2002: anything better than MORE 3.1 ?

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 1494

Posted by rh
2002-11-03 21:58:18

In 1999 I posted to this group my experiences with MORE and VISIO (the joke!)... http://www.outliners.com/discuss/msgReader$226

It’s 3 years later: has any tool emerged in Mac or PC land that is a good site architecture planner for websites? Must have both hierarchical text entry, plus graphical control over flowchart display mode.

Have no idea if this list is still active. But someone emailed me out of the blue last month from India—having seen the above discussion—and asked if I had discovered any great tools since then. I told him no… so then I looked at Google for an hour or so, and just clicked around a bit and found some stuff that I have not followed up on yet. Wondering if anyone is experienced with any of the tools mentioned below. If so, please email me at:

. Thank you!

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The following are simply excerpts of what looked like maybe some promising leads for decent flowcharting tools… I have no experinece with any of them.
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First, from the ADS on Google:

http://www.smartdraw.com/specials/flowchart.asp?id=10517
“Create Great-Looking Flowcharts, Process Flow Models, and Concept Maps with SmartDrawóDownload It Free!”

http://www.pacestar.com/edge/index.html
Awarded highest rating by Ziff-Davis
“I have looked for years for a proper, useful diagramming and flowcharting tool and, while I’m not sure why tonight, of all lucky nights, I should find your product, I did and I am blown away. Thank you for putting in all the things that I’ve ever wished for in a tool!” - M.D.

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this may not be directly helpful but see this:
http://www.know-center.at/de/divisions/publications/pdf/hrollett2001-01.pdf
go to page 10 and 11… (I myself have been envisioning a tool called “answermaps”... but not even close to doing it)

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—- a few things i clicked around and looked at, ; some apps are mentioned but i did not followup yet… this discussion may lead you to finding one: emails of people too http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=4229

SOME EXCERPTS FROM THAT DISCUSSION:

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Other people have other opinions on outliners. This site has a really good section on outliners and brainstormers:
http://john.redmood.com/organizers.html *** GREAT PAGE

graphical brainstorming tools:
http://john.redmood.com/brainstorming.html *** GREAT PAGE

I also use Action Outline & Treepad as outliners. Action Outline is shareware, Treepad has a plaintext free version and a rich text/encrypted/etc. shareware version.

I use outliners to organize my thoughts from time to time, or to keep structured information. Action Outline has some really great export features (like auto numbering of the outline, auto commenting of the node headlines /* node headline */ in any format you choose, though I tried putting C++ code into it and it refused to save. Ah well. I wrote their tech support but I don’t think they did anything to fix it.

Mark W
Tuesday, March 05, 2002

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Today, as I fumbled through making an E-R diagram in Visio, I thought to myself that this is a perfect example of what software should not do. Specifically, anytime that it takes 10x longer to create something using software than it does with a pencil and paper, the software has missed the point.

I like to use MS Project and Visio as examples of poor UI design. I use them primarily because they are the tools of choice at my company for communication project timelines and creating diagrams, respectively.
Visio is an example of the other major UI design problem I see: flip-flopping input devices. Half the Visio tasks are done with a mouse and half are done with the keyboard.
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http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn/Articles/PickSql/Appendex1.html
“I use Visio for my initial data diagrams. Once the project gets started, then the built-in database ER tools are used. I also do make some general ìflowî diagrams for the client during the information gathering process. This ìflowî diagrams are *most* useful to the client during discussions, and as to what/how things are going to be done. “

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I can recommend Doxygen [ http://www.doxygen.org ] - it simlpy rocks. It can read Java, C, C++ (and PHP, if you try hard enough), and produces docs in RTF, HTML, CHM, unix man pages and beautiful LaTeX (compilable to PS or PDF). The docs map all classes and relationships (producing clickable class diagrams), optionally creates extensive cross referenced and review-ready code, maps #include and import dependencies, and generally does an excellent job of putting order into the chaos of ANY project.

If you go as far as actually marking up your source with Doxygen specific markup (which is basically enhanced JavaScript), you get high quality user presentable documentation, which can be used from inside Visual Studio and others; ....

Gets transformed into quality formatted documentation in any of the formats above.

Ori Berger
Monday, March 04, 2002

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You might want to have a look at Enterprise Architect from Sparx systems ( http://www.sparxsystems.com.au ).
It’s a nice tool for less than $150.
It beats rose in my view.
I even went so far as registering it… A really good product with added diagrams. Well Visio does them too but this one looks better to me.

Philippe Back
Monday, March 04, 2002

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But I have tried HARD to get Visio to do what I want—I have to, because some students want me to teach it—and it just fails to live up to the high standard that ROSE sets. It’s a far better drawing tool, but a much lesser modeling tool. And modeling is the key, not just drawing. You should never be drawing pretty pictures; you should be editing a model, using the pretty pictures as your user interface to the underlying model. Visio does this much better than it used to, but it still doesn’t come close to what ROSE will do.

Martin L. Shoemaker
Tuesday, March 05, 2002

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After experimenting with UML using Visio and other Visio diagraming tools, I finally turned to Mindmaping. The tool MindManager ( http://www.mindjet.com ) is really good in creating and exporting Mindmaps. I use it to evaluation design options, alternate solutions, document design and even prepare the final spec doc and a project plan.

Extremely useful tool.

Check out the site

http://www.mind-map.com
http://www.mindjet.com

Nitin Bhide
Tuesday, March 05, 2002

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Access 2000 finally added File, Print Relationships after generations of developers had spent time capturing and printing screenshots of the relationships window.

I’m just starting to look at Rational XDE, which promises round-trip modeling in Visual Studio .NET. If it works I may finally switch from pencil & paper to a UML tool, at least for some projects.

Mike Gunderloy
Monday, March 04, 2002

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http://www.anoto.com/
http://www.business2.com/articles/web/0,1653,38392,FF.html?ref=cnet

Looks pretty impressive. Doodle a diagram, it gets plopped into a computer, and you can e-mail by writing an email address in the right field and checking “e-mail this page” e-mails the page. It doesn’t do anything beyond that, but it seems cool. It looks similar to a white-board tool we had. You suction cupped a 3 foot long thing to the white board, and put wrappers on all your markers. You had to press a little extra hard with the market to trigger the tracking function, but it did update to the computer. The only problem with it was the limited size it would recognize. We had wall sized white boards and it only recognizes something like 3 feet by 4 feet. I’m not sure if and how it handled erasures.

Mark W
Tuesday, March 05, 2002

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I would like to recommend a really great tool that I had the opportunity to use a couple of months ago, called Mimio. It is a whiteboard accessory that you attach to any whiteboard, allowing you to transfer your handwritten diagrams to a computer. It works by having a base station attached to the borders of the whiteboard, and special drawing pens which then are used by the base station to read coordinates and colors. It even has a eraser component that allows in-progress editing of a diagram while you are drawing it.
Please go to the link below for more info:
http://www.mimio.com

The drawbacks are of course that the Mimio diagrams are not machine-understandable at all, they do not compile, they do not generate code, and once saved, you can not edit them without redrawing them again on the whiteboard.
But I really don’t care. I love this product, it is easy to use, and ideal for quick UI design, brainstorming and drawing simple diagrams of any kind. Have I already mentioned that I love this product? :-)

Gabriel Lima
Tuesday, March 05, 2002
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On tools able to support my thinking, here is the current list of mine:

- MindManager (MindMaps)
- Axon2002 (better than MindManager for multidimensional data sets)
- Visio Modeler (ORM)
- Enterprise Architect (UML+UIs+Requirements+Reverse/Fwd code engineering)
- Plain old word/excel/access/powerpoint
- A decent vector drawing program able to produce windows metafiles

Rose is installed but not used anymore (except for teaching it… which will allow you to see the limitations).

WhiteBoard Photo from pixid. http://www.pixid.com. Very useful !

As a final comment: boxes and arrows work fine in some settings. In others, either put a lot of text in/aside them or move to a richer notation (why not UML), allowing you to spend less saliva explaining the boxes and the arrows so you can concentrate on moving forward and not running in place.

Philippe Back
Tuesday, March 05, 2002

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