Re: ndxCards v. 1.92 Re: Lessons from the World of Clip Mana

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2716

Posted by daly_de_gagne
2005-02-12 16:11:35

Stephen writes: “I think that IMPLEMENTING THIS APPROACH PROVIDES A BASIS FOR TRULY UNITING OUTLINING AND DATABASE MANAGEMENT. The reason for this might best be seen looking at another attempt to create such a unity, ADM. In part response to Jan’s request, ADM’s weakness comes from a fundamental design defect present from its inception: it has the form of a dual-pane hierarchical database, with body text entered in a separate textcard (now called a ‘page’) on the top or right. As Steve Zeoli has also pointed out in other threads, a separate text card takes the user’s focus off the outline and breaks the flow of outlining by making the user hop to another location to enter text.”

I do not think that ndxCards is the breakthrough in uniting outlining and datamanagement that your, complete-with-capital letters sentence seems to suggest. It is another way of approaching the question the question, to be sure.

Perhaps I’m obtuse, Stephen, but I do not see how the two-pane hierarchial approach qualifies as “a fundamental design defect.” What ndxCards does is to allow one to work with cards outside of the outline, but that in and of itself does not speak to how or to what degree outlining and data management functions are united.

For some users, the two-pane system, as Steve Zeoli says, may break the flow of outlining, although in my experience that isn’t the case, and I have used ADM for some pretty intense brain-storming.

The issue perhaps is that the eyes need to move to the text pane whereas in a one-pane outliner the heading and the content are contiguous. When I first came to two-pane outliners after using a one-pane outliner in the Mac world, it took me awhile to get used to working with the second pane, but now it is second nature.

I still find the multiplicity of windows in UltraRecall and Knowledge Workshop to be a botheration, and much less elegant than what ADM is doing. The outline is sacrificed in Ultra Recall for data management, but one can still do an outline (although ergonomically it lacks). Knowledge Workshop presents material in a modified outline form, but one couldn’t use KW for serious brain storming.

ndxCards is a good solid program, but not a trail blazer in combining outlining and data management. So far ADM seems to be the program that is managing to develop both capabilities without making significant sacrifices of one or the other.

Daly

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