23:59: Similar VisualIDs for similarly-significant files

I've finally started-in on implementing the `similar icons for similar files' logic--so far, I've got the weighted-least-common-substring logic working, which searches through the (ever-growing) cache of VisualIDs for a base-icon. I haven't worked out a system for `mutators' yet, so sufficiently-similar names actually result in the /same/ icon..., but it's getting to be quite a nice demo.

Oh--I've also implemented the `around a shape' and `relaxed inside', and `along a path' generators. The presence of these additional options means that all of my icons have changed. Alas--it's no longer generating turtles. It /is/ generating other interesting things, though.

I think that, before I call it `done', I'm going to want to add some way for the user to specify constraints for which generators are used, and how the random selection of generators should be weighted.

In the mean time, here's another (updated) screenshot:

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02:12: Remote VisualIDs

Yet another interesting thing that just 'falls out' of the way that VisualIDs work: they work just as well for displays of remote data as for local data; and, because of the way that they work, generation is fast for remote files.

Here's a screenshot of VisualID-enabled Nautils browsing ftp://ftp.gnu.org/:

After looking at the previous screenshots, how quickly can you find the README file?

VisualIDs are also showing up (as if by magic) in the Nautilus 'Scripts' menu. I can't figure out how to get a screenshot of that....

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02:07: It's Alive!

It looks like I've actually got it working, automatically generating and caching VisualIDs wherever thumbnails aren't possible.

Here are a few random directories on my computer:

One bit of behaviour that's different now, and that's bothering me, is that the VisualIDs aren't showing up as WM-icons for Nautilus-windows anymore. I was really getting to like seeing VisualIDs when switching between windows--it's so helpful that I'm tempted to go ahead and hack my window-manager so that I can have VisualIDs to help distinguish between windows of any application (e.g.: the bazillion Epiphany or Emacs windows that I have open).

Hm. I had to change the way that I 'reported' VisualIDs in Nautilus in order to get icons to automatically update upon completion of 'thumbnail'-generation (where I was initially hooking into ~/.icons and reporting icon-names that GNOME would resolve to file-paths, now I'm directly reporting file-paths); I wonder if that's what caused this....

Items in Nautilus' "Scripts" menu are still getting VisualIDs, which was (is) another nice side-effect of this.

Of course, I still have to add the gconf toggles and similar-IDs-for-related-files (the latter is going to be interesting...), do some general code-cleanup (now that I understand what I'm doing), and maybe see about adding some more generators.

I did try implementing 'relaxed inside' and 'scribble', but they had... problems...: 'relaxed inside' just doesn't look right, and 'scribble' is ridiculously inefficient (a pen orbiting a set of gravity-wells? seriously?).

I'm pretty sure that I could implement 'scribble' more efficiently by just telling Cairo to run curves between the attractors--should I bother?

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09:30: *My* VisualIDs

I'm trying to put together a demo-collection of the VisualIDs that I've generated, because they look a good deal different than the ones shown in the essay. I'm not sure how to present them all..., but here's a go:

I've hacked my GNOME icon-theme so that, in addition to the usual sources, it also pulls icons from a preliminary VisualID-cache. The 'cache' is populated manually, by copying in the VisualIDs that I got by running make test (which generates a tree of SVG files that mirrors the code-files in my VisualID source-tree)--I still haven't quite figured out how to hook automatic VisualID-generation into Nautilus..., but I at least get a believable demo:

There's that turtle, at the bottom.

And take note of the 'README' and 'src' icons--those are classes of files that tend to show up all over the place....

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04:30: OMFG a TURTLE!

I got over the initial hurdles of learning Cairo and figuring out basically how I should structure my code to work with it, and now I've got about half of the VisualID `generators' working: radial, spiral, line, figure, and scribble; I'm still working on the `along a path', `around a shape', `relaxed inside', and `symmetry' generators. Oh--Pam has also asked that I add a `butterfly' generator, but I wonder if some butterflies might just fall out of the existing shape-grammar. On a test-run, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the randomly-generated icon for one of my files was... a turtle?

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