bob therriault wrote:
> Clearly, animating an accurate, comprehensive
> and understandable visual for Rank (") will
> be an adventure.
Rank isn't so obscure a concept as it may first seem. I suggest you animate
rank along the lines of viewing along the lines of
frames and cells. I have a very brief Essay on this on the Wiki [1], but let's
look at frames and cells in a little more detail.
Let's use comic books (comics) as a motivating example. One way to rank comics
is:
A stack of comics is a vector of N comics
A comic is a vector of M pages
A page is a vector 2 sides
A side is a vector of P strips
A strip is a vector of Q panes
A pane is a table of RxS pixels
A pixel is a vector of 3 color coordinates
But of course, it all depends on how you look at it, and what kind of details
you're interested in. And that perspective is your
rank. Examples:
* A comic buyer would look at a stack of comics as a vector of
comics (he's interested in the details of each comic). But
a comic distributor, shipper, or store owner would look at
the stack as an item of inventory, and wouldn't care about
the comics as individual items.
* A comic artist doesn't know anything about stacks, and in
fact has a finer focus than the comic buyer. Whereas the
buyer seems the comic as a cohesive whole, an artist sees
a comic as vector of pages, and a page as a table of panes
(because that's how he breaks up his work). On the other
hand, a colorist would probably look at a comic as a giant
vector of strips (panes within strips normally sharing some
elements of color), or perhaps vector of panes (because
that's how he estimates his work).
* A comic book printer would also look at a comic book as a
vector of pages, but a page would actually be a vector of 2
sides, and a side would actually be a giant table of pixels.
He doesn't know anything about strips or panes. But a
comic printing machine would look at that same side as a
giant cube of color coordinates (pixels being a high-level
concept for it).
* A seller of comic book paper wouldn't have the concept of sides
(he can't sell one side of paper, except to Mobius), so to him
a comic book is a ream, or part of a ream: a vector of pages,
not subdivided into sides or strips or panels or pixels.
Ad infinitum. For any given rank, you can think of someone who cares about
only that rank, and is unaware of structure "above" him,
and may consider structure "below" him irrelevant detail. Rank is perspective.
-Dan
[1] http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/A%20Fine%20Line
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