Microsoft Comic Chat - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat <comment><USER2> I reimplemented the comic-drawing algorithm in Ruby almost 15 years ago because I wanted to make my own daily comic based on our IRC chats. It turned out that I wasn't as funny as I thought.

Source and artwork is available here: [https://github.com/statico/spittoon](https://github.com/statico/spittoon)

<comment><USER3> I really like the aesthetics, nicely done!

Also the example comic IS funny ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are so many wild and wonderful things that came out of 90s Microsoft.

One favourite of mine is Microsoft Music Producer, I think it was called. You could select genres, styles, tempo and a band then it would 'compose' mid files. I used them to generate royalty-free music for silly animations.

Sadly even any mention of this is very hard to find online now. I recall there being an old website where one could download it along with extra music styles; that can be found here: [https://web.archive.org/web/20070222062521/http://www.musicm...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070222062521/http://www.musicmachines.net/faqmp.htm)

Edit: Changed the name to 'Microsoft Music Producer', as has been kindly identified below.

<comment><USER5> Microsoft Music Producer:

[http://ents-bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=167&t=2346](http://ents- bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=167&t=2346)

<comment><USER4> That's the one.

I searched the web archive and found the website I had in mind above. It has plenty of info on MMP, as well as downloads of extra music styles.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070222062521/http://www.musicm...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070222062521/http://www.musicmachines.net/faqmp.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you'd like to play around with it you can still find downloads by Goolging "mschat25.exe"

Here is a proxy script that will allow you to connect to a modern IRC server: [https://gist.github.com/richardg867/bb19ca2b03545f71ae15](https://gist.github.com/richardg867/bb19ca2b03545f71ae15)

Edit: another fun read was the methods for getting third party IRC clients to connect to MSN's IRC servers directly: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Chat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Chat)

<comment><USER7> Here you are, straight from Microsoft's website, as I downloaded it back in 96 or whatever:

[https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmPhBJ9Dg91wH9NUiF4dKVewazL6g6c...](https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmPhBJ9Dg91wH9NUiF4dKVewazL6g6cJD2Sxv2PveU2HeL)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We were still using this for classified chat in the Navy like 5 years ago. We didn't use the comic feature, just the normal IRC client. Eventually we followed other services and went to mIRC before the .gov paid some software company a ridiculous amount of money to make a very simple Java-based IRC client called Mako. It was like a software project you would do in an intermediate Java class, no bells and whistles. Ridiculous the amount of money available to SWEs who can navigate the contracting process.

<comment><USER9> Not all ships moved to Mako! I learned the very hard way what "slap" in mIRC means in a large strike group chat!

<comment><USER10> Appropriate in a Navy setting of course. Who doesn't keep a large trout around for slapping?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At some point Microsoft chat allowed sending executable files. This was also around the same time backorifice was very popular. This was also around the same time most people were connecting via dialup that was bought in packs of 30 hours. Some people had unlimited time, and aparently more than one person could be using the same account at the same time.

Somehow all this events combined made all the internet kids in my neighbourhood get the same court letter with a huge internet bill one year later.

<comment><USER12> Looking back, the early days of our internet use were so weird.

We had a dial-up connection and a computer well before anyone else in our county/tri-county area in the mid-west. We also had a home line that was a party line.

All the old ladies in our small (<50) town were pissed that anytime they picked the phone up, they heard that robotic screeching noise. We were pissed that we kept getting booted every fifteen seconds.

Weird times. Why did the company even offer internet connections to a party line? What an odd thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> mention of ms comic chat seems somehow incomplete without reference to JerkCity aka BoneQuest, a decades-long webcomic composed using it [https://www.bonequest.com/search/?q=%23linux](https://www.bonequest.com/search/?q=%23linux)

<comment><USER14> What am I missing... these all seem like non-sequiters.

<comment><USER15> You need to be versed in the deep lore to understand it, basically.

<comment><USER16> It looks like it's just a bunch of dick jokes, but if you look deeper, you realize that it's seriously _so many_ dick jokes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Jim Woodring was such an odd, but wonderful, choice of artist for this project. I thought his surreal style worked so well as a visualization of what at the time was newly called "cyberspace". This could have been a totally flavorless corporate thing instead.

<comment><USER18> You put it perfectly! I strongly agree and came here to say what you and ncmncm said first. He's one of my favorite and most surrealistic comic artists!

His web site is currently broken but it usually works, and has lots of awesome stuff on it. I've let him know, so I hope it will be back soon.

[http://jimwoodring.com/](http://jimwoodring.com/) (EDIT: [http://www.jimwoodring.com/](http://www.jimwoodring.com/) )

But in the meantime:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Woodring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Woodring)

...Oh wait, on second try: SOME variations of the url work and some don't:

[http://jimwoodring.com/](http://jimwoodring.com/) and [https://jimwoodring.com/](https://jimwoodring.com/) : broken with wordpress error messages

[http://www.jimwoodring.com/](http://www.jimwoodring.com/) \- works perfectly but just shows "jimwoodring.com" in the URL, but copying and pasting it gets [http://www.jimwoodring.com/](http://www.jimwoodring.com/) \-- is this a Chrome thing??!

[https://www.jimwoodring.com/](https://www.jimwoodring.com/) \- works halfway, you get the text without the pictures, which is no fun.

<comment><USER19> Chrome has hidden "www" in the address bar for a long time, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tech-historian Here's a list of 20+ discontinued Microsoft products in the realm of communications. Comic chat is on the list.

[https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued- micros...](https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-microsoft- communications-software)

<comment><USER20> Interesting list, just learned about OE Classic (Outlook Express remake). Too bad it seems that it is the only alternative to the discontinued software in that list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The longest running web comic on the Internet called "Jerk City / Bonequest" uses Microsoft Comic Chat to render

It is 20 years old this year, and has never missed a day.

[https://www.bonequest.com/7541](https://www.bonequest.com/7541)

(May not be SFW, depending on where you work)

<comment><USER22> I wish I had forgotten about this. Hopefully this webcomic's persistence is actually due to it being a PERL script riffing on dadjokes.txt and whatever reddit lol monkee cheese stuff from 2012.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For anyone interested in the CarTalk collab, I found a video here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GywCgivT_no](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GywCgivT_no)

</comment><comment><USER24> I remember Comic Chat well. It was almost universally hated because many users would connect to normal IRC servers and Comic Chat sent it's own code (to describe the character expressions etc) which would flood the channel.

Comic Chat was even less popular online than mIRC users who posted coloured messages.

Even at the time I felt it was a great idea if only it played nicer with regular IRC networks+. Ironically it's one of the few occasions when Microsoft supported an open protocol by default when actually a propitiatory network might have made more sense.

\+ actually that's possibly a lie because at that time I was writing my own IRC clients and bots and was well into the "l33t g33k" culture. So I might have hated Comic Chat just because of MS prejudices

<comment><USER25> I loved Comic Chat because I was 12 years old. I couldn't figure out what "lol" meant and it was really funny seeing the characters saying it with just a blank facial expression lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This really takes me back. Microsoft Comic Chat, for better or worse, was essentially my intro into the internet. I must've been maybe 10 when I started talking on it, and after they wound it down I switched to MSN Chat, and then quickly onto IRC itself. It was a certainly innovative, but maybe its ability to get kids involved in the internet (at a time it was sort of the wild west) contributed to it going away.

</comment><comment><USER27> Shades of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_(computer_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_\(computer_program\))

<comment><USER28> Reminds me a little of Bob too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Used to love MS comic chat back in the day. A lot of fun times on there.

MMOs kind of took over from it, Ragnarok Online being the main one.

</comment><comment><USER30> I loved this - it was a wonderful hybrid of direct chat with simplistic graphical representation of how people would express themselves in chat before the existence of graphical emoticons.

It would be interesting to create something like this for the MUD experience.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but words sometimes can be worth a thousand mental pictures.

</comment><comment><USER31> I sometimes feel sad because I think of Comic Chat as that dreadful thing that vomited nonsense into IRC channels. But my kids would absolutely love this, and tech should always have space for playfulness.

</comment><comment><USER32> Jim Woodring deserves way, way more attention from geeks than he gets.

<comment><USER33> Agreed. The fact that they chose his style to incorporate into the UI is incredible... I wonder what artist would be his analog if this was created today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nobody puts Comic Sans in a corner!

