April A (retrospective)

This week I believe that I got into a bit of a panic
about "getting work done", since I've imagined
April as this time when I'm supposed to do a lot
of that. Intermixed with panicking, I think I also
gathered some perspective on where things are
at.

The first thing is: I seem to be "very close" to
having everything that was working in my old
code working again in the new code. The main
frustration associated with working with a series of
prototypes is that each new one breaks a lot of
things in the one before it. Anyway, the fact that
it's close to all working again is great, but I'm also
feeling the pressure to get it "there".

The second thing is: even when that is done,
there will be several more things that I'll want
to do to make something really interesting or
useful. I've picked five core things that I might
spend the rest of the month on.

* Search, by which I basically mean word-based
search a la Sphinx, but which could also combine
with semantic search.

* Editing, for which it will be important to notice
the difference between structural changes and
"superficial" changes at the level of content or
'leaves'.

* Browsing, which also has to do with constructing
and processing queries which return the desired
material (and so may be related to search). (Note
that in some previous prototypes there were pretty
nice features for browsing.)

* Clusions, which I now picture as frames occupying
the second component of a triple, but for which I
still need to assemble the other components of
a functional, fundamental, design. For example,
just how will they work for users? Wiki-style?
Sticky- (as in text properties) style? (Note that
a previous prototype had some "OK" treatment
of clusions, but I think it got overwhelming for me.)

* Tasks, which I have a simple system set up
to "manage" -- but does this system even lend itself
to keeping track of my tasks?

With this for "perspective", I'll also mention -- that
I've cleaned up my (mobile) workspace to a reasonable
degree for beginning a new, intense, month of work.
As I go into the next week, I'll be thinking about how
to distribute my time among these 5+1 items -- and
hopefully knocking out the special one that stands
between me and a "fully functional system".