Reducing my PIM/Knowledge/Writing Tools

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 30, 2007 at 10:07 AM

Dominik Holenstein wrote:
>UR is my workhorse now. It took me around one year to understand its potential
>and I think this is the major issue: the learning curve. I remember when I first
>installed and started UR around two years ago. My first impression was ‘too complex
>and no very intuitive ...’ and removed it straight away form my hard drive. But a second
>and third look and issues with other tools (ADM etc.) reminded me of UR and so I started
>using it with v2.

My experience was similar when I first tested UR in summer 2004 (!) I then turned to the now discontinued Hyperclip.

I went back to UR after all the positive reviews I read about it at outliners.com. When I re-installed UR I changed the default layout to show just the data explorer tree on the left and the item details on the top right, with all the rest of the panes as tabs at the bottom right. Things moved swiftly from then on. I learnt to use most of tools along the road, while using UR productively.

Interestingly, in newer installation of UR the default view is much simplified and intuitive; apparently we were not the only ones who found it too complex. I think the learning curve is not steep, as long as one can choose to focus on the main concept, i.e. a classic two-pane outliner with most of the functionality one could ever wish for thrown in.

I now use UR as my starting point for any kind of project; all the background is maintained there, in its original file form, with my notes as imported Brainstorm files. Brainstorm is my main writing environment; after finalising texts they go to Word for layout; when the deliverables are completed, they are saved back to UR, so I have full documentation for the project.

I used to wish for Brainstorm to work as an OLE server so that I could use it from within UR; however, I now find it much easier to concentrate if I am within a separate application for writing, rather than having the data explorer and other similar stuff around me.

alx