in reply to Nested Loops: A cautionary tale about exponential growth

I'm not understanding why you think it's necessary to create a full enumeration of all possible combination over a 3 x 2 x 11 x 7 x 5 x 4 x 5 x 4 parameter set.

Isn't it really a matter of having 8 independent sets of parameters? For each parameter, you just hold the other 7 constant, and show the (2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 7 or 11) different values available for the parameter in focus.

Imagine just 8 rows of radio buttons (number of buttons per row = number of choices for that parameter), along with 8 rows of sample text (each text row demonstrates the appearance of the different options for that one parameter, given that all other parameters are held constant).

When the user selects an option in each of the 8 rows and then submits, the next display shows the 8 lines of text based on the various selections -- e.g. the line that shows the different font weights will have its style, variant, size, family, etc all held constant, based on the user's selections for those other parameters.

This approach means that the user can only see a subset of the possible variations on any one page, but at least the page isn't overwhelming.

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Re^2: Nested Loops: A cautionary tale about exponential growth
by Jenda (Abbot) on Feb 26, 2010 at 10:23 UTC

    With a little bit of JavaScript you do not even need the submit. The example text below the rows of radiobuttons may change as you click the radiobuttons.

    Jenda
    Enoch was right!
    Enjoy the last years of Rome.

      Update: After re-reading the text, my message doesn't make sense. I originally thought he meant that he was going to provide example text below, which wasn't in his post. Perhaps I need to get my eyes checked again...


      Jenda:

      That's a really terse example ... I don't follow.

      </big_grin>

      ...roboticus