Re: Outliner shootout at the Userland Corral

< Next Message | Back to archived message list | Previous Message >

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 1785

Posted by srdiamond15
2004-01-03 21:09:12

The issue with MyInfo is that it falls more into the category I call hierarchical free-form databases. That is, it allows you to store information in a tree-structured format—there are a zillion programs like this (Treepad, Jot+, MyBase, etc.).

Do you know why there are so many hierarchical free form databases? Is it that they’re easy to program, or do users like them because of their similarity to the familiar Windows Explorer? Not only are they abundant, but they all do it in pretty much the same way. I think the best of the lot might be KeyNote, which is free.

The innovation in this genre that’s surprisingly rare is to provide a single hierarchy all the way from top to bottom. By that I mean a freeform database with outlining of the data and the ability to treat higher levels the same way as the data levels. (Even better would be to allow outlining in the meta-text or comments, as implemented on the Mac in Ted Goranson’s Nisus outlining macros.) The only product I’m aware of that does this is ADM 2. Microsofts OneNote moves in that direction, but the only ADM implements this idea consistently is ADM 2.

Back to archived message list