Re: Inspiration 7.6

< Next Message | Back to archived message list | Previous Message >

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2889

Posted by srdiamond15
2005-03-02 16:14:35

Whether rational decision or CRIMP symptom, I just ordered one. I mean, it’s one of two writing outliners on Windows. Having bought all of these useless pims, why not buy an outliner that at least looks interesting? (CRIMP, I understand, is often accompanied by extensive use of rationalization).

No doubt I’ll play with the diagrammer, but at the moment I still can’t get my head around this part of Inspiration ideology:

>Inspiration allows you to create a picture of your ideas or concepts in the form of a diagram. It also provides an integrated outlining environment to develop your ideas into organized written documents. Inspirationís combination of visual and linear thinking helps deepen understanding of concepts, increase memory retention, develop organizational skills and tap creativity.

>When you work with visual representations of ideas, you easily see how one idea relates to others. Learning and thinking become active rather than passive. You discover where your deepest knowledge lies, and where the gaps in your understanding are. When you create a visual map of ideas, you can recall the details better than if you had read a paragraph. Thatís because you can see it in your mind.

One thing a concept map certainly is NOT is a “picture of your ideas.” Maybe some hand drawn Buzan type mind maps could count as “pictures of ideas,” using the terms very, very loosely. But the ideas aren’t represented in an Inspiration concept map, only the formal relations among them, no other than the relations in an outline. Well, not quite. Actually, less, in that an outline can be taken as an ordererd list, while a diagram has no inherent order, which is about their only advantage that I can perceive. (That is, a way of eliminating order, where it would distract from the main focus. I picture it as a hoist over an abstract object.)

The Inspiration theory seems to be to use outlining for writing and diagramming for thinking.But ordering is part of thinking, and most thoughts worth thinking can’t be captured with linkages among brief phrases.

Of course one can use the product without buying the theory. But what better way to predict the future development of a product besides the theory apparently guiding it?

As to features, it seems to me the most important one missing in Inspiration 7 is any integration between finding and multiple selection, as when in NoteMap you can automatically “mark” found items and then gather them.

Stephen R. Diamond

Back to archived message list