Re: MyInfo 3, Jot+, etc., and the vital need for calendars

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2360

Posted by srdiamond15
2004-12-27 20:09:41

Idea! has an excellent implementation of hierarchical key words. I’d say Ideas!‘s is the most straightforwardly logical anywhere. There’s a free version with the same key words feature. Idea! doesn’t actually *call* them key words, but refers to the structure as the ‘category tree.’ Look at that, positioned midway between outline topic and key word structure in form, and you can readily see how the difference involves style alone. Name your outline topics the way you name your key words, and you *have* key words.

The difference between Idea! and UltraRecall, conceptually, is that Idea! has some restrictions on linking. Idea! has two fundamentally different kinds of objects, categories and documents, and a document can never be the child of a category. To remind, categories are every bit the equivalent of key words, and the relationship between a key word and a document runs only one way. To reverse them would be to eliminate the restriction on the way outlining must be done to mirror the workings of key words. Outlining with complete cloning power fully encompasses key words but extends farther.

UR takes it as far as you can go. UR prides itself on allowing any linkage the user wants, even circular structures. MyInfo3 (not quite yet released) occupies the middle ground on this question, taking cloning power only as far as common sense allows.

One concession I must make. I claimed that certain programs all lacked calendars, but I recently discovered that one of them, UR, does have one. But in my defense, it’s such a scrawny thing I don’t think it would satisfy a professional user confronted with time/information interactions.

Essentially what I’m looking for at the moment is a program in which to write books a book in philosophy and for tracking ideas, my own that is. My process currently is that I think in BrainStorm, format the result in NoteMap (well, it’s a nice program, and I have to use it for something), and then put it into some kind of database, which I hope to be able to reorganize easily. When I bought ADM is was the main contender, but it simply is not a highly ergonomic environment and there are too many glitches that I have trouble ever seeing sorted out, when I see how the beta testing proceeds. I am attracted to Idea! Professional because its logic is spot on, but the absence of a multiple document interface knocks it out as a writer. I think the developer plans to upgrade that feature.

So now my choice is between MyInfo3 and UltraRecall. I have a license for both. UltraRecall seems the more capable program, but I find the aesthetic of MyInfo3 so much more congenial that I might overlook the absence of some features I am unlikely to use (such as UR’s rather elaborate metadata system). But then MyInfo3, I recently discovered, has one significant weakness, if you are looking for the best outlining functionality in a database. It isn’t possible to select topics at different hierarchical levels, a rather big defect these days as multiple selection becomes the norm among the top knowledge organizers. And UR is one of the few that has a universal unlimited undo and redo. MyInfo doesn’t apply undo operations in the tree. UR seems simply technically ahead, unless I am overlooking something.

So my heart goes to MyInfo3, as the purest of knowledge organizers, and my mind to UltraRecall, as the most competent receptable for products emerging from BrainStorm. Which will it be? If only all conflicts were so trivial.

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