No. 04 · Study
Constellations on a permanent canvas
A canvas where things stay where they are put. Gather a few into a named constellation, move them as one, take them off the canvas and bring them back exactly where they were.
A folder asks you to decide, before anything else, where a thing lives. A canvas asks something gentler: where would you like to put it for now? Things dropped on this canvas stay where they are put, so that position itself can carry meaning: near, far, above, apart.
A constellation is a few cells gathered on purpose. It has a name and a grip. Drag the grip and the whole group moves together; drag any one cell and it moves alone, and the boundary follows. When a constellation is not needed, it can be taken off the canvas entirely and, later, loaded back exactly where it was.
Click cells to mark them, then Group. Drag a cell or a group’s grip ⠿ to move it. With the keyboard: Tab to a cell, Space marks it, arrow keys move it (Shift for larger steps).
A small canvas written for this page, with invented cells. Mark a few and group them; move the group by its grip; unload it and load it back. The real canvas does more, and draws differently.
Closer to a gathering than a folder
A constellation does not own its members. Each stays an ordinary cell that can be selected, edited or moved on its own. The group is an arrangement laid over them, closer to a circle drawn around some things on a table than to a box they are packed into.
That is also why unloading is safe. Taking a constellation off the canvas removes its placements, not its contents: the notes, images and recordings it gathered are untouched, and its layout is remembered so that it can return as it was.
Where it stands
Exists
- A canvas drawn by a Rust core compiled to WebAssembly, holding notes, images, audio and tracks as cells kept in the account.
- Constellations gathered by lasso or Shift-click, named, moved whole by a grip, and unloaded and loaded back at the same places.
- Unloading deletes nothing. The notes, files and recordings stay as they were.
Not yet, or not decided
- Constellations inside constellations, or one cell in two of them. Today they neither nest nor overlap.
- A final form. This is a point the canvas is passing through.