⏾ Concept Map

Types of entries

|↑| Records | Types of entries

｜1st｜: Primary

Anything which isn’t a purely navigational node should have a front-page entry and preferably a definition. There are a few different kinds which meet the need. Here, the title is also the category.

  • Definitions are just that. The best ones contain a sentence like “thing is words”, crystal-clear, simple and clean.
  • Documentation defines lexical items.

Pointers are URL-only entries which, as you might guess, point to the thing at hand, or to something useful for understanding it. There are several kinds for different kinds of things:

  • Link,
  • Reference,
  • Repository,
  • Webpage,
  • Website.
  • Pointers to entries in a database take the name of the database:
    • PyPI,
    • SIMBAD,
    • WorldCat,
    • Open Library.

There are also untitled primary entries, often used in situations where it isn’t reasonable to expect a proper definition, or when echoing across multiple concepts to safeguard against mistakes. Opening with untitled or simply _ creates an untitled entry, hiding it from the topics view. It may still receive a label:

  • _nudge: Points to another concept which may help in understanding the thing at hand. An alternative to sharing the same definition, used in cases where it wouldn’t make sense to do so.
  • _table: Contains a table which is echoed in a line to explain several things at once. _table_ marks cases where the table is in an appendage.
  • _wiki: Special kinds of Wikipedia articles: _wiki_glossary, _wiki_list.
  • untitled_remarks: Mainly excerpts from literature, PDFs. Falls short of the standard of a definition, but still serves to introduce or explain an idea in its place.

And finally, there are two meta slots for primary entries:

  • A _filler entry pads concepts which are sufficiently understandable by inference and therefore don’t need a definition.
  • A _placeholder entry pads concepts which need a definition, but where retrieving it is more work than it deserves at the moment.

｜2nd｜: Secondary

Nothing yet.

｜3rd｜: Tertiary

Same.

｜4th｜: Quaternary

Same. The ordinal ranks are a frontier for future expansion.

｜ENC｜: Encounters

  • An encounter captures the context of where an added concept was found. Encounters also serve as an example of the thing’s usage: for pure vocabulary items, these are example sentences; for code, they’re example constructions. Because they play a key role in introducing things to the site, they have a dedicated page at All about encounters. Labelled _encounter in addition to the category code.

Ungraded, Titled

  • Arguments… …command options, function parameters…
  • Bookmarks are URLs relevant to the concept at hand.
    • The form for titles is Bookmark -- given_title_of_page_by_author_of_content
  • Clippings are extracted copies of a table, figure, etc, from a document. They live off of the document and take the same title as given by the author.
  • Fragments…

Ungraded, Untitled

  • An appendage wraps around irregularly shaped items like images and tables and remove them to their own entry. Labelled _append.