It looks so beautiful in rounded speech bubbles. ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28A9Jgo92GQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28A9Jgo92GQ)

[https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/nobody-puts- ba...](https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/nobody-puts-baby-in-the- corner)

</comment><comment><USER34> Someone should make a /comic command for Slack which turns the last N messages into a comic.

<comment><USER35> There are some rather clever Discord bots with this capability and I relish in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's an interesting video here with David (DJ) Kurlander, the creator of Microsoft comic chat [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19078993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19078993)

</comment><comment><USER37> Even if you don't connect to the IRC network, even under Windows 10 MCC can still serve with minimal issues as a comic strip generator. That means that yes, you too can have your "own" Jerkcity if you want to.

</comment><comment><USER38> That article desperately needs better screenshots!

</comment><comment><USER39> maybe the inspiration for [https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/rage/](https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/rage/) =P

</comment><comment><USER40> Comic Chat, Dogz, the 3.1 games .... Those were the days.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is how I found out about IRC.

</comment><comment><USER42> # Appears as XENO.

</comment><comment><USER43> And now we have been blessed with VR chat more than 20 years later.

<comment><USER44> They had that too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_V- Chat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_V-Chat)

<comment><USER45> I remember those late 90s VR chat apps. None of them figured out the controls, usually opting for some sort of awkward three knob style navigation widgets. Interface was via browser widget so it barely worked on every platform. Everybody wanted to make Neuromancer's Other Plane, but the tech wasn't even close to ready.</comment></comment></comment>


The Value of the Designer Who Codes - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/garry-tan/the-great-value-of-the-designer-who-codes.html

<comment><USER2> "Mark Zuckerberg's design team is his imperial guard. They work closer to him than any other discipline in the company"

Interesting... as I don't rate fb's design at all...</comment>


That 1970s Feeling - <AUTHOR> https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/next-global-recession-hits-the-supply-side-by-kenneth-rogoff-2020-03 <comment><USER2> Funny, I was just thinking yesterday "I wonder if what's happening in this cycle will get its own word when we look back on it from some distance, like 'stagflation'"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation)

<comment><USER3> Stock market melt-up is one I've heard.

<comment><USER4> The "central bankers' bubble" is another one I've heard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how a Just In Time world will impact a "supply side" shock. Normally I'm a bit of a critic of it for making it too easy to cut all the margin out of the supply chain, but once a normal situation resumes and random chunks of the world aren't under quarantine, I wonder if there wouldn't be a radically different response to a supply shock. While there are still some limitations on how fast things can move around (container ships, for instance, introduce certain unavoidable latency), the logistics world of 2020 is very different from the logistics world of 1970. The flow of supply and demand indicators through the economy of 2020 isn't going to be like 1970.

(Note I'm not saying this will be no problem, or that it is certain disaster; I'm wondering about how it will be different in any manner or direction.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Author of this doesn't know how to use Excel and published incorrect results which were used as austerity justification by the politically motivated: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt#Metho...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt#Methodological_flaws)

<comment><USER7> That was quite an interesting read... I was astonished by how awful their response to the criticism was: [https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/reinhart- rogoff...](https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/reinhart-rogoff- continued/)

Personally, that just killed his credibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was waiting to read more about "how the next global recession may be unlike the last two" and then... didn't find much actual detail beyond "prices could go up a lot"? E.g., prices on _what_ precisely, or other information that would be useful if anyone's wanting to prepare.

The "get rid of the tarrifs with China" conclusion also feels very disconnected from the rest, since if the supply chain could be broken and there's nothing from China to buy, the tarrifs are the least of anyone's worries?</comment>


Ask HN: What is your side hustle? How much money does it make you? - <AUTHOR> Just curious and wanting to learn how you started and scaled. <comment><USER7> Trading cryptocurrency - in stock markets charting, Elliot wave don't really work as well (or not easy to use), you're trading against hyper experienced investors. In Bitcoin, ethereum, there is broad participation by less experienced investors and speculators, and there is much more emotions in the chart. It makes technical analysis very easy, because the patterns are obvious, easy to spot, much less likely to be manufactured. The transaction fees are also low allowing small positions. So when I see an opportunity I just put $500. Next thing you know I'm up $200 and I cash it out. One more thing is if I'm ever wrong, cryptocurrency is in a bull market, and the position would always get rescued as long as I am patient. Of course I do have discipline and do cut my losses. Transaction costs is cheap, and opportunities are frequent, so it's easy emotionally to do it. I have a few grand this year which is nice.

I do have a lot of money in stocks and with those I don't do nearly as well but clearly I learned enough to make a quid or two in crypto markets.

<comment><USER8> Hello meric, where can I learn to trade cryptocurrency? Do you have any advices for learning?

<comment><USER9> Hello, I don't trade crypto and I never will.

I'll give you one tip.

Look at a graph of bitcoin, litecoin etc. that extends past the last bubble and collapse and ask yourself if you are willing to eat those kinds of losses if they occur again.

[https://99bitcoins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bitcoin- ma...](https://99bitcoins.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/bitcoin-market-value- chart.png)

<comment><USER10> Looks like your link is broken due to some hotlink prevention stuff. :(

<comment><USER9> That's a shame. Good news is that any graph of bitcoin's historical price over the last 6 years will serve just as well :)

<comment><USER7> Yes, if the purpose is to make money as opposed to learning or for fun, I agree it's better to ride the trend. :)

<comment><USER9> > I agree it's better to ride the trend. :)

I think you haven't looked at a 6 year graph if you think the 'trend' is only ever going up. The point of my post was to highlight the risk of (another) crash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I flip stuff on ebay and/or craigslist (or the german equivalent). I want to experiment a little bit with retail arbitrage on amazon fba too.

It is really easy to get started (just sell stuff that you can find in your house and don't need anymore) and I really like this treasure hunt feeling when entering a thrift store or looking for clearance.

made me so far around 300€ in less than 30 days and still have inventory left for about 150€. and I'm still learning what might sell and what not.

<comment><USER12> >It is really easy to get started (just sell stuff that you can find in your house and don't need anymore) and I really like this treasure hunt feeling when entering a thrift store or looking for clearance.

Interesting. What is the process for getting started and then doing it? Can you provide some links? And by flip I suppose you mean buy and then sell?

<comment><USER11> Well I just looked around in my house for stuff I haven't touched for 3 months or so. I just looked it up on ebay and craigslist and posted it there. that was how I did my first 300€ bucks now. And then for flipping (buying and reselling higher), look for thrift stores, garage sales, yard sales and so on. If you want to know what to buy look for some youtube channels e.g.: Ralliroots, 10konthebay, rockstarflipper

Just one tip for eBay: don't do auctions. You will usually get low-balled. research the market price and price the item accordingly.

<comment><USER12> Interesting, thanks for the tips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I do freelance coding work in my spare time and try and combine it with some open source stuff too as a way of boosting my web presence. I recently made £500 in a month doing work in my spare time, not a huge amount but add on a full time job, it's nice to have the extra income.

Link to my latest project - [https://github.com/DrRoach/DynamicImage](https://github.com/DrRoach/DynamicImage) (It's a dynamic image generation library if you're interested)

<comment><USER14> Nice work Ryan - This is how I started too! Keep going my friend!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I pay people to ghostwrite books for me. I then list them on Amazon and market them. I started 2 years ago and have been putting out about 1 book/mo.

Last month I made ~$4.5k

<comment><USER16> Not expecting you to share one of the books with me, but I was looking to get into this as well. I am assuming they are small, niche-specific books.

Do you perform all of the keyword research ahead of time (before finding your writer), and build out an index/table of contents so that every chapter in the book is planned ahead of time, or do you leave all of the research, chapter creation, and writing for the ghostwriter?

<comment><USER15> Much of it depends on what I am looking to publish. I mostly focus on popular romance niches.

For instance I publish a lot of LGBT erotica/romances. I write up about 1-2 paragraphs of what I want the story to be and pass it to the ghostwriter. I have a few different pen names and each stick with one genre. Example: "Mary Sue" _only_ publishes BDSM Gay Romances. That way if you find one of my books and like gay bdsm romance, you're more likely to buy the others or subscribe to learn when new books come out.

I have a simple wordpress site for each author with an email list. I provide 1 book free for signing up.

I've used the same ghostwriting service for ~2 years so they're pretty consistent.

I'm currently working on a nonfiction politics book. I basically provided a word doc of research (news articles/etc), and a theme. I only specified 2 chapters and a word count. The other chapters are up to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My experience is that hardest part is marketing.

