# 260614 — ZigZag / zzstructure deep dive (an information space as orthogonal dimensions)

Date: 2026-06-14

## What this is

A focused study of **Ted Nelson's ZigZag** and its data model **zzstructure**, asked
through a specific shard-wiki question: a wiki page is linked in many independent ways
at once — a **namespace** tree, a **created-from / genealogy** lineage, **hyperlinks**,
plus shard-wiki's own **shard / overlay / version / transclusion / equivalence**
relations. Could the information space be modelled as a zzstructure, where each
relationship is a first-class **dimension** and none is privileged?

Distinctive material:
- the zzstructure model — **cells**, **dimensions** (edge colours), **ranks**,
  **posward/negward**, and the one rule that defines it: *at most one posward and one
  negward neighbour per dimension per cell* (a directed coloured multigraph)
- **views** — I-view (one dimension), **H-view** (pivot two dimensions into a cross),
  raster-vs-view
- trees/lists/tables as *spent dimensions*; many-to-many graphs as the hard case
  (handled by **clones**)
- **clone ↔ transclusion** convergence with the Xanadu dive

## Contents

| Path | Role |
|------|------|
| `findings.md` | zzstructure model, views, fit analysis, a proposed dimension map for a shard-wiki space, recommendation (lens not store), INTENT mapping, UC seeds, architecture notes, sources |

## Status

Initial deep dive complete. Three new use cases promoted to `spec/UseCaseCatalog.md`
(UC-47 navigate-by-dimension, UC-48 H-view pivot/cross-tab, UC-49 genealogy
dimension); UC-05/17–22/26/29 enriched. A **dimensional projection layer** is logged
as architecture for `workplans/SHARD-WP-0002-federation-architecture.md`.

**Recommendation recorded:** adopt zzstructure as a **navigation / visualization /
indexing lens** (a derived dimensional projection over the union), **not** as the
storage substrate — Git and sovereign shards remain canonical (INTENT Stability Note).
The many-to-many hyperlink graph does not fit zzstructure's rank constraint and stays a
separate graph index. Pairs with `research/260614-xanadu-deep-dive/` (clone ↔
transclusion).
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