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: 2379

Posted by srdiamond15
2004-12-28 20:38:29

I’ve never tried Zoot!, but I have downloaded it repeatedly and looked at it, only to emerge with the same reaction—what’s the big deal? I have two clip managers that assign things to folders based on rules and one of them takes other more complex rule-based actions. Zoot’s virtual folders seem not only unforbidding but rather trivial. Like why would I want to organize information in this nuts and boltsy way.

Of course I’m certain my _impression_ is entirely false. Zoot! in my scheme is the quintessential professional organizer. I have seen features I would like to see in a knowledge organizer, so I know it must be well-designed. I just haven’t looked at it more closely because I don’t need an instrument of its nature. I don’t receive tons of email or have to react to any other electronic fluctuations in cyberspace.

But Daly seems to me the perfect Zoot! candidate, intimidated it seems by a complexity that I don’t see. Maybe I’m missing the complexity in the same way I’m missing Zoot!‘s strengths, but what can be so daunting about setting up virtual folders and rules for transitioning between them? I think InfoHandler is the more complex program, if only because it seems more adversely affected by errors. To be easily learnable a program should be permissive of bad moves. They should be easily correctable, and shouldn’t readily lead to a whole edifice being constructed on a rotten foundation. Intolerance of error is the reason Literary Machine is so difficult to learn. There are a few bad things you can do in InfoHandler that cannot be corrected without dismantling a lot of work. With its emphasis on folders, each with its own rules, it seems to me Zoot! should be a pretty forgiving program.

Did the ease of learning and using

Perhaps Steve Cohen was thinking of mouse operation when he characterized the ergonomics of GrandView. And I’ve heard that before—that DOS programs could be more ergonomic than our current offerings, I guess because of their use of the keyboard. (Something which relates to one of Daly’s arguments. Daly said the mouse and keyboard commit the alleged sin of compartmentalizing functions. I said they didn’t. But in actuality, the mouse and keyboard is an intermediate case, somewhat compartmentalized, somewhat overlapping. I understand the guy who invented the mouse says using it is a waste of time.

If DOS programs—in the hands of capable users—were actually more ergonomic (or transparent, which comes to much the same), then maybe the inherent ergonomics of a good DOS program overcame the obstacles to implementing an ergonomic interface in so complex and multi-functioned a program. And it wasn’t ported because an intergration mindful of ergonomics wasn’t possible over such complexity in Windows. (?)

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