It’s a girl! - The Thortspace Genesis Quickstart
Thortspace now has a sister: “Thortspace Genesis”.
Please note that all content in Thortspace Genesis is currently public. Private content is coming soon.
Please also note if you arrived here looking for tried and trusted regular flavour old faithful Thortspace, you will find that here: https://www.thortspace.com or here: https://thort.space (whereas Thortspace Genesis is a new experimental product in the Thortspace universe and probably not what you’re looking for)
(0) Send me an email (andrew@thortspace.com) to let me know you’re trying it out. Then I will send you a link to the zip file and provide help as desired. Download Thortspace Genesis zip file to your Windows computer. Extract the folder and run the file called: Thortspace V2 Codename Genesis. (Instructions for Oculus, iPad, Android, Mac, Linux coming soon — check back!)
(1) Log in to Thortspace Genesis using your regular Thortspace account credentials.
(2) When login has finished you will see the main menu button.
(3) Click the main menu button to see the main menu.
(4) Choose Profile from the main menu to update you profile information. At the current time this is just your first and last names and your profile picture. Paste the file path to the location of your a picture on your local hard drive and click “Update Picture” to update your profile picture. You ought to do this now, before doing anything else with Thortspace Genesis. Also enter your first and last names and click “Update profile”.
(4) Click the MyArrangements main menu item to see the list of your Arrangements (ie. the ones you have created and therefore the ones that you own). If this is your first time using Thortspace Genesis, the list will be empty.
(5) This is not my first time …
(6) Click the arrangement you want to open, or click “New Arrangement” to create a new arrangement.
(7) The new arrangement will initially have one group and one thort in that group.
(8) Click on the Thort to edit it.
(9) Click “Colour Picker” to choose a colour for your Thort.
(10) Click on the Group text to edit the Group text and the Group colour in the same way you edited the Thort.
(11) Click on a group wherever you see the “+” plus cursor to insert a new Thort.
(12) To add a new group click the “+ Group” button on the side of an existing group.
(13) Click on the new group to go to it and start editing it.
(14) Drag from the centre of one thort to another thort to create a PathStep between those two Thorts.
(15) Click on the PathStep to edit its colour (just like you do for Thorts and Groups).
(16) Drag thorts to reposition them within a group. Also drag thorts between groups to change the composition of groups. Note that you can only drag your own thorts unless you are the owner of the Arrangement.
(17) Select the Arrangement Information button to see the Arrangement Information dialog box. Here you can change the name of your Arrangement if you are the Arrangement owner.
Below I change the name of my new arrangement to “Two Groups”.
(18) From the main menu click the “Everyone’s Arrangements” button to see a list of Everyone’s Arrangements. The main menu button will either be in the centre of the window or the top-left corner.
Next I will open an arrangement that belongs to someone else, for example William Shakespeare.
This is what Shakespeare’s Third Arrangement looks like:
Notice that I can’t edit thorts or groups that do not belong to me.
When I go to the Arrangement Information dialog for an arrangement that I don’t own, I can see a “Join” button. This allows me to join the arrangement as a Collaborator, so that I can add Thorts to it.
Now that I’ve joined the arrangement I can add my own thorts and groups to it. I cannot edit anyone else’s thorts or groups, but I can add thorts to them. Also I can create Pathsteps between other people’s thorts and my own. If the Arrangement owner decides to remove me from the Arrangement, all my thorts will be removed as well. However the Arrangement owner cannot edit my thorts. If the Arrangement owner removes me from the Arrangement, I will not be able to add myself back unless they invite me to come back.
(19) An arrangement owner can manage collaborators on an arrangement by using the Manage Collaborators dialog. Click the Manage Collaborators button to open the Manage Collaborators dialog.
Notice that because I am a collaborator on William Shakespeare’s arrangement, I appear on the list on the left. If William wants to remove me from the Arrangement, all he has to do is click on my name on the list on the left. Similarly, to add others to the Arrangement, just click their names on the list on the right.
(20) Arrangements can get quite interesting. Here’s one or two I created earlier.
Release History
TSv2.0.014 Genesis.zip
(0) Implements a significantly better precising of Thort text on zooming out, and complete display of whole thorttext when zooming in on a Thort
(1) Implements being able to drag the focused group with the mouse to translate the entire structure relative to the camera.
(2) Implements having a “selected” state for both ThortGroups and Groups
so that a first click on a thort in the focused group just brings it to the middle, only a second click on it, displays the edit box. And a first click on the focused group just selects it, only a second click adds a thort.
TSv2.0.013 Genesis.zip
Fixes three bugs:
(1) The G->G new pathstep guide line would disappear when the mouse pointer was dragged over the control sphere.
(2) 0.3f alpha being applied to T->T pathsteps — should only be applied to G->G pathsteps
(3) Under some circumstances editing a thort and then a editing a group text was erroneously copying the thorttext over the group text when the edit button was clicked or tapped.
Release notes:
Known bugs in TSv2.0.013:
- In order to scroll the text in the thort edit box, you have to click the edit button, which is not great for a bunch of reasons. Reliably reproducible.
- Bug/Issue If you don’t re-root the arrangement before adding a new thortgroup, the new group appears in a weird place. Reliably reproducible.
- When trying to use the #main #menu, the menu disappears if you go too far away from the centre of the circle. Reliably reproducible.
- On one occassion when I tried to create a new arrangement, the wait-timer kept turning for a long time and I lost patience. Don’t know if it would eventually have worked. After a restart I tested again and it worked. I don’t know how to reliably reproduce this.
- When adding a new thort we can get a thort #rendered #twice (ie. a visual duplicate of what is in fact only one thort as far as the data layer is concerned). I don’t know how to reliably reproduce this.
TSv2.0.012 Genesis.zip
(1) Adds missing circle button icons to recently added circle buttons
(2) Makes GG pathsteps transparent, thereby making a typical arrangement network much less confusing to look at
(3) Makes navigation to move a group to the centre focus simpler by not automatically re-rooting the network from a new root group.
(4) Re-rooting the current arrangement is now a separate operation which can be applied from a button at 6 o’clock on the current focused group.
TSv2.0.011 Genesis.zip
(1) Allows Group->Group pathsteps to be created between any arbitrary pair of existing groups, and Group->Group pathsteps deleted between any pair of groups where it would not create orphan groups within the arrangement.
TSv2.0.010 Genesis.zip
(1) Fixes a bug that sometimes prevented users from adding new groups.
TSv2.0.009 Genesis.zip
(1) Enables users to move groups at “level 1” (ie. what in version 1 of thortspace was “the current sphere”) independently of each other. Constrast this with being able to rotale the entire structure of groups. This recovers some version1 functionality that had been missing in version2. See:
(2) Fixes some bugs
TSv2.0.008 Genesis.zip
(1) Reduces the size of the font of text in the thort and group editing boxes — making it more pleasant to write longer sections of text into a single thort.
(2) Automatically identifies “keywords” ie. longer words, to display on thorts when the edit box is closed. Lots of improvements can be made to this algorithm, but it is a good first go at it.
(3) Enables automatic identification of URLs in thort texts (any text that begins with www or http or https). Automatically enables following links to webpages in a browser. Some minor bugs related to this functionality still exist, and significant improvements readily possible, but as with point 2, this is a good first go at this functionality.
TSv2.0.008 Genesis Release video:
PREVIOUS NOTES:
Video introduction:
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