Hello?

I know you're out there ... I can hear you reading.

According to the Google Marketplace statistics, there are around twenty people (on four! continents) who didn't immediately wipe GlyphOK off of their phones. Don't worry, all I can see are the sanitized totals, I won't be cyberstalking you. But, thanks for being there. Since I started this I have had the phrase "Delusions of Grandeur" running through my head, so the existence of anonymous bystanders (how would I know if you're innocent?) is circumstantially encouraging.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to tell you early adopters what my general plans for the immediate future are (so that you won't worry unnecessarily). Updates to GlyphOK are going to slow down, but that doesn't mean that I'm not still refining the overall system (which is obviously a very very long term project)

Don't hate us or our hiatus

I've started grad school, and all my desire to write has mysteriously vanished. Instrumentation is far from complete, but I'm going to let it sit for a while. I should update the Hypodescription Block, but that is time consuming, and the pointers would initially be non-functional.

This version of Instrumentation is a prototype. It was created to demonstrate that Instrumentation can exist. Instrumentation is far from perfect and it might only be 'usable' by grace of a liberal definition of the word 'use', but it exists all over the place.

The vocabulary needs a complete rewrite. Words are fighting to get into some categories and get out of other categories. The Hypodescription and Articulation blocks need review and rewrite based on linguistic and logical considerations.

I'm not giving up on this project, but I need some time to asses the current structure and decide what to do next. I'll make minor changes when possible.

The State of the 'Art'

GlyphOK is developmentally 'stable' at this point. This means that the only changes will be bug fixes and cosmetics (That bulldog always needs more lipstick. Did you see the "End of Fortune" message? Pretty fancy, right?).

I am currently working on updating the vocabulary. I'm using WordNet and Apertium to create interrelated sets of English words that can be mechanically translated into Spanish. This effort will take a while and I don't have any estimate as to when the new vocabularies will be ready for use. I have put candidate vocabularies out with the Language files so that you can preview new files as I create them. You can also follow the vocabulary development in the Basic, Hypodescription and Described pages.

Plans for the Future

The non-free version of the appliance is actually already running. It has multiple message templates and better message editing functions (search for '###') and it currently looks exactly like GlyphOK.

I'm not going to publish the non-free version of the appliance until there are enough users to make it worthwhile to set up a business account at the bank to handle the massive cash inflow. I'm thinking a thousand users or so would be a reasonable threshold. The price would be $1.77. This would leave me approximately one shiny dollar for each sale after Google and Uncle Sam take their cuts.

Once that happens, I plan on farming development out to someone who actually creates Android applications for a living. Someone who can streamline the user interface and take advantage of Android features (and fix the 'issues') that I haven't touched. Someone who can make the appliance look like a commercial product rather than an arts and crafts ashtray (be honest now). I can make things that work but I've never been good at making them pretty. The average user is more impressed with polish than performance and those are the people that I have to entice.

Some potential updates to the non-free version are:

move the terms to an SQLite database so that it can be used by multiple applications

this should also make start-up faster after the initial load

add more methods for term discovery
automate sentence construction and deconstruction
improve the SMS interface to allow more glyphs in a message
add an email interface so that glyphic messages can have attachments

This would also avoid SMS costs (although email may not be free for some)

add mailing lists for conversing with multiple friends simultaneously
add multiple inboxes for saving important messages
add a feedback button to automate vocabulary updates
add the 'active term' facilities required for Personal Vocabularies
programmatically generate a more coherent basic vocabulary
add the web interface required to download Specialized terms
hire 'Subject Matter Experts' to begin creating the Specialized Vocabulary
hire 'Subject Matter Experts' to oversee the vocabulary translation, etc.
add an interface based on the use of "chorded keyboards"
add "speak the glyph" functions to add another input/output channel
automate Sentence Creation and provide sentence preferences

None of these enhancements exist in the current non-free version because they are beyond the reach of my limited Android development skills and non-existent budget.

If you buy the non-free version, you will get all of the updates for free (whenever they happen). I have plans for a deluxe version someday (for around three bucks), but that will have to wait until I can think of something actually worth three bucks.

The free version will forever remain clunky so that the people who use it can be properly shamed into upgrading. The two versions understand the same glyphs, so you can continue to use the free version (although you should buy the pretty version or no one will respect you).

Semi-Final Thoughts

So, while the user base grows (or shrinks) I will be creating examples of Instrumentation applications for the real world (these examples have their own page). These will be similar to the Business Management section (or the Music section for the really tricky bits). This is intended to show the world that Instrumentation really can be applied to anything. ("Mad, am I? I'll show them. I'll show them all! Mua ha ha ha ... ") I also want to eventually add math and logic tutorials now that the Articulation layer has been updated.

So, those are my plans. This phase could last a while (as in years, it is always a mistake to underestimate conservatism *), so tell your friends, tell your enemies, start conversations with total strangers in awkward situations.

If Instrumentation doesn't succeed, you won't have anything interesting to tell your grandchildren.

I don't know If I will be updating this note every time I update the website, but if anything ever happens I will let you know in the "Latest substantive changes" area.

Depreciated section. See hiatus

Update related to updates (other than itself):

I've settled into a routine of doing updates every other Saturday (but not usually this Saturday **) on a six week schedule. I will update the website twice and then update either the smartphone or the game next. If you check for updates every other Monday that should give me time to fix any (stupid, utterly obvious to any eight year old child) mistakes that (always seem to) pop up right after I make my update.

If your web browser can schedule automatic bi-weekly website update checks, (I.E. if your browser is adequate for the Twenty-First Century) you can use that function to facilitate your casual enjoyment of the progress of the degradation of my mental facilities.

Footnotes

* Fortunately, the next generation will eventually grow up.

** 'Usual' implies that some event happens more often than not. This would require an event to happen more than fifty percent of the time. Since "every other Saturday" is exactly fifty percent of all Saturdays, it cannot be usual regardless of whether it is happening this Saturday or not.

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