "version" receives, either internally or externally.
So, let me summarize my understanding and see how well it maps
to yours. Berts are the soul of a document and represent the
discrete, persisting identity behind the changing representations
of that identity. As changes are made, a document visits different
states (represented by new Stamps), and whenever a particular
state is blessed with a BertD hopped from a predecessor StampD
(thanks, Nick) we refer to the result as a new "editionD" of the
original document.
When a document is replicated a new BertD is created representing
a new and separate identity; we refer to this as a "variation"
on the original document, anticipating a distinct intent by providing
a distinct identity and state/editionD history capability (note
that the term "variation" is somewhat presumptuous, but not overly
so since it fits our reasonable expectation of actual changes
representing a new intent).
It doesn't seem to add anything but confusion to think of the
various relationships possible between editions spawned from
different variations. The act of variation is itself an assertion
that significant distinctions exist between the resulting variations
to warrant a new and separate identity. We should honor this
assertion by abandoning any attempt to draw cloud patterns or
global identities around the two.
Are we getting closer?
-- bobp
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| Reading List |
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As We May Think,
1945
Vannevar Bush
Augmenting Human Intellect:A Conceptual Framework,
1962
Doug Engelbart
Literary Machines,
1981, 87, 93
Ted Nelson
Engines of Creation, Chapter 14
The Network of Knowledge,
1986, 87
K. Eric Drexler
Hypertext
Publishing and the Evolution of Knowledge,
1986
K. Eric Drexler
SF:EarthWeb,
1999
Marc Stiegler
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