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Gzz is an implementation of Ted Nelson's zzstructure. See Gzz in a Nutshell.

News:
  • 2003-04-01: Welcome to Fenfire.org.

  • 2003-02-26: The Gzz project will cease to exist. Using a patented technology (zzStructure) that will not be openly licensed is strictly against the free software philosophy. The code that constitutes Gzz and is not dependent on zzStructure will be split into new projects in a layerwise fashion: some will depend on others but with as much independence as possible. This will enable reuse by others.

    There will be an overall project called Fenfire which will depend on all the others. Fenfire is the whole we're working towards.

    We apologize the last year of silence.

  • 2002-04-14: Name change. The project formerly known as GZigZag is now called Gzz.

  • 2002-03-08: Upcoming name change. Ted Nelson has asked us, due to trademark considerations, not to use the name GZigZag any more. We shall comply with this and will announce the new name shortly, as soon as we come up with it. Once we have the new name, we will release version 0.6.4 with most likely only the name changed.

  • 2002-03-07: News: GZigZag 0.6.3 is released. This is a stable release. We recommend that all users switch to using the 0.6.x series. For information on getting GZigZag, refer to the download page

  • 2001-10-09: Problem with 0.6.1 We've noticed that 0.6.1 doesn't work properly on JDK 1.3.0. This is due to Sun changing the method AWTEvent.consume() to protected. We will release 0.6.2, fixing this problem shortly. In the meantime, try 0.6.0 which does not have this problem. Additionally, for Linux glibc-2.2, note Sun's note about crashes in 1.3.0 and 1.3.1 : stack size must be limited.

  • 2001-10-01: Xanalogical links between different cells quoting the same PDF file! We now have, in the default ZZ space that the current CVS rewrite (to be released as 0.8.0 Real Soon Now(tm)) some Xanadu model spans included from a foreign PDF file, and a visualization which shows the other cells which quote the same file.

    (Screenshot) Note that the screenshot is VERY wide (1023 pixels) so you may have to scroll to see the other side. There are three reduced-size PDF pages on the image, and the two on the right-hand side are shown only because they quote the same mediaserver block containing the same pdf file. No explicit connection was created between the cells!

    This has a momentous significance: whenever you write another comment on the same PDF file, they are all interconnected and never lost in the depths of the system somewhere. "Copying" bits of sources is equivalent to building a hyperstructure. All the hard work is finally starting to pay off - we are using this system ourselves to start putting together a good picture of hypermedia literature for ourselves.

Ted Nelson's zzstructure (trademarked as ZigZag(tm)) is a new way of putting information into computers, kind of a crossing between a database, a filesystem, a personal information manager and many others. And even that isn't sufficient to describe it: it's simply something new. The intention is to have some screenshots up here at some point but we haven't had the time yet.

Gzz is an open-source free software project implementing Zzstructure architecture. Zzstructure is an invention of Ted Nelson, and ZigZag is his trademark for it. ZigZag is no longer used in the name Gzz (it used to be used with permission).

Gzz is not an acronym, it's a buZZword.

Gzz is hosted at Savannah (see links in the margin), and of the features provided we use CVS, two mailing lists (gzz-announce and gzz-commits), there is another mailing list at Xanadu, and the task manager. The other features are currently not in use.

Gzz is directed by Tuomas J. Lukka and implemented by him and others. You are welcome to join in, please read the documentation and talk to Tuomas at lukka@iki.fi.