Zoot's Secret

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 3870

Posted by srdiamond15
2005-08-24 15:11:10

>I think the same applies to Brainstorm. I found both programs completely mystifying until reaching a Eureka moment when I suddenly grasped the underlying principle of how they worked.- Graham

My initial reaction to Brainstorm was to be put off by what I considered its ugliness. But I was coming over from the Macintosh, where a different aesthetic predominates. After acclimating to Windows, I don’t find Brainstorm ugly. (Similarly, I came to like rather than detest the ADM look, but other problems intervened.)

I wasn’t mystified by Brainstorm, maybe because I tend to read more than most about the program before starting to use it. My problem with Zoot—other than the overriding consideration that I tend to think it is overkill on data management for my needs—is that from reading I tend to feel underwhelmed and unmotivated even to try it, something I know means I’m missing something.

I think it is easy to state the basic principle of Brainstorm: Promote to see the children of a topic; demote to see its parents and siblings (if that’s what you mean). Can you are someone else state the basic principle of Zoot. Or, if that principle is what I have taken it to be: Set up rules for virtual folders, that determine what goes “in” them and what’s done to the “contents” (virtually speaking).

Virtual folders perhaps confuse some. I have trouble seeing the sticking point, perhaps because I deny the distinction. Aren’t all computer folders “virtual”? And functionally, an ordinary computer folder can accommodate items in several places at the same time by aliasing. Only the metaphor seems different, and the fact that a virtual folder organization is superimposed on the standard folder hierarchy. I use the Opera browser, which has integrated mail with virtual folders, so it’s not a new concept, more like the opposite, an unexciting one.

So my final question is, if I’m right about the central concept of Zoot, what exactly is the big deal?

Stephen R. Diamond

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