Re: Up & Coming Contenders / Ideaspad / Hyperclip / XML

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2074

Posted by sub
2004-07-26 09:16:38

[ Here are two new free form database programs that deserve mention because of the speed of their ongoing development and the ability and conscientiousness of their developers ]

I’d just like to mention here Ideaspad, a product suggested at this forum for its use of templates; it’s a simple way of combining free-form and structured data.
http://www.mindwarp-consultancy-software.com/ideaspad-shareware-download.html

At the time I was sceptical for its use of HTML rather than XML to store the form data; Ideaspad developer responded and has included a comprehensive XML exporting feature in the new version (currently a Release Candidate I believe). At $25 I think it’s definitely worth taking a look at.

Incidentally, Hyperclip, mentioned elsewhere, apparently uses XML as its native format, which I think is an added benefit.

In the long term, I guess that all outliners and similar programs should switch to XML as a native format; then we can perhaps use a standard like the Resource Description Framework (RDF) to ensure that files are interpreted in the same way from all programs we use; and then (am I talking science fiction here?) we’ll be able to switch between tools depending on their individual strengths in composing / viewing / re-organising and our own preferences (right/left brain etc) without worrying about the technicalities of the underlying data since we will all be using the same file formats.

OK. I may have been carried away, but it still seems reasonable, doesn’t it?

alx

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