ZigZag is Ted Nelson

Ted Nelson

Theodor Holm Nelson is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published it in 1965...

's trademark on a data model

Data model

A data model in software engineering is an abstract model, that documents and organizes the business data for communication between team members and is used as a plan for developing applications, specifically how data is stored and accessed....

 he has designed for computer interaction, both for users and between programs. The design is centered around an information structure

Data structure

In computer science, a data structure is a particular way of storing and organizing data in a computer so that it can be used efficiently.Different kinds of data structures are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specific tasks...

 called a zzstructure and its interactive visualization

Interactive visualization

Interactive visualization is a branch of graphic visualization in computer science that involves studying how humans interact with computers to create graphic illustrations of information and how this process can be made more efficient....

s. Nelson's stated goal is on one hand a platform for the Project Xanadu

Project Xanadu

Project Xanadu was the first hypertext project, founded in 1960 by Ted Nelson. Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it an improvement over the World Wide Web, with mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper...

 hypertext

Hypertext

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...

 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

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...

 whose cells can contain various kinds of data.

Structure

The zzstructure is similar in form to a doubly linked list

Linked list

In computer science, a linked list is a data structure consisting of a group of nodes which together represent a sequence. Under the simplest form, each node is composed of a datum and a reference to the next node in the sequence; more complex variants add additional links...

 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.

History

Ted Nelson designed a data structure in 1965 and later generalized and applied it in ZigZag. The first prototype consisting of two character-graphical views was implemented as a Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

 module by Andrew Pam in 1997. From 2000 to 2003, a free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 project GZigZag (later Gzz) developed another prototype with more views and other conventions, but Ted Nelson stopped supporting it. The underlying zzStructure is a patented technology. After 2003, prototype development has continued in various other projects.

See also

• For contrast, the current World Wide Web
  World Wide Web
  The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
  
   and its standards:
  • HTML
    HTML
    HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
    
     - hypertext
  • XML
    XML
    Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
    
     - data model
  • RDF
    Resource Description Framework
    The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
    
     - metadata structure
  • Semantic Web
    Semantic Web
    The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
    
    - "a better World Wide Web"