Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Infinite canvas notes in the non-Euclidean Poincaré disk

uonr.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 37 posts

Re: Show HN: Infinite canvas notes in the non-Euclidean Poincaré disk

#11

Post by boldslogan »

levmiseri wrote: post #6

Loving the smoothness of this. One concerning thing is overlapping notes – I don't want to be fucking around with trying to move the canvas just right to read a note under another note and there doesn't seem to be any other simple mechanism to resolve this (especially for larger blocks/images). The 'untangle' feature doesn't really solve this.

i think there isnt an overlap if you zoom in more?

just another user. fun app, feel like theres something here. as with all note taking apps pen and paper for me are just so hard to beat.

Re: Show HN: Infinite canvas notes in the non-Euclidean Poincaré disk

#16

Post by AxisAngles »

This is very cool. It maps to my existing understanding of how knowledge actually works.

You often don't need to see the whole hyperbolic disc, only some region in the center, and there, the text would largely still be readable.

The arrows are drawn in hyperbolic space, but the text is not; it really should be. Then there will never be an overlap problem.

Alternatively, the center of the text (or generally the anchor) of the text box could still be oriented to the screen to seed the render orientation, just like it already is, but allow the rest to be drawn following the rules of geodesics in the hyperbolic space. though I don't know if that would work as well.

Re: Show HN: Infinite canvas notes in the non-Euclidean Poincaré disk

#17

Post by penteract »

I'm a bit more interested in what it teaches about the hyperbolic plane than I am in it's effectiveness as a note taking app (although the way it supports an exponentially growing tree does seem appropriate for depicting knowledge - I'd be interested to see something like a force directed graph of Wikipedia plotted on the hyperbolic plane).

The points and arrows do move and change shape appropriately while panning, but the images and text do not. It might be possible to use feDisplacementMap (an SVG filter effect) cleverly to get the deformations right. This would probably make performance worse, and I'm not sure how readable the text would be, but it would mean that things wouldn't start overlapping each other while panning.

Re: Show HN: Infinite canvas notes in the non-Euclidean Poincaré disk

#19

Post by JdeBP »

OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #5

I really like the approach but it'd certainly be nice to be able to use alternate topologies. Also it'd be nice if there was an underlying grid plotting the metric/distance function to help conceptualize distance/relationships better when you get to the edges.

If you look closely, you'll see that some faint dots are already outlining an order 7 triangular tiling.

Re: Show HN: Infinite canvas notes in the non-Euclidean Poincaré disk

#20

Post by uonr »

ofalkaed wrote: post #9

This would be fantastic on a tablet; stylus for entry and fingers for navigation would make it very efficient and a great improvement over the standard infinite page. I would probably pay for a non-web tablet version, it is rare my tablet is connected to the internet.

(I'm the dev) I tried it out on an iPad and it seems to work fine. Let me know if you run into any issues. Supporting direct stylus/Pencil input will definitely be a challenge, but I think it’s worth a shot.
Post reply on HN