Yesterday I have launched [https://submit-sitemap.com](https://submit- sitemap.com) and I have shared link to it on various platforms. How much traffic I got:

\- reddit - side project - <USER2>

\- hacker news - 11 (+2 from different aggregators)

\- I have added link into 2 communities on Google+ with around 200k people - <USER4>

\- producthunt - <USER4>

\- Facebook where I have shared it in group with 5k people - <USER5>

\- StumbleUpon - <USER6>

And I think that I can subtract 1 from these numbers since I have clicked on them myself to test if those links works. :)

<comment><USER17> Explanation for StumbleUpon is, that I am sending X-Frame-Options DENY, so it never loads there. This explains no traffic from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://statetable.com](https://statetable.com)

~ $30/month from donations covers my Digital Ocean bill for the month.

I'm also trying to get some sales & affiliate revenue going with athletic wear designs on Zazzle. Starting with a niche to get rolling then probably expanding to more general designs. The biggest problem I've hit so far is their fulfillment times & prices.

<comment><USER19> Any revenue from the ad?

<comment><USER18> After 6 or 7 years I think I finally had enough for Google to drop a direct deposit in my account. That's, what, $100?

It's pretty unobtrusive up in the corner there. I'm sure it suffers from banner blindness. But I don't want to load the page up with ads. It's a tool for other devs, not really a revenue source. But the donations are nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Making various things, explaining various misconceptions, playing with blockchains.

Makes me zero money and some knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER21> NL holdem live only. This month I'm at about +$80 an hour.

<comment><USER22> Stakes? Rough location?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> [https://oppslist.com/subscribe](https://oppslist.com/subscribe)

Started charging this month.

~ $40 / mo

</comment><comment><USER24> Trading forex CFDs (contract for difference), gold, oil, grain futures.

</comment><comment> le-mark A rental property, earns about $400 a month in principal paid down.

</comment><comment><USER25> algo trading and I am pretty happy with the profits...

<comment><USER26> Thanks for filling out your profile! Helped give some background.

<comment><USER25> No problemo, let me know if you have any questions...

<comment><USER26> No questions, algo trading is not something I want to get into. But it was interesting to read about your approach

<comment><USER25> cool!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm curious as to why you call it a "side hustle"?

Is the term "hustle" not extremely negative to you?

Merriam-Webster defines "hustle" as to push or shove someone in a rude way.

Urban Dictionary says "Anythin you need to do to make money... be it sellin cars, drugs, ya body. If you makin money, you hustlin."

Obviously, you don't seem to think that the word "hustle" has negative connotations, so I'm wondering how you came to that view?

<comment> le-mark I hired some movers once, these guys really 'hustled'; they moved quickly and worked efficiently. You can say this of a sports team as well. It is a colloquialism with good and bad connotations. Someone who has hustles can be seen as getting things done. The negative is a 'hustler' someone who gambles on games of skill pretending they're worse than they are to draw people in[1] ie crooks or con artists.

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054997/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054997/)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Gingko, a tree-document editor - <AUTHOR> https://gingkoapp.com/p/future-of-text <comment><USER3> Far from identical, but along similar lines: [http://treesheets.com/](http://treesheets.com/)

"It's like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for complex data because it's hierarchical. It's like a mind mapper, but more organized and compact. It's like an outliner, but in more than one dimension. It's like a text editor, but with structure. "

You can nest spreadsheet-like cells within cells within cells within cells.. and zoom in and out between the various levels of nesting.

For Windows and Ubuntu, with a beta for Mac OS X available.

<comment><USER4> seems nice, but I have a question: can it import - export to other formats? Latex, markdown, csv ....

<comment><USER3> You can export/import views as XML or CSV. The generated XML is UTF-8 encoded and it only has three element types in total for the cells and rows so the structure of the file isn't complicated at all.

<comment><USER5> Treesheets is an awesome way of structuring ideas and materials. As Matti said, the XML output from TreeSheets is easy to parse and convert for other uses. Basic HTML export is also provided as a simple means of sharing sheet data. Since TreeSheets is an open source project - it is possible to extend these areas of functionality to meet your own workflow needs and the code is easy to follow and fun to work with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm certainly drawn to the idea and am inclined positively towards it. I'm even willing to overlook the ridiculous hubris of "This new medium will be the way most text is read and written in the future."

However, there are many confusing things to me as a person who arrived at the site through HN. Since one of the developers is promoting the "app" here, it might be useful to hear from him on these points:

1\. Is this an input format or is it a publication format, or is it a viewer? Does it rely on a time-tested plaintext markup format like LaTeX or markdown? Perhaps it is a HTML viewer for a LaTeX markup document with special structure, rather than an actual typset web publication format.

2\. What is the conceptual structure of the document system? Giving me a screenshot does not show me anything about the way you are conceptualizing your document. Is there a separation of content and output, output and viewer?

3\. Is any part of this open source? Are you incorporating any other major technologies which have already been developed?

I apologize if any of the above seems harsh, but this is an important topic and I have become slightly tired of seeing flashy presentations about poorly- thought out "revolutionary" new document formats/tools/whatnot.

<comment><AUTHOR> The hubris of the statement is not lost on me, but what should a founder be but delusional and optimistic :)

1\. It's both a viewer and a word processor. It relies on Markdown (and LaTeX through extensions). We export to Md, but will be adding more import/export options in the future. We hope to create a publication standard for it.

2\. The structure of the document is an "outline of index cards". Each card can have one or more children. Source content (in markdown) is edited by toggling edit mode on that card.

3\. Yes, we are extracting parts of this as open-source. The rest remains proprietary (for now, at least).

> I apologize if any of the above seems harsh

No need to apologize. Thoughtful criticism is what we need.

Thanks!

<comment><USER7> > It relies on Markdown (and LaTeX through extensions). We export to Md, but > will be adding more import/export options in the future. We hope to create a > publication standard for it.

Do we need a new standard for structured documents? Would a
 not be sufficient?

<comment><AUTHOR> For three levels deep, no we don't need a new standard. Larger trees, linked together will probably need something new.

<comment><USER8> Why does it matter how many levels there are?

<comment><USER9> He's probably talking about many-to-many relationships that he has planned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hopefully this criticism is helpful.

I find this really hard to read, sorry.

I can't just scroll through or scan read, and I'm met with a variety of different things all at once. Everything's always visible, so I don't know what I'm looking at. I've scrolled down on the lowest level, and read a bit but have no understanding of the context. Clicking on it makes me realise where I am but I've skipped over a load of stuff in the middle so I'm scrolling back up that to find where I left off... I think this is a visual thing though rather than a major issue with the _idea_. Fiddling a bit I've only just found that not every node has children, but this this is only indicated by nothing happening (which is identical to something that should happen but doesn't)

This is really a different formatter for the same structure of text we've already been using, so the hyperbole is a bit of a turnoff for me.

        \section{some title}

        Explanatory text

        \subsection{subsection title}

        Sub text

etc.

Or

heading

Text

heading 2

Why do we need something new? What's being added? What couldn't I do before that's now possible? These are the things I want to know when you tell me you've got a new hierarchical document. Can I already read these well with a screen-reader? The ordering in the source would (I think) read each column individually, which wouldn't make sense. Try loading your viewer without CSS. Imagine a screenreader hitting the massive block of JSON at the bottom of the page. Why is that in the body?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, the UI needs improvement. No one feels the gaps more than I do. But they say, "launch before you're ready!" ;)

For one thing, scrolling on its own (with mouse scroll), doesn't automatically highlight whichever card is now centered. So it breaks the flow. Clicking, or scrolling with keyboard are the only way right now to keep the context clear.

> the hyperbole is a bit of a turnoff for me.

I know, it's a big claim, and I don't expect anyone else to believe it. I thought about not including it, but it's honestly what I believe. Delusional founder? Check.

> This is really a different formatter for the same structure of text we've > already been using

That's true, more or less. Table of contents, chapter & subsection breaks, etc, are all attempts to make the structure clearer.

However, once we go beyond 3 levels deep, this has significant advantages.

One can get an overview of a text by reading column 1, but can drill deeper and deeper into specific sections, and even into other trees that are embedded (or "transcluded") into this one. We could have all of physics, or comp-sci, in one tree, and the reader will always be able to drill in for more, or zoom out for overview.

> Why do we need something new? What's being added? What couldn't I do before > that's now possible?

