More gRSShopper

I have played quite a lot with gRSShopper because I like it.

Update 2021-10-29: Some day, two preformatted code snippets got corrupted and were now replaced by a ‘code’ block.

Result 1

One result is a list of Stephen Downes’s articles, by categories:

• All articles https://mmelcher.org/categorized.htm
• new articles https://mmelcher.org/new.htm

I still have not found how I can use the categories table for the optlist in the entry form.

Result 2

I am rather proud of the next result,

• a Demo https://mmelcher.org/chooser.htm

that allows you to Display a gRSShopper List or add to a Condensr Map (Condensr is my own think tool). The sample data used is the same as in a previous blog post.

First, this is a gRSShopper page

and the Javascript is https://github.com/x28de/mytooldemo,
the demo version of my free Java program.

It is called from another page

[<a href="<st_cgi>page.cgi?x28cat1=[*x28cat1_id*]">List</a>] [<a  href="http://mmelcher.org/x28map.html?http://mmelcher.org/cgi-bin/page.cgi?x28cat1=[*x28cat1_id*]&format=condensr" target="_map">Map</a>] [*x28cat1_cat*]<br /> 

on the same server (to avoid a CORB problem), but I was not able to
use the st_cgi tag again because I don’t have https where the javascript
comes from, due to an old plan.

This page, in turn, points to a view called x28cat_condensr:

<topic x="-[*x28cat_id*]0" y="[*x28cat_id*]0" color="#ccdddd" id="[*x28cat_id*]"><label>[*x28cat_title*]</label><detail><![CDATA[<keyword db=x28tagging;format=condensr;cat=[*x28cat_name*];sort=crdate DESC;> ]]></detail></topic>

and a view called x28text_condensr

[*x28text_title*]    [*x28text_excerpt*]

(with a tab in between), and such tab-separated lists (label TAB detail)
are the input that can be dragged and dropped onto my canvas.

Five pictures

To understand gRSShopper better, I made the 5 pictures, according to Christina Wodtke’s 5 models

• “Mind Maps, to gather your thoughts
• Concept Maps, to organize your understanding
• System Maps, to map the system (a tautology, but an accurate one)
• Mental Models, to understand and communicate your user’s understanding
• Concept models, to message a way to think about a complex system”

(which I had also done her https://github.com/x28de/mytool/wiki/Design for my own tool).

Concept model

Mental model

System map

Concept map

Mindmap

The mindmap’s content (without the cross connections) is better readable here:

gRSShopper

• elided benefits of RSS
  • harvested in the background
  • decentralized
    • no hub needed
    • no gatekeeper
    • no patronizing
  • pull, not push
    • less incentive for loud voices
  • no stream enforced
    • less context-switching
    • less built-in confusion
      • no need for recommendations
    • more room for infrequent writers
  • no tracking and privacy abuse
• full workflow
  • aggregate
  • organize
  • publish
    • even distribute
• incredibly powerful common interface
  • for common tasks
    • many channels in & out
    • many shipped examples
  • for custom tables
  • even for system tables
    • sometimes scary
• emerged from practice
  • proven & very effective
  • many subtle accelerators
    • need time to appreciate
  • continuously improved
    • perpetual beta?
  • tailored & biased
    • courageous ‘under the engine hood’
    • specialities for large audiences
• beyond consumption
  • handy for involvement
    • annotate/ refine/ put in context
    • bookmark/ share/ tag
  • convenience for making
    • comment or cite
    • curate or compile
    • write
  • beyond page impressions
    • pre-process the incoming
    • store resource meta-info