Thortspace info for techies
This is a technical article. Most users should not need to know any of this.
What are the limits on data that can be stored in Thortspace?
A single Thort can contain:
- up to 56 words
- up to 8 lines
- and up to 7 words per line
More general limits on data storage in Thortspace are listed towards the end of this article.
Logging in to your Thortspace Account and Enabling Realtime Collaboration
For most users there should be little or no configuration required for this. You should be able to simply log in to your Thortspace account from inside a given installation of Thortspace and get going.
However there may be extra configuration required on business and educational networks which have been configured to deliberately block network traffic in various ways. To address some of these issues, I have written a separate article:
Setup
Installation/setup on Android, iPad and Mac is achieved via the relevant AppStores.
On Windows and Linux there is a Setup.exe or package file available for download from https://www.thortspace.com/get-thortspace-app/
On Windows platform, the installation process is managed by Squirrel. The Squirrel installation process leaves an log file in respect of the installation. If you have problems with installation you may want to check this log file.
Program file installation locations
Are platform dependent.
On windows PCs program files are installed to:
Post a comment to ask about other platforms.
Thortspace Setup.exe and SetupThortspace.exe installers should create a shortcut on your windows desktop when they run. It should look something like this:
This desktop short-cut can be used to re-start Thortspace, next time you want to use it. The short-cut icon will be configured something as follows:
Trouble-shooting note: Some Anti-virus software may block the creation of the desktop short-cut.
When Thortspace installs, it should add a shortcut icon to your Windows desktop which you can use to start the program next time you want to use it.
If you don’t see this, my guess is that there is some software or local policy in place on your machine that is blocking access to the Windows desktop?
Sometimes, in particular, Anti-virus software blocks programs (especially Setup.exe files) from doing various things, including creating desktop icons.
You could try (at your own risk) disabling your anti-virus software and re-running the setup.exe.
Or specifying an exception in your anti-virus software that will allow the Setup.exe to run without being interfered with.
If all else fails you could manually create a desktop short-cut to the executable file (see below) — but this not an ideal solution as it probably will give rise to everytime there is update to the App that the short-cut will stop working.
Please let me know how you get on with any of this.
File format for Thortspace spheres
Thortspace spheres are currently stored in protobuf format, which as I understand it is an open standard that can at least theoretically at some future stage be made accessible in a whole variety of ways.
Google says: “think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler.”
Local file locations
Are platform dependent.
On windows PCs files are stored at:
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Gooisoft\Thortspace
Also on Windows PCs Thortspace program files are also stored under your AppData directory, but at “\Local\ThortspaceMG”.
On Android or iOS you can’t manually get at spheres; ie. you won’t be able to find the folder by hand because it’s in private app data rather than in the shared-and-visible-to-all-apps storage that Android lets you copy files to and from.
Post a comment to ask about other platforms.
Related:
Thortspace Premium and Free Services run on Google’s infrastructure
Thortspace Premium and Free services can be used to:
- Sync spheres between devices
- Collaborate in realtime with other Thortspace users
- Share sphere files with other users so that you can all work on the same spheres at different times (or the same time)
- Back-up your sphere files
- Publish spheres to the Web with one-click.
Thortspace services are Powered by Google App Engine
Thortspace Premium and Free services run on Google App Engine and your sphere data is stored on Google’s Cloud Data storage. Your data is as secure on our service as it is on any of Google’s native services.
Information Syncing the “Local Cache” to Google’s Cloud Datastore
Background information about how the Thortspace App syncs the local cache of saved Thortspace spheres to Google’s cloud datastore is discussed in the paragraphs of text under the top graphic in the following article (which also discusses now the synchronisation process has now been made explicit in the Thortspace App UI):
Encryption and Data privacy
Your cloud data is stored in Google’s global data centre network, where it is encrypted at rest, in transit, and in backups, and physically protected by access controls, guards, video surveillance, and perimeter fencing. Employee background checks, vulnerability management, and internal audits are used to protect it to the same standards used for Google’s own data.
All data transmitted between you and this cloud, including your private data and your authentication credentials, is encrypted by industry-standard TLS to protect against eavesdroppers and MITM attacks, and communication between collaborating users is encrypted using TLS with key exchange occurring via the cloud to secure against impersonation.
Google’s cloud is certified under the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework for meeting EU data protection law for storage of personal and sensitive data for EU customers.
See our data protecting and data privacy document here:
Permission to Read Contacts
At the moment of install on Android and iOS devices, the Google Playstore and the Apply AppStore prompts users to accept a number of permissions in respect of the software. One permission in particular may stand out for some users: “Permission to Read Contacts”.
On Android devices, the “permission to read contacts” is used to implement the share dialog. The share dialog is used so that users can share Thortspace content (“spheres”) and collaborate on them in real-time with your contacts.
On iOS the permission is also being used to enable Thortspace users to Share Thortspace content with your contacts.
Essentially the point is to save you from having to type in email addresses when you want to share spheres with your contacts.
We do not harvest, store or sync contact information, or use any such information for any other purpose than to save you from having to remember the email addresses of your contacts and type them in.
The share suggestions are done locally on your device.
Once again, just to mention, the Thortspace privacy policy is here:
Sharing and Collaboration
Sharing on Thortspace works by having a local cache which is synced to Google Cloud Storage, but also supports realtime collaboration. Realtime collaboration is supported by each instance of Thortspace App being able to be a server, and receive direct connections from other users’ Thortspace apps.
More about Sharing and Collaboration is here:
What’s the maximum number of people that can be collaborating on one sphere?
The rough version is something like this:
Maximum number of realtime collaborators —
- ie. people working concurrently on a sphere at the same time — maybe 100
Technical note for techys: Because realtime collaboration is peer-to-peer (https://techterms.com/definition/p2p) it depends on the hardware that the collaborators are using (not our ie. Google’s servers) and how fast and reliable the internet connections are (because these are used to connect each peer to each other).
Maximum number of sharing collaborators —
- ie. people visiting a sphere at different times, doing some editing and then stopping before someone else does some editing — there is no theoretical limit to this.
Thortspace cloud service has its infrastructure on Google. So the practical limitations of this are probably things like how many Thorts you can put on a sphere (you can work round this by having multiple spheres).
In particular the following limits have been set:
- Maximum number of thorts per sphere: 10,000
- Maximum number of category sets: 1,000
- Maximum number of two-way links per sphere: 1,000
- Maximum number of path types per sphere: 1,000
- Maximum number of path-steps per sphere: 10,000
- Maximum sphere radius: 400 “units”
- Minimum sphere radius: 30 “units”
- Maximum number of characters used in a name of something (eg. a category)
These limits are theoretical. Limitations of the User’s hardware will quite possibly intercede before any of these limits are readily approached.
Thortspace trouble-shooting articles are listed here:
