Textbender Changes
------------------
Upcoming releases will depend on project Votorola, which relates
to textbender by way of collaborative law making.
0.2.2 2007-08
Designs for an open legislative system and an open electoral system
were sketched.
0.2.1 7
The project was effectively opened up. We now have a contributors page,
a discussion group, a Mercurial repository, and generally
improved documentation.
0.2.0 5
A clipboard transfer facility was added to the kit.
This completes the functional core of textbender, bringing it to alpha.
0.1.15 pre-alpha 5
A 'reload' action was added to the page daemon, as well as
other file synchronizations. Together, they allow the browser
to function in tandem with a text editor.
A description of editing procedures was added to the demo walk-through.
0.1.14 4
The genetic encoder was improved. It now detects duplicate genes
that arise from manual editing, and corrects them.
The page-daemon user applet was moved to the top edge of the browser window,
where it now functions as a floating toolbar.
0.1.13 4
Chromography was added to the kit. It reveals genetic similarities among
documents by tinting along a chromatic gradient, according to locus.
0.1.12 4
A branching tool was added to the kit. It serves to initialize
new working documents and assign them to unique revision lines
(branches) of their own.
The trace algorithm for authorship/ancestry was improved.
It no longer depends on detailed revision history.
Authors now have the choice to work without a revision control system.
The encoding of meta-data was improved to reduce document size.
0.1.11 3
A region-transfer facility was added to the kit.
0.1.10 3
An algorithm to trace authorship/ancestry of sequences was formalized.
The genetic code was modified accordingly. Outstanding bugs affecting
the page daemon on Windows were fixed.
0.1.9 2
A genetic encoder was added to the kit.
It converts ordinary text to recombinant text.
0.1.8 2
An undo/redo facility was added to the page daemon. A popup
for runtime errors was added. The platform was moved to Java 1.6.
0.1.7 1
Demo texts, boot scripts, style sheets, and instructions were overhauled.
A two stage boot to inject the user's applet
without pre-installing greasemonkey, and so forth, was introduced.
Applets were relocated for better visibility.
0.1.6 1
JavaScript-to-Java event dispatch was overhauled in the DOM bridge.
0.1.5 1
Text highlighting was added to indicate the context
of the page daemon's pop-up menu. A 'silent' mode was coded
for remote pages, as a work-around for same-origin restrictions
on JavaScript-to-Java messages.
0.1.4 2006-12
The structure of ancestry and authorship records
was finalized in the genetic code, and formally documented.
Page-load caching is now disabled in the browser,
to improve handling of page exits and revisits.
0.1.3 12
A (monochromatic) sequence highlighting tool was added to the kit.
It responds to user selections of text by highlighting
genetically related text in other documents across the desktop.
A pop-up context menu was added to control in-page tools.
Shadow-point tools are now switchable on/off.
0.1.2 11
The locus-point facility was introduced.
It reveals genetic similarities among multiple documents.
Design was shifted to generation 3. It follows a paired-regions approach,
based on a server-less architecture that piggy-backs on existing
Web infrastructure, overlaying it with a peer-to-peer network,
driven by user scripts and applets.
<http://reluk.ca/project/textbender/a/
<http://reluk.ca/project/textbender/d/
=============================================================================
Design generation 2. 2005 - 2006
It followed a simplex-wide approach, based on client-server communications.
<http://reluk.ca/project/textbender/d/_/simplex-wide-obsolete/0.0.7-emacs-demo.xht
<http://reluk.ca/project/textbender/d/_/simplex-wide-obsolete/0.1.1-jaxe-demo.xht
0.1.1
Code was refactored and simplified,
in preparation for the next round of prototyping.
0.1.0 7
Support was added for the Jaxe XML editor.
0.0.7 pre-alpha 6
Support was added for authorship claims.
A claims generation tool (staker) was introduced.
0.0.6 5
A modeling and simulation kit was introduced.
Reference simulators were coded.
0.0.5 4
Component fold.xquery was introduced.
It implements an XQuery interface to the gene pool.
0.0.4 4
A full desktop toolset was introduced. It integrates
with the user's text editor. A reference interface for Emacs is included.
A command-line gene extractor was introduced, to extract genes from texts.
The command-line for the Swing graphical tools was extended
to interface with non-Java tools (Emacs).
0.0.3 2005-10
Web tools were retrofitted with improved sequence handling,
in line with the Swing tools introduced earlier.
Web tool (harvest.target) was introduced,
as a query interface to the gene pool.
0.0.2 10
Swing graphical tools were introduced.
A Web service for querying the gene pool was added.
The genetic code was improved. Mark-up overhead was reduced.
2005.1 5
Bare-bones Web tools were introduced.
2005.0 4
Test release, non-functional.
=============================================================================
Design generation 1. 2001 - 2003
It followed a simplex-wide approach, based on peer-to-peer wiring.
Developed under the name 'EDGE' (Evolutionary Design by Genetic Engineering).
It featured an integrated text editor/recombinant toolset (simplex),
and peer-to-peer (population-wide) communications over Java RMI.
<http://reluk.ca/project/textbender/d/_/simplex-wide-obsolete/0.0.0.14-edge-overview.html
Details omitted.
The original description of recombinant text (the domain of textbender)
was Canadian patent application 2,340,792 (filed 2001, since withdrawn).
<http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/details?patent_number=2340792
"The sooner you start coding your program...,
the longer it will take..."
-- Henry F. Ledgard