Re: Why ADM is a good idea with poor implementation?

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 5264

Posted by daly_de_gagne
2006-02-15 16:25:49

Stephen, thanks for the post.

Stephen: “I think it no coincidence that both of us were former Mac users. This made us 1) vulnerable to hype, such as Jobs feeds Mac users constantly; 2) unknowledgeable regarding the development history of Windows programs, which knowledge I think would really help in evaluating a program. Other forum members with a first hand knowledge of GrandView have a jump on us. Don’t you ever wonder why with the experienced users of outliners on this forum, all of these great new features don’t really, really excite anyone but you? Instead the attitude ranges from moderately favorable to totally deprecating.”

I think your observation is interesting. Unfortunately we didn’t use Grandview, although back in 1988 before I went into the Mac I had a PC with Grandview. If I could find the disks someplace I would try to install them. I don’t doubt from what I have seen here that it was and is still a great program.

The features I like most in ADM are what I liked most in the Mac program InControl—the use of columns and metadata. Incidentally, those are the characteristics that set Ecco apart in the PC world, also Zoot.

Other programs have, with a great deal of falsehood in my opinion, have talked about being Ecco replacements—I am thinking of one of the mind mapping programs and InfoSelect.

Stephen: “But I have to say, your message reads as though you haven’t read a word I posted. I criticize ADM for bragging about massive feature increments accompanied by bugs that make the program unusable. This is followed not by cleaning up the bugs, but introducing still more features. Then you - procees to brag about all the new features! That’s fine, except you really seem to expect that it might impress me.”

Yes, you and many others, have reported lots of bugs. But where we differ is that lots of bugs have been fixed. The issue around data security was not well handled. My reference to new features was obviously not a ploy to impress you, but was a response to certain pointns you were making about ADM.

Rightly or wrongly, re your point about further development of ADM 3, Eric has decided that upgrades that eliminate ADM 3 issues are in fact accessible by using ADM 4 betas. I think that strategy would have been not a problem if ADM 4 was not intended to be so significantly different from ADM 3. There should have been an ADM 3.5; there was not, but that does not justify your conclusions.

In fact, I use many of the features on ADM 4 that were refined from ADM 3, as well as some of the new features.

Steven: “The features implemented are those with the most glitter at the least cost to the developer. When I was in the developer group, I said that for an outlining program to be built on a foundation which includes no undo function in the tree is a major blunder. Did the developer argue with me? NO. He *emphatically* AGREED. He said it couldn’t be changed, but was a high priority, because he agreed it was terribly important. Is it added? Are there any plans to add it? My prediction: Multiple undo in the tree will NEVER be added to ADM. But how can this be, when the developer states that its omission was a “major blunder.”

I think your first sentence is ludicrous. The emphasis on metadata, multiple page windows and so on has required a great deal of programming time, and can hardly be equated to the “least cost.” Re the multiple undo issue in the tree—perhaps if ADM was had more resources all priorities could be dealt with at once.

I will leave the judging of your last paragraph to the sagacity of other readers.

Daly

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