The life of a minor minor prophet, not the rock Tuesday, August 26, 2003 Why do we need a WYSIWYG XML editor? James Farmer writes: "Micah says we need a WYSIWYG XML editing tool, um (me being naive here), what's wrong with WYSIWYG html tool? Is it the syndication stuff? Am only just starting to realize that I should know more about this!" James, I'm pretty naïve on these issues too.  Fokes I know who aren't include Chris Nitchie and Jon Udell.  Chris wrote a long and detailed response to my pointed jabs about Arbortext which I never adequately responded to (and won't now ;), but the bottom line is we need a way to edit/create structure while editing formatting.  The high priests of XML want us to think about structure directly (this section should be H1 or H2), when most humans think in formatting (18 point font vs 9 point).  WYSIWYG HTML editors have gotten us some of the way there, but the structure behind HTML is limited and co-mingles the presentation. While as users we often want to manipulate the structure and the presentation at the same time it's important that within the underlying representation (the code behind the WYSIWYG editor) these two layers remain separate.  It's because this separation exists that you can copy and past a column from Excel into Word as either plain text, formatted text, a table, or an actual Excel object.  Fundamentally your right, the user shouldn't have to care, it should just work, but it may take a while to get there. Experts readers, did I screw up?  Let me know. 11:55:51 PM     IM Beats Email in Smackdown The Shifted Librarian writes: Right now there's a poll on the Yahooligans site that asks what do you use more often? Results since August 26: [The Shifted Librarian] How long until we all start getting IM viruses? 11:29:38 PM     The LATCH is loose My friend Ryan Baker responded to yesterdays post about LATCH which stands for: Location Alphabetical Time Category Hierarchy and pro-port to be the five ways of organizing information.   Ryan pointed out several limitations with LATCH including the fact that data may be intentionally randomized.  He writes: "I personally think LATCH is a useful idea for designers but that the creator (which wasn't Swineheart, it was Wurman) overstates its universality. It's not great for organizing statistical information, and in fact his categories (LATCH) are special cases of statistical categories. Categorical: unordered items which can repeat Ordinal: ordered items which can repeat [Nominal: unordered items which can't repeat. Superset of Categorical.] [Quantitative: ordered items which can repeat and have a defined spacing.         Subset of ordinal.] Location is Categorical. Category is Categorical. Hierarchy is Ordinal. Time and Alphabetical are Quantitative. (which means they're Ordinal) By having the general categories 'Category and Hierarchy', Wurman does catch everything; but he hides the fact that he has two overarching categories and three specific ones: putting apples and oranges together. (at last!) This doesn't mean LATCH isn't useful. Location, Alphabetical, and Time are clearly special categories for humans. Neh?"   In response to my post on social capital and weblogs Ryan also pointed out the excellent essay by Phil Agre on how to establish a reputation called "Networking on the Network."  Thanks Ryan, I have seen it, but forgot to link it in. Update: As I was finishing up annotating Ryan's comments I went back to Rob's original post and saw that a lively debating on the topic was progress between Rob Adams,  Jeffery David, and Vishi Gondi. Some observations so far:   The LATCH concept was originally presented in Information Anxiety 2 by Richard Saul Wurman, David Sume, and Loring Leifer.  There's been talk about networks, hierarchy, trees, graphs, and topology as well as further discussion about the role of randomness.     11:25:54 PM     Wearable Envy My friend Kerry Bodine who runs Styleborg, the excellent blog on wearable computing, is talking about class envy: "As another semester begins, I'm reminded that CMU really doesn't have any great classes for people interested in exploring interface and interaction design for wearable computers. Two classes I'd love to take: 1) Columbia's User Interfaces for Mobile and Wearable Computing. Class topics include input devices, applications, context awareness, form and function, and wearability. Students give presentations on displays, body-worn sensors, assistive interfaces, collaboration, privacy/social issues, and augmented reality. 2) Ivrea's Designing for The Body in Context. Students explore the functional/cultural/personal value of items kept on or near the body -- everything from wedding rings and eyeglasses to pens and cell phones. They then go through a series of exercises that culminate in the design of a new wearable device. Along the way they sketch, create storyboards, research cellular technology, and create a video. Not bad for four weeks! The class site currently links to many completed exercises and final projects from this year's students and has an amazingly extensive list of references and resources. I could easily get lost for hours. Sigh." [styleborg]   10:42:33 PM     © Copyright 2003 Micah Alpern.

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