Looking for information manager that combines strengths of X1, Evernote, TreeProjects, GloboNote, My Notes Keeper, Clipboard Help & Spell,

Posted by 22111
Nov 21, 2014 at 01:18 PM

( Re Search, continued: )

“I too would love an integration of file manager / outliner / super-search. Maybe someday. But it would be very hard to do, and I don’t think there’s a large market for it. So… expensive.”

As for the outliner part and the large market, that would probably be in function of the obviousness (= “getting into the way” for non-outliner-affin users) of the outlining character of such integrated software, and as said above, if every item is a file in itself (with pre-loading of file groups, and even with an additional pane listing sub-items within any file (not only a traditional outliner part, but also headings within a Word or a pdf file, but that additional pane would be displayed just in case the user would WANT that “outliner” part of it, so it would not bother all the other users just being after an optimized file manager); and of course, buyers shouldn’t have the impression that they pay extra for the outlining part of the thing.

At the end of the day, outlining within a file manager would not be so exotic, it would just be an AUTOMATED drilling down the hierarchy within the file system for specific parts of it (as you can do today, manually, by opening sub-folders into additional panes in cascade

(if enough of such additional panes are available (but often hidden behind tabs; but see X2’s scrap panes or DO’s additional windows with additional “listers”; also see the Miller-columns-style file managers which remain exotic (“tiny market”) since for everyday use of a file manager, you don’t Miller columns, i.e. you are only interested in the sub-folder deep down, but not in its multiple parents, so the latter should not take 3 quarters of your screen estate))),

AND with the additional functionality that all those lists are not necessarily sorted by just automatisms anymore (abc, suffix’ abc, etc.), but will have to be sorted manually, too, for any one of them, wherever the user decides so (and also in different sort orders for different contexts in which they appear); cf. XY’s manual sorting in their latest releases… but which, on further looking, is restrained to what in fact are virtual folders only; in other words, the integration of files-as-they-are in the file system, AND of files-(virtually-or-not)-relocated (to “other” positions or additional positions) has not been made (yet) in this set-up (so that in spite of the advertizing, XY’s “manual sorting” is nothing more (yet) than X2’s scrap panes (I don’t know if DO’s listers’ capabilities lately go beyond these?).

All this should be available, and be easy (!) for the user, but be far from intrusive.

As for a market for integrated search, that market would be immense, and I think that a file manager in the region of 100 bucks (DO) should indeed offer such functionality. As said above, search tools sell development kits, too, but at high prices, and the virulent problem is that if you sell dtSearch for 250 or 300 bucks, perhaps plus TVA, you can’t sell the development kit to a file manager developer at a price that would entitle him to sell his combined product for 100 bucks: His sales would not only cut into yours, but literally raze your own market (and if you sold a crippled version to the file manager’s developer, that quickly would become known, and it’s him who would be blamed to sell some overpriced “fake”).

From what precedes, it’s evident that with a tool such as X1, integration possibilities would be quite more realistic, but here again, file manager at 50 bucks, or with X1 integration 100, and X1 alone 50 bucks again, would mean that the price the file manager’s developer would have to pay to X1, would be rather high, in order for X1 to not lose money, but get more (from the sharply risen market penetration of their product) than before.

In other words, the core technology being the search technology (whilst “anybody” could create another file manager), integration should probably come from the search engines’ side, not from the file managers’ side (and that means the above-mentioned outline, or folders-INTEGRATING-virtual-elements technology cannot be expected to arrive soon - it’s much more probable that some file manager will quite soon integrate some third-rate search technology (for which even some free offerings exist), and that people will then have to live with that substandard solution (the standard being defined by what should be possible, financial considerations put aside).

I would not dare comment on OneNote (had had version 2003 coming with some Toshiba laptop out of the bux, but quickly discarded that version), but their Bing integration makes sense to me, from THEIR point of view at the very least:

Bing is crap: Whenever I try, I do not get “other” hits, but I get a (strictly leatoric, not “better”) subset of what I get from google by the same search; people know this, so not many of them use Bing. On the other hand, search integration between your desktop (remind yourself not many people maintain monsrous knowledge “databases” on their pc, as we, outliner freaks, do) and the web has often been discussed as highly desirable, and in fact, I often do both searches, albeit with slightly different search terms then, for my search within the web (and everybody would probably do the same).

Now if the MS product “integrated” web search, and most people being quite “lazy”, i.e. they accept an “acceptable” offer in spite of their knowing just one step further, there is a better offering (and which doesn’t “cost” them any more than just that one more step to go), it’s to be expected that (perhaps even more or less “automated”, even unwanted / unneeded Bing searches will see the light of the day: MS’s commercial objectives reached, and if you really need good web search results, you’ll do the google search immediately afterwards.

But two things remains to be seen: First, will MS/ON/Bing invariably phone home even your internal searches (terms, let alone the results?): a) when you do a combined search (that would necessarily be positive, except for the results of course), b) when you don’t even want to search the web for it also?

And then, the graphical rendering of such Bing searches in ON: The only beautiful search I’ve ever seen in a website (I said this before) was in the TheBrain help forum, whilst I abhor sites which integrate google search, and I certainly would not want goggle-style search results in a desktop applic (see above for “some lines above and below the hit line” NOT in the hit table (and by that cutting off the hit table into non-digestible pieces), but in an additional pane).

As always, MS does what makes (some) sense to MS (alone): Well, I could have told you before, and anyone could have done that. This being said, some google (web) search integration would be welcome, but would not make any sense for google: No ads, and no blah-blah around the hits anymore… (I HATE those google hits, among the very first 5 (!) or so, where for “somesoftware review” I then get “Be the first to write a review!”)

Oh, I’ve got a hint for your smoothing your google searches: Currently, you will probably open too many even dubious hits because it’s not so easy to revert to the search tab, for clicking on further hits in case of not having got a sufficient number of satisfying ones yet.

Just do your searches in the very first tab, not from the tab you accidentally happen to be when you start your search: Most browsers have got a shortkey for going to the very first tab at least (or even tab 2, 3…, i.e. a tab you can remember, for a specific search - so if you need to have open some 2 or 3 searches concurrently, allocate tabs 1, 2, 3 to google from start on), so this will help in not precautionarily opening a plethora of probably unworthy hits for fear of not finding your original search anytime soon (and without the need of another particular FF/Chrome add-ins); the same would apply to dict.cc and such…

Which would imply you had “go to lastused tab” toggle of course, so I looked this up and found, under superuser.com, this:

“browse about:config
find browser.ctrlTab.previews
set true

wow! thanks! this what i’ve been looking for.
@Dashed You poor soul, waiting 1 year for the best answer.

And I’ve been waiting for several years! Thanks!”