Post Haystack email thread
NOTE: This is an email thread copied here to have all the information together. Email addresses have been removed
Wow it looks like I missed a fun party!
Marco, Alan that is awesome! Mods has a wiki with some info already, it would be great to merge all your docs there and do a bit of housekeeping (some images belong to CBA mods etc). I assume you are all in fabcloud?
https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/pub/project/mods/-/wikis/home
Leo I am so excited to see you and Quentin onboard, images were not forwarded by Neil but I had a look at yada. I love the idea of searching modules and drag and drop from sidebar. In fact sidebars for programs and modules was on the pipeline as iOS cannot display the right click menu.
BTW let’s abandon this thread and continue in the issue tracker?
https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/pub/project/mods/-/issues?sort=created_date&state=opened
You will see there some issues already populated which things I was never skilled enough to solve. We also had a roadmap/whislist which I am so excited to see how it will evolve with all your contributions.
https://scf.acm.org/2022/ That looks like another nice party after Bali ツ
Fran
On Jun 1, 2022, at 19:47, Neil Gershenfeld wrote:
Nice threads below from Marco on mods documentation, Alan on mods workflows, and Leo on mods design.
I'm cc'ing Fran, who's the keeper of the mods project:
As that settles I'll replace the original project with a redirect to there:
I've never written anything up on mods; one thought if a quorum is interested would be to do a paper for the SCF July 7 deadline:
Neil
On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 10:08 PM Leo McElroy wrote:
Hi everyone!
Last week was delightful, glad I got to spend time with each of you. I found the community interest in mods quite exciting so decided to play around with a few of the ideas which came up by spending my last day of vacation the same way I spent the rest. Enjoying some beautiful nature and programming too much. So I took this bike ride by my house:
PXL_20220530_174214497.jpg
Then I sketched out a few ideas for mods which may be interesting to discuss or integrate into the main project.
Here's a little demo.
Screen Recording 2022-05-31 at 9.44.01 PM.gif
- Nodes can be defined with a simple JS object. This structure also enables some rendering templates which can help unify the UI. Arbitrary HTML can still be included in the "view" function. Note also some explicit type declarations on inputs and outputs. These can be strictly enforced and also allow for intelligent inference of default values.
Screen Shot 2022-05-31 at 9.39.05 PM.png
- Adding a toolbox to the UI with search functionality and the ability to drag and drop new nodes. Would be nice to add search by type and some of Alan's ideas for assistive features based on type searching.
Screen Recording 2022-05-31 at 9.47.39 PM.gif
- Edges can be plugged in and unplugged by dragging.
Screen Recording 2022-05-31 at 9.49.12 PM.gif
- A more constrained but consistent execution policy. In this case each node can be evaluated on demand which also evaluates all dependencies of that node. Quentin and I spent some time discussing different approaches to this and took inspiration from AliceVision. Note also the interface element for editing node inputs, it's similar to xod's approach I believe.
Screen Recording 2022-05-31 at 9.50.30 PM.gif
You can find a live version of the program which I called yada (yet another dataflow attempt) here https://www.leomcelroy.com/yada . Obviously it's still full of bugs and doesn't do any of the useful things mods does, but I find making helps clarify my thinking so thought I'd go through the exercise. Curious to hear any thoughts on these features or other things which must be included.
Such a pleasure to spend last week with you all.
Best,
Leo
On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 2:17 PM Alan Grover wrote:
"If I don't know mods, how do I hook these things together to get from A to B? E.g. I have a SVG and I want to loft it and make a STL for 3D printing."
The code extracts the inputs/outputs of each mod and allows listing, searching, and notably: workflow assembly.
The solutions are interesting. And, this immediately raised more questions:
- Was that the useful question?
- How do we express the semantic meanings so the A-to-B can make sense (e.g. "text" versus "filename")?
The project is at:
https://gitlab.com/awgrover/mods-exploratorium
I would consider a node-js rewrite if there is interest.
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 9:32 AM James Rutter wrote: Yup, all good. thanks!
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 9:27 AM Marco Perry wrote: And just in case, this is the link to the doc again with adjusted share settings. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TRcb2s6gilUtz-OVwm7rJyy-rZ8KfmooZHmyeOwq3Uk/edit?usp=sharing
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 9:22 AM Marco Perry wrote: I think I fixed it. Give it a shot. With the help of Alan Grover, I created this spreadsheet of the mods available, their input requirements and the outputs they produce. It's a work in progress but fairly close. A user can slice/filter/sort for inputs they have or outputs they need to help select the right mod for their application. Can you add this to your drive and I will link to it in the getting started guide? Marco
On Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 9:11 AM Marco Perry wrote: I know the issue. I'll adjust some settings.
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: James Rutter Date: Wed, Jun 1, 2022 at 8:01 AM Subject: Re: Mods Project getting started guide To: Marco Perry Cc: Neil Gershenfeld
Yeah, strange. I can't open it now either. If you click on the big blue SHARE button (top right corner) and change the settings to "Anyone with link", than it should work.
<Screen Shot 2022-06-01 at 5.27.19 AM.png>
On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 12:35 PM Marco Perry wrote: That file may want to be in the mods exploratorium folder? I can't move it. I will keep adding to it. It seems that I have the rights to or it's the same file. I was thinking of making individual pages for several mods and creating a format that is easy to add to. I was considering making it a google slides format so we can add gifs and videos, because I can't seem to get that to work in google docs.
On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 8:01 AM James Rutter wrote: Awesome, thanks for this write-up. I just put it in the public haystack labs drive.
On Mon, May 30, 2022 at 2:28 PM Marco Perry wrote: Hi James and Neil, I realize there wasn't any sense to document the D.I.Wire machine since we didn't leave one behind, so, in order to contribute, I started a Mods Project "getting started guide" document. I believe it would be helpful to others to get them familiar with the interface. I didn't have permission to add it to the shared drive, so this is a link to the doc. If you could add it, I hope it would be helpful to others.
Also, please correct anything if it's wrong. I just kinda poked around until I understood how to use it at a base level.
M Marco" Perry Partner - Pensa