Memoir organization & structure

You can structure and organize your information as its entered or add structure later―perhaps a structure suggested by query results. Non-invasively, Now & Then analyzes, "chunks", and stores your information in forms that facilitate its future retrieval based on its contextual relevance to the subject matter of your queries.

Now & Then uses its own "intelligence" and your rules to organize and re-structure retrieved information as a "virtual" view that includes table-based data, narrative, and multimedia―a view of relevant journal information assembled into a package of narrative, timelines, charts, and graphics. For example, Now & Then might assemble a Virtual View that includes information stored in your "Calories eaten & body weight" log and narrative regarding daily exercise accomplishments.

Structure
Now & Then assembles "virtual" information structures from the smallest building blocks of text and data. It knows all of the terms and phrases and data points you record in your journal. It identifies where, and how, their cross-associations are dependent on context and viewpoint. You might think of words and dates as the "atoms" that are assembled into the journal "elements" of sentences, paragraphs, and time series units.

Every sentence is an element. Each "column" of time in a grid or time series is also an element. For example, if you are monitoring diet and exercise, an element would be one day's: "calories', "weight", "distance walked", and "Walking time".

Now & Then begins with the native or "static" structure of your journal information and "chunks", or reduces, it to its elements for eventual re-assembly and organization into a myriad of context-dependent Virtual Views―Views of journal information that are query-dependent, and completely associative and relative. Your information is re-assembly based on an understanding of your worldview, semantic text indexing, user defined rules, your feedback, and your system training. Using your worldview and the context of your Query, Now & Then makes "good guesses" about when it should re-assemble your information and when it should retain your information's original structure, including multi-paragraph continuity, data table inclusion, time-series placement, and parent-child relationships.

Structured & Free form information
Structured information is stored in grids and tables with spreadsheet-like defined rows and columns or tracked in a time series―ready for presentation using charts and graphs.

Although you may take care in composing your memoirs, your daily "train-of-thought narrative, photos, images, links, and audio usually have little objective structure. In fact, over 80 percent of your journal information will be probably be unstructured narrative.

                                                              continued...memoir structures

see also:  Self-Organizing Memoirs

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