Yearning

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 1912

Posted by ureadit
2004-05-15 09:28:04

Today, this site has virtually become a real-time chat room. Clearly there are many of us searching for our “perfect PIM.” It seems to me that even if there were a super programmer out there who could create whatever we asked, each of us has two, tough questions we need to think hard about:

What functionality do I really want in MY PIM?
How (by what mechanisms) would that functionality be achieved?

Perhaps those of us who are seriously thinking about this should start a thread on this topic…or, perhaps, a weave of threads. For example, for messages related to this subject, we might begin each Title heading with two asterisks,**.

For example, JP’s message 1905 listed a couple of functionalities:

“Lastly, I’m still thinking about the question you pose at the top of this thread. Suppose we completely ignore the existence of all the software tools discussed so thoroughly here. What if we just concentrate on the work we do, and how we do it. We outline to write coherent and organized documents, and deploy information (retrieved from databases?) to flesh out our writing. So outlining (hieracrhy) *must* come first. Secondarily, keywords inside the outline can link to other information and turn those skeletal outline elements into full sentences/thoughts. So when you say “Hierarchy doesn’t exclude key words” you’re absolutely right. I just think that the outline (hierarchy) must always come first.

“Organizing thoughts for writing and storing/retrieving information are different activities, and I think these deliberations (and all that powerful, confusing software) confirm that. Fun to think about, though!”

On the mechanism side, I’ve suggested that a tree serves as a highly flexible table of contents, while a good FIND function can be thought of as having the functionality of a sophisticated index.

Any thoughts?

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