You can imagine how the pieces might work in other types of interfaces. We started with a spatial canvas that hosted computational elements. More on this in a lab note soon The essay is out now; it’s a thorough read discussing what we did and why. Enjoy. www.inkandswitch.com/embark/
Embark proposes one such way: separate the data, functions, and interfaces users need. Then let users recombine these pieces for their own needs and context. Embark puts these pieces into an outliner, which has familiar mechanics for grouping, hiding, etc.
Update: Making great progress on this; will be in testing soon. Working on documentation (which will run in-system as an app itself, with your live items populating in the docs' code examples!), and getting the API polished.
So I've been building it to include some creature comforts, and to make it easy for folks to introduce 1) other providers, and 2) their own "app"-like interfaces which they can load up on demand. It's a fair bit of work, so stay tuned!
...an "itemized playground" — just the scaffold of providers + item store — for other developers to have, in which they can create their own ideal personal software. It'd be an interesting experiment to see what's possible when people have access to an itemized environment.
One (almost) example: as you're navigating through (previously) non-sequential things, they end up in a lineage visualized on the periphery, leading to the thing you're currently focused on.
Ah nice. Is it one note per URL?
(...) and I’ll always know how to get to it. I think another reason is that it’s a bit of a delightful brain breaker. “Wow, I’ve never thought about what’s on the back of a webpage or window before. Now I know: my own notes!”
I think in part it’s that this seems highly un-mysterious & easily retrievable. Lacking universal expectations for how things might be attached and retrieved together in the spatial desktop environment, this is very clear: my note is on the back of the webpage. It won’t get lost, (...)
A gestural environment for the OS of the future: https://alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes/037/