On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 1:02 PM, Edward K. Ream <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 12:25 PM, Terry Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > >> A plugin can "load" these from the leo outline, and "save" them back to >> it. To me, the "Graph World Aha" is only marginally more useful than >> this. > > I don't really disagree.
On second thought, I do disagree, and fairly strongly at that. The Aha in The Great Graph Aha is a shift in point of view. It is this shift, and *only* this shift, that matters. We agree that a graph-oriented plugin would allow users to create and manipulate graphs in a visual format, say in the body pane. The Aha says that the plugin can represent the graph any way it wants: - As the body text of a single node, - As @node and @link nodes, or any other structure in the Leo outline. The user typically *won't see* the representation of the graph. That's an alternative form of the Aha. Leo is an excellent filing cabinet for all kinds of data, including data that happens to represent a general graph. True, Leo does not do graph-oriented algorithms. Imo, it is reasonable to ask, so what? A graphing plugin for Leo need only "stand between" the data in the Leo outline and a graphing package. Why try to outdo a general graph package? The package will have solved problems that you and I have not even imagined. For example, the networkx packages defines several types of graph iterators. Why should we care if none of those iterators corresponds to the typical Leo tree traversal? In short, there is an easy, natural way to do heavy-duty graphing calculations in Leo without changing Leo's core in any way. Why is this not good enough? Edward --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
