Zim Desktop Wiki -- observations and comparisons

Posted by Hugh
Aug 5, 2014 at 11:14 AM

marcus wrote:
. Lately I appreciate
>skeumorphism in this context: computer notebooks imitating the
>appearance and organization of paper notebooks. I often find physical
>things (printed books and printed notes, especially if bound in a
>journal) easier to remember than things managed on-screen (or on loose
>papers). This is one of the reasons I find CT’s change of mode
>(view/edit) so hard to work with: one moment the text I’m focused on is
>under the second smaller heading, starting near the right side of the
>page, and spanning four lines; (switch to edit mode) the next moment
>it’s under the third equi-sized heading, starting near the left side of
>the page, and spanning two lines. I know there are things one can do to
>make this transition easier (like selecting the text you’re focused on,
>or customizing the syntax highlighting, or setting both modes to use the
>same font—but a monospace font good for editing, or a more readable
>font less suited to editing?), but all of them are just incomplete steps
>toward WYSIWYG.
> >Anyway, if I had a Mac I would definitely try Circus Ponies Notebook,
>which seems to imitate the feel of paper notebook even more thoroughly
>than OneNote. (In the end, I don’t know if I would like it. Certainly
>there are things I like in Zim, like backlinks, which go beyond physical
>skeuomorphism.)
>

As an aside, I don’t recommend Circus Ponies Notebook strongly. Five or ten years ago, it was probably advanced for its genre. It is still quite a good notebook. But now, particularly since Apple has its own free Notes application on its machines, notebooks have to do more than simply be receptacles for notes - at least for me. They have to have the capacity for analysis and extensive re-presentation, like Tinderbox, or connectivity with every available platform, like Evernote, or a new-ish combination of notes and todo’s, like Notesuite.

Of course, Circus Ponies’ skeuomorphic tendencies are pretty much unrivalled. Look at their iOS application for an extreme example, of which the toolbar is a realistic representation of a pencil, where clicking every mark or device of the design - including the eraser - drops down a tool or a source of information. It looks attractive, but after a year I’m still trying to remember how each specific piece of functionality relates to the design. I bet it seemed a good idea at the time.