NOTE: this is an experimental view.
Information City view is intended to explore Andreas Dieberger's Information City concept from the 1990s. As an experimental view, it is not necessarily finished in all aspects individuals users might want. Its purpose is to allow users interested in Dieberger's ideas to explore them within Tinderbox and to aid discussion as to whether such an approach makes a meaningful addition to the exploration of information.
This is from the abstract to Dieberger's 1997 A City Metaphor to Support Navigation in Complex Information Spaces:
A major problem for users of modern information systems is the retrieval of new and previously viewed information from the system. Systems like the Word-Wide Web are heavily interlinked but do not communicate structure that helps users to navigate the information it contains. The use of appropriate navigation metaphors can help to make the structure of modern information systems easier to understand, and therefore, easier to use.
We propose a conceptual user interface metaphor based on the structure of a city. Cities are very complex spatial environments and yet, people are used to navigating within cities. They know how to get information, how to reach particular destinations, and how to make use of the infrastructure. Furthermore, cities possess a unique set of navigational tools that lend themselves to creating sub-metaphors. A city metaphor makes this existing knowledge about a structured environment available to the user of a computerized information system.
Essentially, in the Information City view notes are represented by buildings. It shows only the contents of a single container within the document (tin that sense, akin to Map view). The styling of a building can represent other metadata. The resulting city is shown in a 3D render allowing the human visitor to walk around it. The location and juxtaposition of buildings is intended to aid navigation, recall and serendipitous discovery.
Configuration of the view is achieved via the views context menu, supported by a small number of system attributes in a new 'InformationCity' group.
More information on configuration an use of this view:
See also—notes linking to here: