The Leaves will display dynamic information of several varieties. The information maintains consistent abstract meaning Numbers are a reliable, regular description of something important about a stock. They can be interpreted within a fixed context in a useful manner. Put another way, the display can follow some simple rules about how to translate the numbers into a pattern of lights. A user of the display is interested in knowing not just the price of Apple stock, but also what its recent trading volume has been and whether it has risen or fallen in price since the opening of the market.
Users configure the display by clipping and unclipping individual components to the display.
Some components will simply be display elements - a user can configure the display to have more information by adding more display. Other components will have special meaning - choosing which particular stock to display in a strand, controling which valencies of data are displayed in what representation. Finally, we need not limit the Leaves system by displaying only information piped in from outside. The Leaves can generate displays on their own as well. Time permitting, we hope to explore alternative uses of the Leaves to see what sorts of applications are natural to this hardware.