Radu Luchian(ov): Pastime: Commentary
MonDoc as a Post-it engine

I seem to be at a loss any time I try to explain MonDoc to people
... so here's an analogy.

I bet you know about stickies. Or Post-its. The little bright-colored pieces of paper which have a bit of glue at one end and come in nice little stacks?

Nifty little tricks, aren't they?

• Wanna leave a reminder to yourself or someone else? Pop a stickie on an available surface, jot down the reminder.
• Wanna put a quick note on a document on which you can't or won't write? Pop a stickie that underlines the text you're referring to and jot down the note.
• Wanna make a quick diagram of the office or a quick plan for a project? Jot down some notes or deadlines on stickies and play around with them on a whiteboard.
• Wanna arrange ideas, keep a player roster for a game, keep track of phone numbers or otherwise organize small sets of data? Stickies help in all of these cases.

So how does MonDoc relate to any of this? It is a modular relational database system with rendering. So one of the most useful 'objects' it can handle are post-it-like layout elements which I call "Panes". These float on top of a normal web page, can be moved around, can contain text, images or any other DHTML code one might want to add. Essentially they add to the browser the possibility to digitally shuffle pieces of 'paper' as one would do in the real world. With the added benefit that digital 'paper' can be more easily moved, stored, searched, edited, linked, automated, etc.

But stickies are mostly static layout elements. By themselves, they offer a lot to layout designers, but not much to functionality programmers. By placing active objects on panes, one can really transform a document into an interactive application or even a programming environment.