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: 2407

Posted by srdiamond15
2005-01-01 18:34:50

I almost replied that if you find a pim costing under $100 that actually imports rtf files directly into its pages as though pasted (but better), I would buy it. Hyperclip doesn’t; at least not that I can see. Even UR only imports rtf (along with most any other format) in a special way, so that it is opened by the nature program and is not immediately visible within the notes.

Had I said this, though, I would have had to buy TexNotes Pro, which I’m not sure about but may just have to purchase anyway. No one but me has remarked on this new version 4 of TexNotes, which is a big upgrade and even gets rid of the teddy bear. It does so much, a lot of which I’m not sure I need, that I worry that if I used it, I would end up playing with it all day. It contains drawing and painting modules, for example. It also contains a feature called notebooks. Within a notebook you can arrange the notes like cards on the screen, in the manner of Writers Blocks. I have experimented with this approach to writing using Miss LonelyNotes and I don’t think I find it congenial. It may be better suited for fiction. The idea is to write modularly in small chunks you can then arrange, using either outlining or a flat ordering, like you were organizing notecards on a surface. But I imagine that facility would sometimes be of use and I wouldn’t mind having it available within the pim. It also has macro capability (I haven’t tested it), something I have not seen elsewhere, but we have been told it was available in GrandView.

I think TexNotes Pro joins Ultra Recall, MyInfo3, and Idea! as the premier knowledge organizers. What it lacks is cloning, which the other three have. Cloning is vital if you want to use the bit as a database for general knowledge organization, but may not be important for more focused use, such as writing a book with a cohesive argument where you think you know the context in which you will use a piece of information.

What almost all of these programs lack, I have found, is an easy way to combine _parts_ of different notes into a single note or document. In fact the only outline based pim that I’m aware of that does this straightforwardly is InfoRecall.

Stephen R. Diamond

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