Re: InSight's features promote insight

< 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: 3354

Posted by sub
2005-05-30 06:54:16

InSight is indeed an interesting program; its “non-classifiability” takes me back to DOS days when many of us were calling for more uniformity in user interfaces, compatibility and interoperability. Perhaps we got more of what we were asking for than is practically required.

Therefore, I am glad that there are still programs like InSight, Brainstorm and Zoot being developed. However, in order to use such a program, one must, as Jack said, have figured out what to do with it.

InSight is targetted to programmers, as far as I can tell from its feature list. Many of its advanced features, such as file comparison, are mainly useful to software source development. Others are similar to what’s on offer from programming editors, i.e. catalog files (.cat) are compatible with NoteTab outline (.otl) files.

I personally have no use for its pseudo-rich text format as it only adds to the text format diversity and confusion; plain text, RTF and .DOC are already more than enough for me.

I would be more interested in using it if it offered a classic tree outline; I find its flat topic view as easily cluttered as MDE Infohandler’s category listings. By contrast, Leo, an open-source plain text programer’s editor, includes an excellent outliner supporting clones and metadata.

All this aside, I admit that at present your enthusiasm is probably the main reason for my downloading it, trying it out and not uninstalling it yet. As has happened in the past with Brainstorm, I may use it for a specific project and then grow inlove with it.

alx

Back to archived message list