Re: Some advice on software needed

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 4853

Posted by szeoli
2005-12-31 17:51:00

> All this to say that I am not quite sure why MyInfo is at the fringe of our attention, but that it is a well designed product by a company that has a clear concept of the ideal tool they want to develop.

I bougth a license for MyInfo when version 3.0 appeared early this year or late last year. It has many strong features, including a tabbed access to multiple databases (are you paying attention, Kinook?)—though it lacks a cross-database search capability. Nevertheless, I find I don’t use it much. I’m not sure why. One possible reason is that to add all the formatting capability to their editor, they sacrificed extended selection of text, which makes it a less-than-ideal writing environment for me. If I needed the OLE features frequently, I probably would use it a lot more.

It is odd to say this considering that our interaction with these programs is always through a keyboard and mouse, yet the way the program “feels” is so important to me. There’s something about MyInfo that just doesn’t make it inviting to me… but that is true with so many programs. Familiarity is important and contributes to this substantially. Many people are alienated by Zoot, when I find it quite comfortable. UR on the other hand, just doesn’t feel right to me, when, clearly, it feels comfortable to many of you. I supposed these are intangibles to some extent—but, as Stephen Diamond recently pointed out, just because they are intagible doesn’t mean they are imaginary (sorry to paraphrase you, Stephen, and probably mangle your meaning in the process).

Steve Z.

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