I've worked with Ted on Zigzag and think it's a brilliant piece of software. More people should check out the Java version of Zigzag, Gzz. Basically, where the WWW was Word for the Internet, Zigzag is Excel to the Internet.
It's like Excel in that there are connected 'cells' (called that in Excel and Zigzag), but instead of being in a grid, they can be connected via a link to another cell. A link is either - or +, and the link has a dimension (eg, d.1 or d.name, or d.date). A cell has a string of text as its value.
So say we have 2 cells (which are numbered uniquely), cell 1 and 2. "1+d.1" points to 2, while "2-d.1" points to 1. Cell 1's text is "Here" and cell 2's text is "There".
The final element is that there is a cursor, which sits on a cell, and the program follows all the links from the cursor and draws them onto a canvas, and then shows it.
The user interface lets you make links, break links, edit the text in the cell, delete a cell, and show cells adjacent to the cursor cell. Another aspect is that the screen draws 3 dimensions, and you can toggle the ones shown. This is because showing every dimension is impossible, so we view a subset. It's not a static environment: rather, you make new cells, link them all together, etc.
My work was making a C version. Existing versions were a Perl version (the original prototype) and Gzz (an excellent Java version).
I should have improved Gzz instead of making my own version, but porting it from Perl to C was a good learning experience.
I then made a Lisp version which works great.
Finally, one challenge was getting Ted to accept my innovations and new features, but that isn't easy, so I had to stop working on my version of Zigzag, and maybe even stop using it.
