Thx to @Jun_GL 's and @jooz’s inputs I realize my approach was forcefully unproductive: I started exploring with the graph analysis perspective. I was curious of generating the big picture. But often this does not convey a lot of practical information, only the forementioned blob effect.
So yes, I agree, focusing on the relationships between the items witin a set (eg. a group) seems more meaningful.
Use cases
I now see several use cases where visualizing the relationships within a set of items would add value to the existing « list view modes». Again, I focus on use cases I face to make them as tangible as possible, rather than theorizing.
1. Visualizing wiki notes
I have some wiki about a topic, with 40 notes inside. They’re all enclosed in a same group. In general, each of those notes hold 3-8 wiki links to other notes in the same set. Currently, DT allows me to see the set in mode Icons, List, Column, Coverflow. There’s currently no way to see how, within the set, they relate.
Visualizing this set as a network graph would give me the opportunity to
- identify unlinked notes (orphans)
- identify the note that’s got most connection (centrality)
- identify groups of notes in this wiki that are tighly coupled (clusters)
2. Visualizing a long-read and my stuff about it
When I read ebooks/pdfs, I take quite some excerpts (of text or illustrations) from it, and tag them more precisely that the original document itself. Those excerpts point (through a x-devonthink link in their URL field) to the page they come from. Sometimes in the excerpt I do in-text links to another excerpt, because they relate.
Then I jote down thoughts, questions, etc. as markdown docs which often point to these excerpts. So this is what I end up having in a same group about a long-read:
- notes and thoughts which point to others notes or to …
- textual and visual excerpts which point to other excerpts or to …
- the original document
Having it all in the same group helps me to manage it all.
But there’s no way the current list view modes are going to help me make sense of the structure I web around the original document.
Visualizing this set as a network graph would allow me to see how they relate, distinguish who’s who in this set of (often) more than 50 items.
3. Visualizing my topics network
Even a single item is rich of relationships. It links to some web resource and/or to other items, it is tagged and/or replicated. A concrete use case: my “professional knowledge-base” contains 1000+ topics (represented as group tags). I do heavy use of replication because a concept my pertain to many theories, a tool or a construct to many methodologies. The inspectors and list view are great to show the topics a topic relates to (aka parent and child relationships, but not in a synthetic nor uniform way.
Being able to focus on one of these topics and seeing its multiple parent- and child-relationship would be way easier.
4. Visualizing the context of a set of items
Remember I said that I tag excerpts and notes about long-reads more precisely than the long read itself (use case 2)? That is a point of interest: this graph of « 2nd-degree tagging » (i.e. how I tagged the notes and excerpts that link to that long-read) provides a richer view of the topics covered by the long-read.
In a more general way, a set of items rarely has zero relationship towards its outside, rarely self-contained. It can have tags, links internal to the DB, etc. These links to the context are a very rich source of information.
Outline of a solution
The contributions in this thread opened my eyes that the most meaningful exploration would be to stick to DT information architecture and UI concept. In other words, to dream from within it.
DT IA, summarized
Let me briefly introduce how I describe it to then be able to speak of it.
A DT database contains items, which are either
- documents (PDF, markdown, …) or
-
non-exclusive sets of items, among which
-
static sets
- groups
- tags
-
dynamic sets
- smart groups
- search results (not properly belonging to the DB, but useful to fit search result somewhere in this IA)
-
static sets
The list view pane in the central column of a DT main window is there to represent sets, let use navigate it and select or several items in it. And this regardless of the type of set: group, tag, search results, smart group.
Principles for a network viz within DT
- A network visualization of a set of items (and the relations within it (and potentially to its context)) should happen in this list view pane as well, as an alternative list view mode.
- The concepts of set and selection should also be translated into the visualization (as visual boundary, respectively highlighted nodes).
- Another consideration is the use of colors: colors are used to mark nodes. So the network graph should make a use of colors coherent with its current usage.
How it could look like
Here’s a mockup of how it could look like — on the basis of my use-case 2: the long-read — and what options / widgets it would, imo, require.
I apologize in advance if that act seems pretentious to some. As stated earlier, I intend to contribute to this discussion through exploration and ideation, in the hope that it sparkles a little something somewhere …
