Instead of tapping on the finder icon in the account pane, it can also be dragged and dropped on the playpen canvas.

This is how to create a special kind of placeholder concept called a ‘seeker’.

Seekers

Seekers can take on the qualities of either a topic or a statement, or they can be more of a wildcard. They may be given properties to match. There are two special properties: a seeker can either have a ’name’ property (to match topics) or a ’text’ property (to match statements), but not both. And they can also have a type (some of which may be more typical of topics, others of statements).

Any links drawn between seekers (or between a seeker and a topic or statement) are ‘seeker links’. Seekers, seeker links, and the topics or statements they touch can then be used to search either Polylude – or the current playpen – for ideas matching the created pattern.

Both seekers and seeker links may be marked as ‘optional’ to indicate that as long as a search can match the rest of the pattern, to also consider it a result.

Seeker Links

Besides the special ‘optional’ setting, seeker links may also indicate a minimum and maximum number of ‘hops’.

The use of ‘hops’ is useful when anticipating a chain of concepts which repeats a similar kind of link. If a seeker link indicates hops but specifies no minimum or maximum, results may be chains of indefinite length.

Search Outside

Once you have a pattern of seekers and seeker links, dragging and dropping them onto the Hex button triggers a search.

The kind of search depends on the current context. In the default – draw – context, the search will look for matches outside the playpen.

Search Within

Alternatively, dropping them onto the Hex button in the action or series context searches for the pattern within the current playpen.

Currently this ‘search within’ only recognizes saved or published concepts & links.