Clones? Cross-referencing?

Posted by 22111
Oct 5, 2013 at 11:17 PM

From my research, text-based outliners don’t have clones (automatically updated “copies” of items in the tree; in the same tree=the same file) - none of them has, in fact.

And then, database-based outliners SOMETIMES have clones, but not all of them have.

Those that have (sometimes in their best versions only):

Ultra Recall, MyInfo, The Brain, InfoQube, ConnectedText, MyBase, Zoot
Surfulater, ADM, NoteCase, Whizfolders, InfoSelect
Chandler, KeyNote NF, OneNote, Leo, Treepad
Smereka TreeProjects (?)

Those that don’t, in spite of being database-based (but perhaps that’s my misconception in some cases):

RightNote (SQLite! has something weird, wsp called it a “virtual notes feature”, but I checked and checked again: NO clones! For its other qualities, it’s a shame it has no clones, and will probably not introduce them, because of this other feature by which they errouneously think they can avoid them)
TreeDB Notes, Tree Notes, Evernote
MyNotesKeeper (but has “bookmarks”, within the same tree)

Corrections and additions would be welcome.

(As said, NO program (of my knowledge) offers clones maintained in different databases (even within the same directory, so in theory at least, updating should be possible). This means cloning items will blow up your database, and you’ll get in troube when you try to cut off some part of the database to make it separate database: Another obstacle in your trying to separate the things you work on, from your reference material.)

It should be said that some (again, database-based only?) outliners provide cross-referencing to individual items, even in other databases.

This is an obscure feature of Ultra Recall: You can set a reference to an item within another database.

In MyInfo, you can set references to items within the same database only (?), but also to particular paragraphs of them.

I don’t know of other outliners providing linking to particular items, let alone to particular items in a different database.

Some additional info available here? I think such links could replace clones in many instances, and especially so for links to different databases. (But it should be done in a better way than UR does it: As soon as you didn’t do it for one week or so, you’ll be completely lost, it’s really complicated to do.)

Btw, in TheBrain, it does NOT seem to be possible to link to an item in another “brain”, judging by a post to this regard.

Anyway, this seems to be a subject of real interest, if you’re serious about information management.