There are great benefits for _writing_ this way, for one. Rearranging entire sections or subsections is just a drag and drop. Working collaboratively is also easier, because each person can focus on their particular strengths

> Hopefully this criticism is helpful.

It is, thank you. All criticism forces us to reevaluate our approach, again and again.

<comment><USER7> > agree, the UI needs improvement. No one feels the gaps more than I do. But > they say, "launch before you're ready!" ;)

Oh I fully agree, I'm also sure that things I don't like are points of joy for others :) Launching like this is important, it helps you focus on things that people find rather than things you _think_ they'll find.

> For one thing, scrolling on its own (with mouse scroll), doesn't > automatically highlight whichever card is now centered. So it breaks the > flow.

Yeah, I was going to try and suggest something but I'm not sure what'd be better (I make terrible UIs). The problem is the alternative is while you're scrolling automatically making other columns move which could be jarring. Your approach might be better and I might be 'using it wrong' because I'm trying to read it like a normal doc.

> That's true, more or less. Table of contents, chapter & subsection breaks, > etc, are all attempts to make the structure clearer.

But you have the same structure, internally. That was rather my point. It's an editor and a viewer, not a new structure, which is why I would heavily suggest you use standards rather than writing your own.

The structure is this

        Section := Title, Content | Title, Content, [Section]

This is covered by already existing standards, which will play nice with accessibility devices too. If I was a company, I could be held liable if I release something which is unusable to the blind because of the way I'd mixed the content.

> We could have all of physics, or comp-sci, in one tree, and the reader will > always be able to drill in for more, or zoom out for overview.

I hate to be a downer on this, but a tree won't describe these things well, there isn't an exact hierarchy. So you improve it incrementally like so:

* Make it a DAG

* Realise there can be cyclic references, make it a graph

* See that the graph looks like trees with links but with links in between them

* Represent it as a series of distinct trees with links and anchor points

* Make it lazy loading

* Define a way of allowing people to link between different trees stored anywhere

* Realise that's the internet

While that's a bit of an annoying thing to say, it's actually nice :) Lots of stuff that'd be a great boon _already exists_. If you can use existing HTML standards then you get lots of functionality for free.

> Working collaboratively is also easier, because each person can focus on > their particular strengths

Yes, it will really help this, having embeddable nested trees works wonderfully, it's why latex is nice for collaborative work. Although I'd like the nesting to be arbitrary (maybe there's a way of doing this, but I don't think so). It's also why the web works so well.

What I'd suggest is this:

* Use HTML sections.

* Write a bit of js to load in specific nodes from other documents lazily. The semantics for linking already exist.

* Keep the sexy visuals :)

You'll have properly marked up, parseable documents. They'll link together or be embeddable (depending only on the renderer, the semantics are the same) and you can represent any graph with it, but still have a focus on trees, and render graphs as trees. You'll get more and have to build less yourself.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure why, but I can't edit this reply, but here's a link to a simple gist that shows a simple inclusion technique that keeps the semantics and degrades nicely if you don't have JS (you're left with anchored links).

[https://gist.github.com/IanCal/6398286](https://gist.github.com/IanCal/6398286)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> First of all, congratulation for pulling off a new and experimental user interface!

However, I believe, the idea that tree- or graph-like structuring of text is beneficial for reading and writing text in general, comes close to the graphical programming fallacy. Eventually, the spatial make-up fails because of the following three reasons:

(1) The manual difficulty of navigation and the count of subconscious visual cues necessary for retrieving a passage increase exponentionally as the content grows, (2) altough thoughts do seem to come in hierarchical structures, we usually don't think of text, code, stories, memories nor knowledge as visual graphs and (3) textual hints for emphasizing and linking text are more efficient and flexible than visual hints.

At first glance, Wikipedia seems like an affirmative example for graph-like structured text, but that structure is usually not used for primarily intended navigation. The articles are actually expected to be self-contained for readers with only a fair amount of prior knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER11> Scrivener has the same "mission" as this. To make text writing into chunks that you can rearrange.

It's more fully baked and I think has a better UI that Ginko (writing a book or long piece with 3 relatively small columns isn't ideal).

Unfortunately it is marketed poorly, so not a lot of people know about it, but I have found it very useful when doing writing for longer pieces.

</comment><comment><USER12> Dear authors, my screen has hundreds of pixels vertically, I would like to be able to read more than 15 lines at once. The font size is insanely huge. It made me close the tab.

<comment><USER13> Just how tall is your screen? Also, [http://www.wikihow.com/Zoom-With-a-Web- Browser](http://www.wikihow.com/Zoom-With-a-Web-Browser)

<comment><USER12> ~550px on ~15cm I'd guess. With a sane text size as on HN for example I get about 30 lines of text on it.

Browser sadly zoom the whole page nowadays, not just the text. So that is not a good solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like this a lot!

The research manuscript example is exciting. It would be great if authors could link directly to the part of a paper that they are citing and be able to open that up if you want to dive deeper. Linking methods to results to discussion for specific experiments would make reading through dense papers a lot easier, and maybe have a notation/jargon definition section open at the same time. It's almost like a tiling window manager for reading.

I'm a little bit concerned about how it looks on smaller screens. It looks fine on my work monitor but I only have a netbook at home right now and a lot of websites have overlapping elements that keep me from reading articles. I haven't looked at this from that computer yet though. Maybe it would help to have collapsible columns if there are issues.

Good luck, I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback!

Yes, the idea of simply embedding parts of other people's papers right there, instead of citations, is something I'm excited about.

Literature review is such a pain, and could be a lot better.

As for smaller screens, we have plans for allowing this to be read on mobile, by collapsing columns and letting you scroll left-right to navigate the tree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Gingko is intimidating. It looks like a neat way to work

but when I see a big button called "try it now" (red flag), with testimonials (big red flag), no download (small red flag), and no mention of licensing, privacy, or cost (edit: it was just hidden), or... anything (big red flag). My experience tells me to avoid it, and to council everyone else to avoid it as well.

I don't want to be gouged, aggregated, or advertised to. I would love to use your tool. I just can't be sure you wont use that desire against me. I can't find anything on your site that will assure me that wont happen.

edit: AHA. I did find your pricing.

[https://gingkoapp.com/p/pricing/](https://gingkoapp.com/p/pricing/)

So at least you're mechanism of monetization is there.

</comment><comment><USER16> I like the use case for reading movie scripts, it could help to keep all levels of the story in mind:

[https://gingkoapp.com/Alien-1979](https://gingkoapp.com/Alien-1979)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Screenwriting was one of the initial inspirations for the UI, because screenplays are naturally hierarchical (logline > Acts > Sequences > Scenes > Beats).

<comment><USER17> Questionable. I work in the film trade, and while people may consider a logline or a one-sheet, when some reads a script they sit down and read it start to finish, like a book. It's going to play in linear form on the screen, so it has to be read that way as well.

What authors usually do is is knock out a freeform treatment where the story is described in prose, which is then broken down into scenes. It is helpful to have the overview in mind during the writing process, but existing tools such as Final Draft provide a plethora of writing aids for that, from virtual index cards to graphical character timelines.

Bear in mind that when you work with finished scripts like the _Alien_ example, you've got a survivor bias problem, because almost any story that makes it through the screen has been through multiple drafts and hundreds or thousands of mini-edits. So while it seems very natural to lay that out in a neat hierarchy, that doesn't really reflect the writing environment, which is a lot more messy.

As for keeping track of story context, this is job one for the writer - <USER2> can beef up the dialog or whatever later, but writers, directors and other keys need to be able to keep the entire story in their head at once and know what the inputs and and outputs of any given scene are, not least because 99.9% of films are shot out of chronological sequence and so being able to keep a handle on that story context is essential for guiding the actors. Obviously you don't try to remember every last little thing at once, that's why we use storyboards and breakdown sheets, but you do need to be able to articulate the whole story off the cuff at the drop of a hat.

I do think this would very useful for film students doing analysis, but I can't really see myself writing a script in it, although I'll try doing some treatments with it.

BTW I also feel that if you offer people the opportunity to try it, you should let them try it, not switch to asking for a signup. That really annoyed me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's great to have a film insider's take on this.

The screenplay examples do only go up to the "scene card" level, but we plan to have more columns so you could add the script there as well. That way you could go start-to-finish, or have overviews as well.

> I do think this would very useful for film students doing analysis.

Interesting, thanks.

A question: would this be useful for _pitching_ a film? Say if there were concept art sections, character descriptions, and additional notes, _as well as_ the script itself (from logline down to linear form) ??

