Re: Absent Hoisting or a Deeper Problem; A Question about Idea!

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 4673

Posted by stephenz
2005-12-07 09:01:01

> I’m not entirely sure that adding a hoist command to Ultra Recall would solve the problem of trees that are hard to navigate, since hoisting geared to focusing the user’s attention on a given branch and its subordinates not on reaching deeper levels of hierarchy. I’m sure the hoist command would help, but I’m not sure it’s the basic solution.

I have contended that databases relying primarily on a tree hierarchy to structure information are almost always going to become cluttered to the point of unusability, sooner or later, depending your tolerance for clutter. You are right, Stephen, when you say that hoisting is only a partial solution, or work-around. A better solution, in my mind, for UltraRecall would be to allow multiple databases to be open at the same time and accessible through a tabbed interface, and to include cross-database searching. Hoisting sort of mimics this process—that is, you can think of a single database as multiple databases, if you can focus in on any one branch at a time.

Zoot, by the way, has virtually the same functionality that you ascribe to Idea! Data items are listed in a separate pane and multiple file links can be applied to any one item (though Zoot, wisely I think, saves screen space by providing the list of links as a drop down from an icon). Zoot is not as nimble at creating hierarchical categories as Idea! appears to be, though you can do so and you can set it up to apply these categories automatically.

Steve Z.

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