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Re: AskSam - is this my best choice
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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.
Outliners.com Message ID: 4997
Posted by stephenz
2006-01-13 09:15:34
Not having a technical understanding of these issues with AskSam, I’ll just make some broad comments. I’ve owned AS for several years, originally purchasing it for a similar (though far smaller) project that you have in mind, Graham. While working at a college, I needed a repository for all the notes from curriculum meetings generated by the various academic departments. These were all Word documents. AskSam did import them, except that all the tables were messed up. The information could still be accessed, so it served my purpose, but I thought it was a big issue. That was two versions ago.
Nevertheless, I still liked the idea of AS, for the same reasons Graham and Derek have mentioned; that is, having a big bucket and the ability to search quickly and browse results. But, for me, the problem with AS is three-fold. First, the editor is really quite primitive, and doesn’t allow for some very basic editing procedures. There is no extended selection whatsover. As the company has promoted the idea of writing memos and letters in AS, you would think they would have addressed the issue of their crummy editor by now.
The Second issue I have is entry forms. It isn’t hard to create these, but they are very touchy, I’ve found. Tabs seem to have a mind of their own, as does formatting. Pick lists don’t seem to work quite properly. Maybe it’s me, but this is very annoying.
Finally, I have yet to get the reports to print properly. I don’t know what it is—and, again, maybe it’s me—but they never seem to print the way I want. I usually export CSV files and print them in Excel.
So I am whining a bit, but that’s because I love the concept of AskSam. I just wish the company would spend more time fixing it before they add more features.
Steve Z.