> BTW I also feel that if you offer people the opportunity to try it, you > should let them try it

Again, sorry about this. It's what we've got, and we're trying to make the best of it.

<comment><USER17> Somewhat. A fully developed proposal will have a book with all that stuff, but OTOH it's a fact of life in Hollywood that you shouldn't spend too much money on that stuff before you go into production, for 2 reasons. One, it's a fast way to go broke. Two, you wouldn't have all that stuff to hand if you were trying to turn your friend onto a great film that you had seen and thought your friend should watch _right now_. Studio execs don't want to be distracted by eye candy or character sheets, they want to hear something that fires _their_ imagination.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see. Again, thanks for the insider info.

I didn't consider that presenting __too much __concept art & story details might detract from the experience of letting the concept blossom in the studio exec's own mind.

I'll have to sit down with some screenwriters again, and see if Gingko is something that they'd be able to use or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a good concept but the execution needs some work. I'm confused that everything is visible all the time - if that's the case, why am I clicking on things? But clicking on things seems to be necessary to 'focus' on a given subject; otherwise, as you scroll, the columns get out of sync and seem to bear little relationship to each other.

I envisioned something very different from the screenshots. I expected you to be able to expand and collapse nodes, with the collapsed nodes existing only to provide a summary of the surrounding information. I can see the appeal of having everything visible so that you can just scroll through the document as you would now, but in that case the scroll positions of the columns need to be dynamically linked and there needs to be more feedback about which nodes serve as a summary or context for which other nodes.

In general, I think the process of reading a Gingko document is not clear to a first-time reader. Fixing this will require changes to both functionality and design.

</comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of Ted Nelson's Zigzag, only he had N dimensions and a cell structure. [http://xanadu.com/zigzag/](http://xanadu.com/zigzag/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Ted Nelson has some similar work in this line. But I think he went too far with the N dimensions... Text is linear, Gingko text is 2-dimensional.

With it, we can represent more than two dimensions, by simply "slicing" along any two we choose (e.g. text & comments)... not sure I'm explaining this properly :-/

<comment><USER20> I think Nelson's use of a more general graph has some value. I could see an encyclopedia or a program being edited/viewed in Gingko with circular references. With some tweaks on the UI (being able to put more emphasis on the card currently viewed, maybe by partially sliding out of view the parent cards or shrinking them when they're not focused).

I think this project is pretty cool and the idea is awesome. It would make a lot of sense on a tablet/phone and as a generalized editor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does this really need to be a web-app? Storing my Documents in the Cloud is not possible and not even desireable in most of my work environments. Even in my private life i like to be offline to work on the kind of tasks that Gingko would help me with. Just charge me a one-time fee for an Windows App (Win8 Guy here, Mac Apps would be reasonable aswell) and let me handle my data my way.

I've thought about building something like Gingko for a long time, so thanks for providing an alternative option!

</comment><comment><USER22> would love to see a self hosted ginko. It used to be that there was a lot of self hosted project, now everyone wants to keep you data... I wonder if the trend will change again.

<comment><USER23> I'd like to try it, but I'm also not going to sign up for an online note/research app to use seriously. I want assurances that my notes are on my devices, read only by me, and, after a shitty experience with Notes.app this week, I'm going to be refusing any app that silos data and/or uses an unpublished nonstandard format.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood. We're planning on adding offline support, and a "Chrome Packaged App" version, so you could use Gingko offline entirely, and our servers will never touch your data.

As for the format, we simply export to flat Markdown. We will be supporting other formats (including XML, and the OPML standard for hierarchical/outline text).

Thanks for your feedback!

<comment><USER24> How about putting the code on github and let users run their own version of gingko on their own servers? i would like to see that..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I want the tool you're building! It's got huge overlap with a project I was just in the planning phase of, a cloud-ified FreeMind.

However! There's one fatal-for-me flaw in your current implementation: only three layers deep. Deal-breaker. I'd love to hear about it if/when you change that behavior, so that I can start trying this seriously.

I saw your comment about future possible options to self-host, or offline mode, or something like that. That's definitely interesting to me. Self- hosting would be ideal, really. But I also very much like having the option to use your servers.

When you mentioned exporting to Markdown, you mentioned breadth-first. I'm not at all sure that you want breadth-first. The documents I'm imagining writing will make more sense exported depth-first.

I think it would benefit from a little visual cue to see where one card ends and the next begins, even for cards not currently selected. My first attempt would be to let the grey background show through the white cards, but whatever.

I agree that the default text size is a bit too big. Maybe some scaling could be added as an option when configuring a tree.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

Yes, more than three layers deep is our highest priority, along with offline mode.

And you are right, I meant "depth-first"; makes more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm sorry if I'm rude, but the more I think of if it, the less I see the point.

The initial described problem (organising ideas in a hierarchical way) has already been solved efficiently years ago with visual mind maps. They have been used successfully to not only create the hierarchy, but also to realise that sometimes, the tree is more like a graph.

As a reader, it's infuriating to have to click all the time (or use keyboard) and have this page scrolling all around. I just want to READ, not being distracted by some kind of useless parallax effect.

As a writer, moving ideas around to get them properly organised is really painful. There is no distraction-free interface neither.

If you really want to make tool for writers, I would strongly suggest you that you take a look at tools like Ulysses or Scrivener and try to understand the rationale behind the UI choice they made.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _that sometimes, the tree is more like a graph_

I agree, but I think it's better to start with a tree, and then add graph-like features, than to start with a graph and try to make a tree out of it. Mostly because I believe hierarchy is a more natural structure for our brains.

For reading non-fiction, yes the parallax can be distracting. But I think A) the interface can be improved. B) For non-fiction, it's outweighed by the benefit of having context & details available.

We do have plans for a distraction free mode, similar to "Zen mode" on Github. But offline & deeper trees are a priority for now.

I have studied Scrivener, but didn't know about Ulysses. Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Neat. A couple thoughts: 1) it took me some time to figure out that I could scroll a given column when the mouse is over it... Also when the mouse is over a non-column area (background on far right/left) it would be useful if scrolling did a global scroll of all columns at the same time.

2) It could be nice if the sections M+1/M-1 (above/below) the selected section in column N were given a subtle distinct color, and then the appropriate sections in column N+1 that are nested in M+1/M-1 were given the same color. Does that make any sense? It would give a visual indication of which sections in column N+1 lie within sections M+1 and M-1, and also help to emphasize the tree nature of the layout. A different color could be chosen for M+/-2, +/-3, etc.

Good job! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> We explored having different color scheme to denote the node distance between two cards.

Unfortunately, it got too messy, and neither of us are designers, so we had to shelve it for now.

As for scrolling, and want the mouse scrolling to work just like keyboard (selects the card at center, reorders other columns appropriately). Haven't gotten around to it yet.

Thanks for your feedback!

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the reply & good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like it and have worked more or less like this for structuring documents all my life (but manually, in text files, making trees and creating documents from those trees with a small Python script). However, I really would like this to be a desktop application; all that online stuff is not very helpful for productivity software, for me at least. I live in the mountains, I don't have internet in a lot of places. When I travel I don't have (stable) internet either.

I like stuff going to the web, but until that works fully offline after installation (so being able to make new projects, save them, change them, do everything except the stuff which really requires internet), I don't really have much use for productivity apps like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad you like it.

My cofounder is working on full offline support right now, as it's been a much requested feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice. The inadvertent jump to another branch can be disorienting though.

Suppose my tree structure is as so:

      * a
      ** b
      *** c
      * d
      ** e
      *** f
      *** g
      *** h

Gingko lays it out like this:

      a b c
      d e f
          g
          h

If I'm in the far right column, let's say I've highlighted item g and go up to item f. However, I hold the arrow key down a little too long and overshoot to item c. This causes everything to the left to suddenly jump around and disorient me.

A related issue, the layout suggests that c-f-g-h is an intended list when it isn't. It can cause readers to become confused if they're reading normally in one column and don't fully realize they've jumped to a different branch in between c and f.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes we could definitely improve the way you interact with the tree.

For one thing, the looping back when holding the arrow key is annoying to me too, and a simple fix we will get to.

As for the branch jumping, we tried other approaches, but haven't found one that works well in all cases.

The core of Gingko, navigating tree structures, is something we are constantly trying to improve.

Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This reminded me to (at last) master emacs org-mode.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm a bit confused by the keyboard navigation. I open the sample document and hit the down arrow. It scrolls. I hit the down arrow again and the background color changes and it scrolls in the opposite direction. If I keep hitting the down arrow it scrolls up and down and up and down with a color change each time. And of course if I hold down the down arrow it starts flickering as it jumps back and forth between the two directions and colors.

Is that a bug or is that how it's supposed to work? I often scroll to the end of a short document by holding down the down arrow until things stop moving.

</comment><comment><USER32> I like how it organizes information spatially, like WorkFlowy. I much prefer this visual organization to tags, for example. That said, I found it hard to understand what it was, even though I'm a long-time WorkFlowy user and am very interested in this kind of thing. I wrote a post where I talked about organizing information visually in more depth here: [http://colemanfoley.quora.com/Mind-Mapping-with- WorkFlowy](http://colemanfoley.quora.com/Mind-Mapping-with-WorkFlowy) (Registration NOT required to read).

<comment><USER33> I'm a big user of Workflowy and I felt the same about Gingko at first. The keyboard shortcuts help a lot though because I can get my thoughts down on paper much more quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Worth comparing: [https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated- Wiki](https://github.com/WardCunningham/Smallest-Federated-Wiki)

</comment><comment><USER35> I have always felt PDF is outdated for research papers. We need some kind of interactive paper format; yet universal, open specs, look the same and usable across platforms.

<comment><USER36> Have you seen eLife's Lens reader? Example article is at [http://lens.elifesciences.org/#00772](http://lens.elifesciences.org/#00772)

They took a fresh, web-centric look at how to interactively display research papers. It's being used — right now — to display all of the new articles from a major biology journal.

I think it's quite nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I hadn't seen that.

Personally, I think that things like this Lens reader are evolutionary advances, but science communication needs a revolutionary change.

I don't expect actual journals to be using Gingko any time soon, but there are already grad students collaborating on research papers right now :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-g Have you thought about allowing for the creation of arbitrarily deep trees? That's one of the features I like most about workflowy. This looks really cool, though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we're definitely working on adding arbirary depth. We are starting with three because it's enough to realize the benefits.

Infinite depth is coming (as well as other exciting features).

<comment><USER37> Do you have a newsletter or other way I could sign up to be notified of updates?

This hits a lot of points that I've been looking for in an app/service. So much so that I was ready to sign up for the paid plan after trying this out for a couples minute, because I'm sure I'd use it enough to be worth it. But I didn't realize the three-levels limitation, and that prevents this from being useful enough to me to start using it.

I'd love to check it out again when you do add infinite nesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> > This hits a lot of points that I've been looking for in an app/service.

Glad to hear that, Jeremy.

I've tagged you with "infinite-columns" in Intercom, so I can update you when we add that feature.

> That prevents this from being useful enough to me to start using it.

I agree, I struggle with this limit too, and it's my #1 most desired feature too... we're working on it!

Let me know if you have any other questions or comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Ontology/taxonomy/classification are seriously difficult things. If not semantic web would have ruled the world by now.

Structural hierarchies (chapter/section etc) may be easy to get for everyone but a navigation side panel would work too. If you build a semantic hierarchy, new users may not know how to find things; yet repeat users may be frustrated by having to go through the layers to access the items they are looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, hierarchy is not a panacea. But I argue that it's better for new comers to have context & overview, and hierarchy helps with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't want to have to think when I read a book. The author has to lead me through and follow a path. The auther has to make sure I get a decent introduction and he should make every sentence count.

This is nice to play. And maybe even has it's applications such as documentation where quick browsing helps. But if I had to read a thesis/book like this I'd be a very unhappy person.

<comment><USER40> The same criticism applies to wikis and their nonlinear way of presenting information. Despite that, people find wikis tremendously valuable, and a big part of it is the ability to jump around, following your own path through the information.

This thing is confusing at first, but it looks like it could be pretty darn slick after spending a few minutes getting used to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This looks awesome, but the elephant in the room is how does the document look offline?

Can it be exported to PDF or be printed or something?

When you print it, how does it look?

<comment><AUTHOR> With better support mobile devices (including eReaders and whatever comes after them), we hope it'll be less of an issue as time goes on.

Right now, we simply export the Markdown to flat text (breadth-first). But we will be adding PDF export options, for exporting the whole document, or one column.

That way, you can still end up with a traditional document at the end, if you want.

Any other ideas?

<comment><USER41> I think you may be overthinking it.

If you just created a document with each hierarchy organized properly, I think you should be fine.

E.g. you create say 3 heading sizes in Word. 24px, 20px, 16px.

Then for the main point, i.e. the content in the left-most column, you put those under a heading that is under the 24px - then any sub content from the 2nd column would go under a 20px heading that is under the first 24px heading and so on.

So there is a chronological order of the content.

I think that's all you need. Proper placement of the content under the right headings, make the headings different sizes and you make sure it flows like the author intended (which I think you can ensure by using the order they setup on your site).

That's just my $0.02.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love overthinking things!

It's true that if every card had a title, then import and export while maintaining the tree structure would be easy.

But as it stands, if you have the following cards:

        A  A.1
           A.2
        B

this approach wouldn't be able to maintain the structure if the cards didn't have titles (it would just list all these as A, A.1, A.2, B).

It's for this reason alone that we've considered making titles required for at least the first card in a group.

Or am I overthinking again... ?

<comment><USER41> You could enforce it like that - i.e. require all cards to have titles.

But I don't think you NEED to.

I would assume that the way you know the order of the cards, is that you have some unique ID on the flow of the cards, no?

E.g. You know that A is first, then A.1, then A.2, then B.

So all you do is when you are exporting to PDF, you put the sections/cards in that order.

I think that should suffice, or am I missing something?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think this is quite a nice experiment in UI. However too small and simple to start charging for (but please proof me wrong!).

1) What I miss is the possibility to attach files. This would be essential in typical collaborative environments. 2) I don't want to give you my data. So localstorage or export/import is essential.

<comment><AUTHOR> We attach files using dropbox links. It's a workaround, but it's been useful so far.

Offline & import/export are features in the pipeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Reminds me of [https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it has similarities to WorkFlowy. We sometimes say "Evernote + Workflowy = Gingko" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I really like this. My nested lists in Evernote always get out of hand as soon as a node needs more than one line.

I've tried WorkFlowy but I didn't like the presentation. I prefer cards and in Gingko's case you get the added benefit of having a great overview.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Kiro!

I should have used "Evernote + Workflowy" in the title, since that seems to be what people immediately understand about Gingko.

Get in touch if you ever have any thoughts or questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> What happened to the app shown in the linked Science without borders talk? That looks more useful to me, if only because it fits with the typical science paper writing workflow. How did the document editor migrate to this 2D editor?

<comment><AUTHOR> That app still exists, and it's being worked on by my friend Ivan Savov, one of the original founders.

You can check it out at [http://papers.mcgillweb.com](http://papers.mcgillweb.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Interesting. This is actually close to the original idea of hypertext (Ted Nelson's vision: "documents - side by side"). I would really turn down the tone. Let the reader decide how important he thinks the idea is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the site is much more toned down, but I thought I'd share what I believe about Gingko's potential.

I respect Nelson, but his intensity is off-putting... don't want to make the same mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> What a great tool! I will definitly use this to structure my lecture notes! (Topic > Sub-Topic > Definition/List)

Improvement: Allow to filter and color cards. So you can walk through all cards of a given type.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks for the feedback Zemi.

We have the ability to filter, using the Search feature. You can just type @tags, and searching them will hide all cards that don't containt that text.

Let me know if you have any other questions or suggestions.

<comment><USER47> Well that's a workaround for now but it could be a little more user friendly (like showing all tags on the top)

Another point: Make cards collapsible/expandable to get a quicker overview about topics. (It is also an aid to the process of memorizing cards)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, hadn't considered having a tag list at top. Thanks.

Collapsing to "header only" is something we might have to add, after we implement infinite columns (so we can get a quicker overview of large trees).

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is anyone else seeing "undefined is editing" and subsequently a bunch of text you didn't write appears?

I'm worried that what I am typing into this might show up in someone else's tree.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a bug that someone's reported before (through Twitter). Working on fixing it.

No one can see your trees. The "bunch of text" bug has never happened before, will try to track it down.

Probably due to the flood of traffic from HN!

