Re: Living with Maxthink

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2118

Posted by srdiamond15
2004-08-19 17:41:37

I took another look at MaxThink. Except for those aspects of its design it shares with BrainStorm, I can’t say I’m impressed. Novel features abound, but many seem to be efforts to cope with the limitations at the foundation of the program. (One reviewer claims the program was _written_ in Visual Basic. Is that true? Is Visual Basic even a respectable language for serious programming, as opposed to writing macros?) MaxThink is a strictly one-window affair (with two panes), whereas BrainStorm can open multiple “models,” open two windows on the same model, and split a window.

One of my strongest prejudices concerning outlining programs concerns the availability of the undo function over organizing commands. The programs that have unlimited universal undo—something integral to today’s software that everyone using Office has come to expect. Not to have _any_ undo command in a program that’s supposed to encourage exploration seems completely careless. Unless I somehow missed it, MaxThink offers no undo command AT ALL. (Amazingly, an undo command for reorganization is something ADM 3 still lacks.

BrainStorm has a universal unlimited undo. Other programs similarly blessed seem confined to the Microsoft products (Word and OneNote), NoteMap, and that seems to be it: Word, OneNote, NoteMap, BrainStorm.

srdiamond

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