The Journal 4.0

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2327

Posted by zeoli
2004-12-06 21:37:42

A few weeks ago, I asked this group for recommendations for journaling software because I was fearful that the application I have been using, The Journal by DavidRM Software, was losing its nimble editing ability in a major upgrade. I am pleased to let you know that the developer responded to my comments are restored extended selection ability in the editor… albeit in a little unorthodox way, but nevertheless effectively.

The reason for this note is that I think some of you may be interested in exploring The Journal for its intriguing and extensive information categorization methods. Like so many programs, items are stored in a tree hierarchy, but you can create many different information trees, each of which is stored in its own category. Each category can have sub-categories, and these can have have sub-categories and so on. So, essentially, all information is stored in one large hierarchical “tree,” but you don’t see it that way. The categories are accessible through tabs (which, because of their placement on the screen, mistakenly look as if they apply to the
editor item and not to the tree). In function, then, each category or
subcategory (or subsubcategory…) is like viewing sub-outline in hoist mode, where you only see the items subservient to a certain headline. This in itself makes dealing with the mess of information you can accumulate much easier to deal with, as you never have to view a tree that is too extensive, which, in my view, is the major drawback with most tree-based data managers.

But the developer has added a new feature called TOPICS which helps to cross-categorize your information. In any entry, you can select an amount of text and assign a topic to it, which also color-codes the information for visual identification. You can then search for topics, and get a nifty report listing all the items in which your topic occurs (even across categories), which you can then click to quickly and easily. (FYI, you get the same kind of report when you
search for a text string.)

The program has many other enhancements from the previous version (the new version is 4.0), such as a countdown timer and stop watch, ability to insert tables into your entries, and the ability to do outlining within an entry.

A few caveats: The Journal is first and foremost a writing environment for recording your daily activities. It comes with thesaurus and dictionary. It is not made for quickly capturing text from the web or other sources, though you can do this with cut and paste operations, of course. It does have something called “Get Web Page,” which will grab the contents from a web page if you type the URL into the dialog box. Also, I do not know how snappy the search is in really massive files.

If you’re looking for a dynamic, feature-packed program for storing and categorizing your own writings, The Journal is well worth looking into. (http://www.davidrm.com)

Steve Z.

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