UPDATE from my cofounder:

"fyi: I fixed that bug weird one" \- Aleksey Kulikov

<comment><USER48> by "bunch of text" I mean several list items. I took screenshots if there is an email I can send them to (assuming that's helpful, I understand if it's not) let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. You can contact me through main menu in app (gear at top right).

UPDATE: My cofounder has just found the bug and deployed a fix. Refresh and it shouldn't happen again.

<comment><USER48> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting idea. Can you make it so that when I click in the card it automatically goes into edit mode? Having to click an "edit" button really slows things down.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can double-click the card to go into edit mode.

Single click would be easier, but since we have drag-and-drop, and sometimes use clicking just for navigation, we have to use double-click to edit.

(unless you have a better approach in mind?)

PS: Also, once you get used to them, the keyboard shortcuts lets you navigate & edit pretty quickly.

<comment><USER33> Thanks.

Also, just now I was seeing other people's cards showing up in my tree. When I switched trees, it corrected itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> For what platforms is it available? (There's no way I'm going to the trouble of signing up, only to be told "uh oh, not on your platform".)

<comment><AUTHOR> Works on all modern browsers. Soon, will work on mobile as well.

I've even been testing it on my Kindle this morning, and was surprised to see it (almost) works there too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I love the tool, though it'd be great if the editing windows support full- screen mode. Writing in a small grid is a pain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's a feature we have planned. Similar to the "Zen mode" in github.

That will let you write a group of cards as one flow, and it'll split it into individual cards once you leave fullscreen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> All that text, and no mention of what platforms are supported (or will be supported in the future).

</comment><comment><USER52> Miller columns for text with a natural outline structure! I like.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is great. Very useful and well implemented. Goodluck!

</comment><comment><USER54> Web: Try It Now!

Me: Cool, a demo! [click]

Web: But first, you must Sign Up...[trollface]

Me: Nope nope nope...

<comment><AUTHOR> We considered adding "lazy registration", but we're a team of just two, and decided to focus on improving the product and helping our users.

Might do in the future, but for now, that's what we have.

<comment><USER55> At least make bugmenot able to locate the login form :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> If anyone thinks serious academics will adopt something stupid and flashy like this in place of "old-fashioned, dry PDFs" when it isn't even free or publicly specified, they're seriously deluded.

Fuck start-ups and capitalism.

<comment><USER57> > _Fuck start-ups and capitalism._

Did you perchance take a wrong turn on the interweb tubes, and arrive at this website by mistake?

You are right, though; nothing proprietary and costly is ever going to 'change the world' of something so basic as reading and writing...

<comment><USER56> That said, my being in the wrong place doesn't change the fact that startups and capitalism are both lame and evil and retarded.

I think you should still consider and perhaps respond to the point instead of just discounting it because its out of place.

<comment><USER57> Well, I thought I did, but I interpreted your point more narrowly: that no proprietary app from some startup would ever be able to revolutionize authoring and reading works, replacing PDFs and their ilk for academics and research. I agreed.

If your point is the much broader contention that capitalism is lame and evil and retarded in general, that's a little beyond the scope of what can be resolved on HN.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good examples of user notifications in a client-side application? - <AUTHOR>

I'm reworking an application right now, and one of the things that's really been bugging me is how notifications are being handled.
Validation errors and exceptions are being reported to the user by pop-up windows, and I think there's a better way to do it.
Do you have any examples of applications that handle notifying the user of validation errors / general errors very well?
This is a client-server application, not a web application; so that does complicate things slightly.
Also, this is a Windows app, so notifications via something like Growl aren't really viable. <comment><USER2> Wish you'd add "(not Growl)" to title.

<comment><AUTHOR> For validation purposes, I don't think Growl is the right answer anyways.

If there are 4 things wrong with an object, the user will forget the rest of them by the time they've fixed the first one or two.</comment></comment>


Why Silent Updates Boost Security - <AUTHOR> http://www.techzoom.net/publications/silent-updates/

<comment><USER2> I really hate it when suddenly out of the blue, my Comodo asks permission for some random 'setup.exe' to change things in the Google Chrome folder. If you're making me practise allowing this, you're making me learn to allow cleverly contrived cracker attacks.

At the minimum, if you don't like asking user's permission to install stuff on his/her own computer, please for heaven's sake _inform_ me (within the browser) that you've got an update and are going to update yourself at some random point in the future. Then, I'll have at least a very little amount of confidence that this setup.exe isn't something evil.

There are many things wrong about Google's update mechanism from running a GoogleUpdate.exe at startup and then continuously without permission (what, are you Adobe?) to updating my software silently without even providing an option for how it's done.

If you're trying for the IE marketshare, make what they want the defaults, and give the advanced users _some_ way to customize things. I'd be happy even to have even the slightly advanced options in an about:config window, rather than not have them at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting paper. Thoughts about tradeoff:

1\. What if the update breaks some user code / extension and causes loss of productivity? 2. What if the update server gets hacked (though highly unlikely)?

On the whole, silent updates are useful when: a. attack surface is greater, b. they are geared towards security fixes than enhancements.

<comment><USER4> AD1: Possible solution might be signing updates. Microsoft already provides way to sign assembly files. Ohama (Google update tool) uses HTTPS, but I doubt they are signing files they download.

<comment><USER5> Ubuntu also signs updates. And I guess they did not invent it, but took the process from Debian.

<comment><USER4> Still, if private key is compromised you can inject evil updates. And it might be the case for teams that lacks necessary security policies, e.g. private key is on same server as download server or is accessible from one.

Maybe requiring signing by several developers (so that if one key is compromised it's still not a threat)? But that might be a little paranoid.

<comment><USER3> Signing by several developers is a good idea. Also, the scheme might still fall to man-in-the-middle attack. One possible solution could be to have multiple update servers with the policy that, download update from one and signatures from the other, subsequently verifying the integrity.

<comment><USER5> The man-in-the-middle attack is not such a big problem in defending against a short-lived attack. Ubuntu establishes the identity with the keys that you get at installation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Luhmann's Zettelkasten (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkasten.html <comment><USER2> A couple years ago I came across the Zettelkasten concept and tried to implement it electronically. I failed, but I do have a notes system that I have stuck with for multiple years and that works for me. My biggest place of failure was cross referencing notes. I use tags (ie #python or #linux) when taking notes, but due to the unlimited size of .md files, I find that I don't cross reference as I (probably) should. Rather, I use search on tags then search on whole notes to find my information. I'm sure it could be better, but it has worked ok for me so far.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/)</comment>


Help humans, hack health. HealthTap Cloud developer platform open - <AUTHOR> https://developers.healthtap.com/ Check out APIs + SDKs for access to infrastructure, content, data, and digital services for health app developers, powered by HealthTap's Health Operating System (HOPES) Modules incl. Telemedicine, Health
Data Exchange, Population Health Insights, Trusted Content, Clinical CRM API Reference: https://developers.healthtap.com/reference Dev guides: http://docs.healthtap.com/ <comment><USER2> A savage development for a savage Health company and concept. This will lead to great advancements in healthcare

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like an amazing resource to power health app development

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazing work to push health technology forward!

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty amazing set of resources for health app development. Could really open up and speed up development.

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty amazing infrastructure - great opportunity for developers interested in health.

</comment><comment><USER6> Powerful stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> Love it

</comment><comment><USER8> YES!

</comment><comment><USER9> sweeeeeet</comment>


Google's Currency Converter and JSON API - <AUTHOR> http://motyar.blogspot.com/ncr/2011/12/googles-currency-converter-and-json-api.html#.UOPa3fpV4wo.hackernews <comment><USER2> I've used this hidden API in the past, but overall Yahoo's free finance API is much more accurate and developer-friendly.

The output of this endpoint is formatted to be human-readable in such a way that it is annoying to do calculations with the result. For example, the result of converting 999 GBP to VND is "34.0263562 million Vietnamese dong." [1]

So to make it useful, you need to parse "million," "billion," etc. as well as the nonstandard verbose currency name. For other results you need to parse the thousands delimiter, which is a space.

The conversion is also inconsistent, which you can see by refreshing the result several times. This may be a cache issue on Google's end.

The last problem is that it's missing some currencies such as the Pacific Franc (XPF).

