[Tb] Age vs. Chronology of siblings

On Mar 30, 2005, at 3:55 PM, Mark Smith wrote:

> I imagine most people would "reach for" the "oldest" term to get such
> notes. I predict that "they" will be confused when they instead get
> the notes from the top of the list.

I agree that it is confusing.

At the heart of this problem is that Tinderbox's manual uses outline
terminology which doesn't assume the existence of metadata such as
creation/modification dates. Once you add that sort of metadata to the
system, language that is intuitively understandable in a "pure"
outlining context loses precision.

Having the terminology chapter in the manual DOES help, but so would
adding a word or two every time older/younger is mentioned.

e.g. ^title(child) : This captures the name of the oldest child (the
first descendant in the outline) of the container.

Alternately, follow Affrus' example and put links all over the
Tinderbox documentation so that every mention of "older" gets linked to
the appropriate terminology.

Either will preserve the precise domain terminology while still giving
newbies and people outside of the outline business a leg up.

--Nik
Received on Wed Mar 30 23:13:43 2005