News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion?

definition according to wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transclusion

I am building an app where u can tranclude information across any two apps, say (Slack Thread to Notion), here is a demo: https://twitter.com/superusapp/status/1543985142468726785

( 14 comments | 6 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by bryanrasmussen on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @02:28AM (#31985015)
I suppose for it to work the different apps still have to allow drag and drop?

So your monetization would be superusers paying for this app to allow them to do this kind of thing, can you already do it via copy and paste operations?

Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by zhangruinan on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @03:17AM (#31985311)
copy and paste only preserve the content, but not the context. u cannot go back to the original content u copied from.
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by capableweb on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @10:04AM (#31988310)
That might be true in a browser context, but I think both Windows and Linux (not sure about macOS) has the concept of a "clipboard" owner or "controller", which is usually the last application that copied data to the clipboard (although Linux also have the concept of "primary" and "secondary" "clipboard"), so when someone pastes into a application you're writing yourself, you could see where the data is coming from. Of course, you wouldn't be able to see what data the data that was made into the clipboard was derived from, but you get a bit of context at least.

Edit: Actually, my memory about how it works on Linux is a bit foggy, only part I'm relatively sure about is that Windows has the concept of clipboard "owner".

Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by zhangruinan on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @11:02PM (#31996229)
I have once used an app (forget name), which can track down clipboard updates. I uninstall the app mainly because I cannot go back to the "context", only knowing which app the data is from is not enough. For example, I copy a sentence from a chrome to word. There is no url for me to reopen the website.
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by bryanrasmussen on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @04:14AM (#31985678)
Thanks!
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by mikewarot on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @10:56AM (#31988967)
I've been digging into the Memex, and Ted Nelson's take on it with Transclusion for a while now. I know he, REALLY, REALLY thinks it's a great idea... I remain unconvinced at a gut level, though intellectually I suspect Ted is right.

I'm beginning to think a new type of bookmark with 2 ends instead of 1 might be the way to go in terms of meeting this type of functionality in building an associative trail.

Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by compressedgas on Thursday July 07, 2022 @07:03AM (#32012459)
Yes, a Xanadu Waffle. See Literary Machines.
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by elviejo on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @04:53AM (#31985926)
Yes I'm familiar with transclusion from:

Using https://moldabledevelopment.com and emacs.

Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by sdwr on Wednesday July 06, 2022 @11:32AM (#32002460)
I think this is an amazing idea. There are so many possibilities!
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by zhangruinan on Thursday July 07, 2022 @12:15AM (#32009829)
I am thinking implementing the idea of transclusion between any two apps. So users can finnaly connect their usage of different apps into a continuous workflow.
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by Tabular-Iceberg on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @03:07PM (#31992384)
Please don’t abbreviate words that are already very short, it detracts from the legibility of your text. This is not Twitter, the character limit on HN is more than generous enough to allow complete words.
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by the_only_law on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @10:06AM (#31988327)
So kinda like OLE?
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by zhangruinan on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @10:55PM (#31996202)
Re:Ask HN: Are you familiar with the idea of transclusion? by nh23423fefe on Tuesday July 05, 2022 @09:01AM (#31987699)
ole embedding?