ZigZag is Ted Nelson's trademark on a data model he has designed for computer interaction, both for users and between programs. The design is centered around an information structure called a zzstructure and its interactive visualizations. Nelson's stated goal is on one hand a platform for the Project Xanadu hypertext and on the other a complete computing system built on new conventions. Instead of the conventional textual formats and tree struct...
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ZigZag is Ted Nelson's trademark on a data model he has designed for computer interaction, both for users and between programs. The design is centered around an information structure called a zzstructure and its interactive visualizations. Nelson's stated goal is on one hand a platform for the Project Xanadu hypertext and on the other a complete computing system built on new conventions. Instead of the conventional textual formats and tree structures, zzstructure is a multidimensional extension of a spreadsheet whose cells can contain various kinds of data.
The zzstructure is similar in form to a doubly linked list that is linked doubly along multiple axes (each dimension corresponds to a single back and forward link, and there are an arbitrary number of dimensions). Each node exists on all dimensions, though it may or may not be connected to anything in that dimension.
Ted Nelson designed a data structure in 1965 and later generalized and applied it in ZigZag. The first prototype...
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