Re: NoteMap vs Word

< 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: 3740

Posted by graham.smith
2005-08-11 18:58:13

>Have you given the outlining features of NotaBene a trial run?

Yes, it’s a bit like the rest of NB, sort of woodwork without power tools. There is some enthusiasm in the NB camp for the outliner, but it seemed similar to Word, just clunkier. Having said that, NB has a trememdous amount of power hidden away. I also really enjoy using it. I have only ever used the beta.

However, much as I like NB and indeed Wordperfect, I came to a massive decision this week that I was going to have to accept using Word. Of all the progams I use, I am the most expert with Word, but I have grown to hate it over the years and when ever possible used WordPerfect and latterly I have completed a couple of reports in NB. Both of which I enjoy using.

But everything I do has to end up eventually in Word and most of my writing is collaborative, with everyone else using Word, so I still end up using Word most of the time anyway.

This came to a head this week when we had a book accepted by Springer Verlag and they provided a complete template/macro for Word that included two tool bars with all the formatting/layout they required for the final manuscript. With a 700 page book you can’t really fiddle about in another program and then try and convert into Word.

The other thing was that NoteMap worked really well with Word, but worked really badly with WordPerfect and I am beta testing a new version of a program I use, and the new bits only work with Word.

So I think I have finally given up, and accepted that I will need to accept Word as “My” word processor.

I am happy with the style/template approach, and there is a lot to like about Word, the problem has been its unreliability, and microsofts slothfullness (if that is a word) at fixing bugs - which I am hoping is better in Word 2003.

As a final stage Outliner, Word is fine, my problem is knowing when I have reached that final stage, and I think this was what I liked about NoteMap, in that it filled the gap between Brainstorm and Word. Not fully decided if this is a good idea and in fact I still haven’t registered NoteMap.

None the less I now seem to have a workflow that is: Zoot ->Brainstorm -> NoteMap -> Word.

But then a gain, I have weakened and finally downloaded Ultra Recall to try, but so far I can’t get it to do anything useful (compared to Zoot).

Enough of this rambling.

Graham

Back to archived message list