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In my experience you need to be very careful if you're going to make that kind of interface useful. It is so incredibly easy to get clutter instead of information. Visual Thesaurus almost gets it right by enabling you to show "distant" relationships more faintly. But it still gets very cluttered.
I think the main problem for me is that the size of the screen doesn't easily support this - or maybe it's just the poor artistry of the developers?
In any event, I agree about the usefulness, but I would hate to see UR diverted from its main mission, which it does so well.
There used to be a DOS product called "Houdini" by MaxThink which was truly elegant at this. But even with it, it was so easy to get lost in the minutia.
I don't mean to put a damper on a good idea like this. I voted "interesting." But it needs to be done really well or not at all in my view. And I suspect that doing it really well is not a slam dunk.
Regards,
Bal
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