[1] [http://www.google.com/ig/calculator?hl=en&q=999GBP=?VND](http://www.google.com/ig/calculator?hl=en&q=999GBP=?VND)

</comment><comment><USER3> I still find Joss Crowcrofts Open Exchange Rates API much friendlier; <https://openexchangerates.org/>

</comment><comment><USER4> And eventually Google will shutdown the API because it's not even documented but then everyone will start bitching like they did for the weather API.</comment>


Saying "thank you" – why startups and small businesses should listen to mom - <AUTHOR> http://blog.crowdspring.com/2010/06/saying-thank-you-why-startups-and-small-businesses-should-listen-to-mom/

<comment><USER2> Is not that great or what!!!!!!!

Final payoff for all sleepless nights and other goodies that comes with the upbringing of a child!!!! :):)

If you learn to listen to a mom, then you can hear others as well. Then, you could decide what to do and make your own mistakes, but learn to really listen (and this is for all negative remarks that were "artistically" produced already before mine and will be after mine.

And more for you whose understanding of global creativity looks like exploiting others: You are lucky to grow up here, in USA, where exploiting others could be in a form of brainstorming. Very lucky, indeed!!!!!!

Please, add double count from me for this topic!

</comment><comment><USER3> This from a company that exploits the majority of their users.

<comment><USER4> and? It may be hypocrisy, but it's still good advice.

<comment><USER5> it's even better, if it works for them, it'll work for anybody...</comment></comment></comment>


Donda Media's First Project - "The Facebook of Websites" - <AUTHOR> http://whodat.biz/

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who don't remember Donda, it was Kanye West's media company, born from a fever dream, set out to change the world with the help of "doctors, lawyers, teachers, tech guys, app guys, and nutritionists".

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/jan/06/ka...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/jan/06/kanye- west-twitter-apps-donda)

<comment><USER2> Guy: Do you like fish sticks?

Kanye: Love em

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> seems like this is just a whois lookup? am i missing something?

<comment><USER4> Looks like theres also fake whois info ?

<http://whodat.biz/#google.com>

Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.LOVE.AND.TOLERANCE.THE- WONDERBOLTS.COM

Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENIS.COM

Server Name: GOOGLE.COM.HAS.LESS.FREE.PORN.IN.ITS.SEARCH.ENGINE.THAN.SECZY.COM

etc.. Or is that normal?

<comment><USER5> that is normal. they are literally showing whois information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://whodat.biz/#google.com> ; interesting.

</comment><comment><USER7> All signs here point to this being a huge prank. The site was registered 2 days ago. Dondamedia.com was registered yesterday. Plus the gmail they use doesn't match up with the e-mail kanye tweeted during his rant (firstname.lastname@example.com vs email@example.com ).

</comment><comment><USER8> Look at their timeline they claim its just a beta, but its basically a whois with too much type which hinders usability.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is some strange joke.. right?

</comment><comment><USER10> My favorite part is a wrapper div in the HTML that has the id "avail_rapper".

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused

<comment><USER8> Nothing to be confused about. Kanye's mouth wrote a big check they obviously can't cash. Can't wait to see the other disruptive things that are sure to come out of Donda, maybe next they will setup a Big Cartel store and tell us its the new e-commerce.</comment></comment>


Another DreamSpark perspective: CS major who likes .Net admits he's as lonely as a young Republican - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/19/open-source-adobe-campus-prods-microsofts-giveaway

<comment><USER2> I kind of pity Microsoft here. Is it actually possible to make money writing development tools any more? I use a lot of them and don't pay anything, because whenever I want something that costs money, there's a free version that's better.

Also, does that mean that at some point there will stop being development tools, since there's no money in making them? Or is the fact that you have to make them in order to make things people WILL buy enough to sustain that?

<comment><USER3> "Is it actually possible to make money writing development tools any more? "

TextMate seems to have won the hearts and minds of many developers using Macs, and it's not free.

<comment><USER4> So to summarize third-party proprietary dev tools on the Mac:

10 years ago: Metrowerks (photo of their HQ: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/MetrowerksBuil...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/MetrowerksBuilding.jpg))

Today: TextMate (hi, Allan!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a young Republican and I find myself in great company.

</comment><comment><USER6> And yet they don't have even one University in Canada listed. I guess you're even lonelier if you're Canadian.</comment>


Enigma raises 95M to build a model of the real world - <AUTHOR> https://www.enigma.com/blog/letter-from-our-founders <comment><USER2> Congratulations to all of you. Can I buy my expired options?</comment>


Can the Growing Democratic Socialists of America Build a New Left Wing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/06/the_dsa_convention_in_chicago_showcases_splinters_among_a_growing_unruly.html <comment><USER2> The tea party together with the alt-right built a new Right Wing, so why not?</comment>


123D Circuit Simulator - <AUTHOR> http://123d.circuits.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> 123d.circuits.io currently quite as intuitive as some of its alternatives, but it supports breadboard, schematic, and PCB views, it also has a novice level simulation (e.g., the breadboard LED 'lights up'), and circuits can easily be forked. I seen most of these features in other circuit simulators, but I haven't seen any other circuit simulators that have _all_ of these features.

I'm definitely not a fan of their maker level pricing ($12/month for 5 private circuits seems far too pricy for 5 circuits _and_ too few circuits for $12/month). Hopefully they can develop partnerships with other hardware suppliers and moderate their fees!</comment>


Living Alone May Be Hazardous to Your Health - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/03/warning-living-alone-may-be-hazardous-to-your-health/

<comment><USER2> It's pretty obvious being isolated from real social and physical connection with other humans tends to have a severely negative impact on people's mental and physical health.

It's really sad how America has built itself into a lonelier and lonelier society over the past decades.

<comment><USER3> _It's pretty obvious being isolated from real social and physical connection with other humans tends to have a severely negative impact on people's mental and physical health_

No, it's not obvious.

 _It's really sad how America has built itself into a lonelier and lonelier society over the past decades._

That's just your experience.

<comment><USER4> > _No, it's not obvious._

Agreed. In fact, I would expect the opposite. Living by myself allows me to precisely meter how much time I spend with others and how much time I spend alone. If I want some human contact at the moment, then I go out and get some. If I don't, then I go home. The only way that this breaks down is if the amount of time I _want_ to spend with other people is somehow detrimental to my health.

Can I maintain this when all of my friends start getting married is another question...

<comment><USER5> Wait till your friends start having children :)

<comment><USER4> Aye. That will likely involve a lifestyle shift for me, but I figure I probably have a few more years until I have to worry about that.

<comment><USER4> @themgt (your comment is dead)

The variety of people that I interact with socially is exactly the reason why I have not been socially starved by a few of them having kids. Four or five of them having kids is of little consequence to me. A _majority_ of them having kids would be different. Were they all in a narrow age/maturity range, I would run the risk of that happening in a short period of time, but they are not.

I think that anyone who finds themselves, seemingly overnight, in an _"all my friends need to find babysitters"_ situation is really the one that needs to consider the breadth of their social engagement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is why todays homo egoisticus will die out in the end.

<comment><USER7> All the major Asian and Western urban centers are huge population sinks with way below replacement TFR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Correlation is not causation. Again.

<comment><USER9> And wanting explanations (much less doubting them) for the obvious is neither science nor wisdom.

<comment><USER10> It's obvious that things fall towards the center of the earth. Yet, you have hordes of physicists searching for a mathematical reason for why it happens. The point here is that nobody cares whether or not 'it is obvious' to you. Lots of things are obvious to lots of people and most of those things turn out to be false. Only rigorous justification advances our knowledge. You would know all of this if you weren't a complete ignoramus.

<comment><USER9> > _Lots of things are obvious to lots of people and most of those things turn > out to be false. Only rigorous justification advances our knowledge._

In hard sciences it does. There, there's no problem with "rigorous justification".

But overdoing "rigorous justification" can take our knowledge back instead of advancing it, in non hard science domains.

What I argue for here is the so-called European way of thinking about humanities and soft sciences, as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon model of quantification, hard proofs, reductionism and such. Letting "rigorous justification" overtake humanities and soft sciences can be detrimental to society, thinking and freedom. Moreover, despite pretending to be "objective", the Anglo-Saxon way takes for granted a whole ideological apparatus of its own (only except of being self-reflective, like the European, it naively assumes it is inevitable and natural).

> _You would know all of this if you weren't a complete ignoramus._

Thanks for the personal insult. Am I to presume it reflects your deep studies and personal cultivation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Duh is my quick answer. We're social beings, well most of us. we're supposed to talk to each other, laugh, share joys, comfort each other, tease and brag to each other.

IIRC, in prison leaving someone in solitary for an extended time qualifies as torture simply because we're not supposed to be alone. You go nuts</comment>