Re: Obsolete and awkward software

< 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: 4766

Posted by srdiamond15
2005-12-19 14:10:49

<Stephen, I’ve never claimed for a second that Surfulater was designed to be used as an Outliner, or that it is fit for that purpose.>

Surfulator is designed to facilitate manipulating information. I recall from the web site that you point out that data only become knowledge when it is structured. I don’t recall the exact word, but the point is made, and it is correct.

So the knowledge Explorer is a central component of Surfulator, and for better or worse, that component is a true, and outline. So it is quite fair to compare Surfulator to other programs as regards how well it does with allowing the facile reorganization of information in the tree, so as to create personal knowledge. The product aims at including both the notebook function and the clipping function. It has to be evaluated on each, as well as on how it integrates the two.

Surfulator provides minimal resources in the way of amenities for manipulating information in the tree. Dedicated clipping utilities of the first rank, such as Clipmate 7, do a much better job of facilitating tree reorganization, because they have the crucial ability to mark and gather. Without mark and gather (to which multiple selection with copy is one modern implementation), it possible to organize information, but it is impossible to reorganize it. That’s a much more significant limitation than panes that don’t resize.

If I see a program that doesn’t allow any undo functionality, I just pass it by. I don’t ask the programmer if he would implement multiple undo, because it obviously isn’t what he finds important. If other users are at all like me in this respect, not getting requests from users is inconclusive.

Stephen R. Diamond

Back to archived message list