Re: New release of bookmark patch

[Peter Harvey <pah06 uow edu au>]

On Mon, 2004-07-19 at 04:57, Beartooth wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Jul 2004, Peter Harvey wrote:
> 
> > What I've tried to capture with my bookmarks patch is a way of 
> > organising bookmarks automatically using some of the ideas of FCA 
> > (formal concept analysis). It relies solely on the information provided 
> > in the groupings of bookmarks (basically, what topics each bookmark is 
> > associated with).
> 
>  	Sounds interesting. Is there a good intro for oafish dolts? (I 
> took a degree in math once -- long ago & far away ...)
> 

I'll have to admit I don't actually study FCA myself (I do constraint
programming research). The main idea behind FCA as it was presented to
me, and as I have used it in Epiphany, is that a 'concept' can be
described by a set of attributes (eg. breathes, has four legs, has
teeth, barks) AND by a set of objects (eg. Fido, Lassie and Snoopy).

It is possible for a concept to be a sub-concept of another concept (in
which case it has a longer list of attributes, and a smaller set of
examples). From this we can derive a kind of hierarchy of concepts
(though it isn't restricted to being a tree).

http://www.upriss.org.uk/fca/fca.html has links to better intros.

Now, when it comes to Epiphany's bookmark system, I applied FCA in the
following way. We know that each bookmark (object) has a set of
attributes (topics). Thus, a 'concept' is roughly a collection of topics
AND the set of all bookmarks which have those topics. My bookmarks patch
tries to arrange bookmarks according to 'concepts', with 'sub-concepts'
becoming submenus or subdivisions.

You might ask why I can use subdivisions sometimes when constructing the
bookmarks menu. Notice that in FCA a concept can often be defined by a
set of attributes OR by a set of objects. Given a set of objects, I can
often find the common set of attributes, and derive a formal concept.
Similarly, given a set of attributes I can often find a set of objects
which have those attributes.

When constructing a menu in Epiphany I feel it is sufficient to group
bookmarks together in subdivisions because a user can see what the
'concept' of those bookmarks by association, even though I haven't
provided the topic name.

http://www.dsl.uow.edu.au/~harvey/code_epiphany.shtml is a little out of
date, but has examples and screenshots of how the menus end up arranged
by my patch.

>  	I expressed it badly. I don't mean appearance per se, but 
> arrangement -- which ones go into which places. I'm not sure whether it's 
> the same; I don't want an alphabetic arrangement, though, but one where I 
> can work my way down, without knowing names till I see them, from the 
> outermost layer of hierarchy, if that's an appropriate concept. So for 
> instance I want a grouping of miscellaneous linux pages; one devoted to 
> particular distros; ones inside/below that for Fedora and YellowDog; ones 
> inside/below each of those for software, and on to browsers, etc.

Only thing I can say here is that the order in which the groupings are
presented is out of your control. The only thing within your control is
the groupings of bookmarks. From your description of the bookmarks, I
think my patch would generate a menu looking something like this:

Bookmarks
 |
 +-Linux
   |
   +-Fedora (a submenu)
   +-Yellowdog (a submenu)
   +----------
   | (miscellaneous Linux stuff goes here)
   +----------

The following menus would never happen:

Bookmarks
 |
 +-Linux
   |
   +-Yellowdog (a submenu)
   +----------
   | (miscellaneous Linux stuff goes here)
   +----------
   +-Fedora (a submenu)

Bookmarks
 |
 +-Linux
   |
   +-Yellowdog (a submenu)
   +-Fedora (a submenu)
   +----------
   | (miscellaneous Linux stuff goes here)
   +----------

So, as you can see, the exact location of bookmarks and submenus is out
of your control. You are still forced to hve an alphabetic arrangement
within menus (to the extent that it doesn't interfere with the groupings
of bookmarks).

>  	Marginalium: one old trick for arranging any personal info 
> collection is to use mnemonics meant to amuse -- i.e., amuse the 
> individual making and using the system, whether or not any of them amuses 
> anyone else. I use that a lot, and suspect others do. Dumb example: filing 
> certain kinds of info about a disliked boss under a private and derisive 
> nickname for that boss, or an anagram or acronym of such a nickname.

Well, this is more a choice of topic name than anything. But you will
have a problem that when you do go to add a bookmark *every* topic name
you have created will appear in the list. If you create a topic name
just for your boss, then every time you add a bookmark you will be
offered that topic as an option.

-- 
Peter Harvey <pah06 uow edu au>
SITACS, University of Wollongong