Glue

Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 15:49:46 -0500 From: rocky-horror.media.mit.edu!jsheena@plethora.media.mit.edu (Jonathan A. Sheena) To: walter@media-lab.media.mit.edu, lacsap@media-lab.media.mit.edu Subject: editor Ok ... here's what we've got so far, plus a few questions/suggestions at the end: There will exist a number of entities that the editor boiler-plate will glue together. Editor will do all the news retreival work for the front end programs. So Editor, given a user and which front end, will return a set of articles. These articles are then arranged and organized by the Organizer. Entities: Betty: actual news Doppelganger: User information Topic Lists divided (currently) into 3 parts: World topics (possibly subdivided into community topics) Personal topics: individual topic lists (per person) with private and public sections. Dynamic topics: topics that are upkept dynamically and respond to "timeliness" type changes i.e. time of day, location of person, anything new going, etc... stuff that wouldn't be covered by the other, more static. topic lists These lists obviously need to be upkept (by some third party) Front End: e-paper, f-papaer, ps-paper, 9600 baud, etc. Each FE will need to have their own appropriateness filters that knows about the kind of news it wants. Editor: checks with doppel on each topic, and submits actual betty requests, sorting responses, and filtering through FE specific filters.~1 Organizer: Given actual articles, and proposed categories divides news up accordingly. <blount's thesis?> Accounts: Bookkeeping info. Includes (at least) betty id's articles read by each person, and through what FE. (a BETTY EXPIRE script should trigger an accounts expire script that tosses away obsolete ids from the accounts.) Flow: ===== Editor reads topic Submits topic for "yea" or "nay" to doppel wieghs interest and appropriateness given where, when, how, why ... of situation for each "yea" performs actual betty request filters returned article list through FE filter i.e. no just voice for "radio", no video for e-paper. (easy filter) sorts returned article list ~2 passes final articles and sections~3 to Oganizer~4 finished package is now ready for FE. ---------------------------------------------------------------- ~1: does doppel need knowledge of the different fe's? Or, rather, the FE, does some setup of doppel giving it where when why how info that influences the "yea"s and "nay"s. I like this idea. ~2: what does betty return? For sorting, obviously more than the article id is necessary. Sort on what? need heuristics for determining importance. ~3: where does sectioning come from? could come from topic divisions from original lists, then when getting topics from the lists, editor needs to keep track of what section that topic belings in. ~4: organizer is covered in blount's thesis? right now, just a 1:1 mapping.