Tree elements' formatting (Scrivener, "Aeon") - The Wolf!

Posted by 22111
Feb 4, 2023 at 04:55 PM

Re Amazon: Clarification: Of course, you can “opt” for chronological sort order of their comments, but the default - as you know - is “By relevance”... and that “relevance” is a scam, multiple proof on file, and in our context above: When you “find” - i.e. for 90 p.c. of prospects: NOT - serious, honest, real - but negative - reviews, with some of them dozens (!) of “likes”, behind those “deflective” “activation when bought from ama doesn’t work” “reviews”, on pages 16, 17, 18 of 18 pages in total, that’s clearly manipulative;

ditto for hotel reviews and “reviews” on booking.com (and other sites, but I’ve proof on file for booking.com): there again, default sorting by “relevance” - i.e. allegedly “of the most interest for YOU” whilst in fact “of the most interest for our percentage interest”, I would say -, I have seen the same phenomenon for hotels I know from my own experience (!): real (and even recent!) reviews but which listed real (but serious, and even serious, systemic, i.e. of the kind which would kill your expensive-there night’s sleep, too, systematically, thus making you “thinking again” about booking) “minuses” were systematically hidden from view, i.e. (obviously) not “censored” but relegated into those “further pages”, pages 8, 10, 15…, after a plethora of “super-duper”, then “only mildly critical” “reviews” - and that’s a fact for hotels in Germany, a country where the respective owners, IF the facts alleged in those real reviews (and which I had to notice myself, I said…) had been libelous, could have withdrawn those reviews within 48 hours…

and I have seen the same phenomenon for Parisian hotels (for rooms about 300 bucks a night; “my” German hotels: about 100-120 bucks a night): really critical reviews are hidden “far behind” all that “super duper” crap plus “just mildly critical, so almost acceptable in the end” stuff:

it’s obvious that the default “sort by relevance” is a scam in general and overall; rare exceptions to that rule might apply.
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Re B-liner: As said, no programmer present anymore, for many of its later years, ditto for askSam; then both just vanished, and in both cases, this is a PITY indeed.

B-liner was marketed as a Warnier-Orr tool in its time, and while I continue to think that J.-D. Warnier, in the Seventies, did do very fine work indeed, it’s obvious that today’s sw construction (i.e. “technical design”, “architectural”) demands have outlived simple, or even somewhat “enhanced”, trees (B-liner came with connector lines from one branch (element) to another element (of another branch in case), in order to overcome the strict “decision tree” paradigm, even then, and, for example, within a vertical tree (see above), you would use clones instead, in order to realize such “hooks”, “jumps”; “simple” clones though (i.e. single, “leaf”, items, not sub-tree parents), which would just work as beacons, since most of the time, you would not want to “carry on” “all stuff from elsewhere”, just signal and make available (by {click} or {enter}) the connection).

As said before, B-liner was frail as hell, on my then XP-last-version, 2gb work memory system, it crashed, even with just “light” representations (i.e. some 30, 35 elements in total), every time (!), but I now deeply regret to not having bought a license in time, since for representation means of quite simple matters - everything from left to right -, it was more than just “pleasant” - similar for askSam which for “special” use cases (which don’t ask for a “variable tree” (try to re-arrange the order of elements in askSam, and you’ll know what I mean) but for better FTS than provided in today’s SQLite’s “PIM” frontends) might continue your “first choice” indeed (and within very probable total file size limits…).

It seems that some Chinese (?) got B-liner’s (abandoned) varatec.com domain, but on https://mindapp.software.informer.com/ (informer.com most of a time being a totally useless site indeed, but not in every single case as it appears), I see that B-liner developer varatek (today’s varatec.ca doesn’t seem to be connected to them) also might have done some “MindApp”, latest version 8.0? I had never been aware of that, but the link gives a screenshot of that sw, and whilst it is - was! - obviously one of the most austere, i.e. “usable” (sic!), “mind map” realizations - see the screenshot: I think it’s very “functional”, I might say! -... here again, as with every “mind map” sw, the subtrees are all displayed around the “node”, i.e. the “source item”, whilst B-liner’s USP (!!!!!!!) had been that left-to-right paradigm indeed - ironically, today’s “social media” “timelines” (or then, their “comment” sections, too…) are all vertical, i.e. NOT in what me might call “the original timeline format”... so I think B-Liner’s (or b-liner’s or B-liner’s or however they spelled it, in their time) demise is a real loss to what “they” call “the community”...
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But IS there a “community”? The “Johnny Walker bombshell”, as I like to call that scoop-of-all-scoops of the last 3 years of so (if you don’t count Prof. Bhakdi who had-said-it-all 3 years (sic!) ago, and who very probably saved my life, together with hundreds of thousand of others’...), briefly - i.e. for 2 hours or some - appeared on the Daily Mail website, then vanished, and MSN (=MS) had allegedly re-published (excerpts from?) that scoop… for some… 20 - twenty! - minutes… while obviously everything “Johnny”, “under the influence” (of both alc, and the impression he had found a new mate he obviously was found of, oh yeah! - so let’s speak about “morals in journalism” here if you want, but be aware, I’d then bring on the terms “public interest”, and even “genocide” - still interested ? I thought so!) - while obviously everything “Johnny” said - and “Johnny” himself is “legit”, real, too -, is true, and if you search English resources by non-google, you’ll get lots of - verified - data…

At the end of the day, folks, it’s not me who’s responsible for your families, folks, you are, at least in some traditional - outlived, then? - concept of family values, and whilst I know that most of you are my juniors, not having time to follow… well: not “the news”, since “the news” is just propaganda… but what I’d call “real info”, additionally, your “national news”, every evening, probably is about 25 minutes or so, and couldn’t you better employ those 25 minutes than with ingurgitating lies-by-omission-while-they-tell-you-all-sorts-of-junk? Just think about it, e.g. while in some traffic jam… ;-)
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I’ll be entirely honest here: My Ultra Recall is, and by far, the very best “PIM” (i.e. “personal [i.e. one-seat (sic!)] information manager” there is, BUT that’s because it “comes”, for me, with thousands of lines of additional (AHK) code.

So, two questions arise:
- how would other “PIMS” “react” to such additional work?
- why don’t I “share” my work on UR?

1) There are specifics, in the “construction” of every such sw, which provide more, or then less indeed, “point of actions” for “interventions from the outside”, and I chose UR, over other “Windows”, competitors, for its wide array of “shortcuts” - which I then intercept by AHK anyway, so them being “user-configurable” or not, is not a criterion for me -, and for its “cloning” feature - of which I make ample, and semi-automated, use.

This being said, it’s obvious that I could apply most, or even anything, of my (UR’s) “individualization” to some other sw, even on Mac’s side, since in/for that system, there should be some similar scripting language available (most commercial “macro tools”, “here” and “there”, ain’t powerful enough though) - at the end of the day, I could even pimp up “Scrivener” almost (sic!) that way - but why should I? Since:

2) There is no “thank you” of any kind, from anybody; the term of “community” meaning, “we take, you give”, and that works both in general terms, as for “outliner sw”, as in specifics, e.g. within the UR forum: UR users give-a-heck about anything somebody could “add”, and be it with the utmost, most precise analysis: They don’t say, yeah, that’s true, please, our developer, amend that, fix this: no! They all live with the state-of-affairs, and it’s the same phenomenon as becomes evident on/in the polls: They continue to vote for the(ir) status-quo…

even if that status quo will have (been) deteriorated considerably, since “last time” - in politics… whilst in sw, the same, technically, not being possible, but in our field, the sheer mentioning > reading of faults, of missings, of detriments, should have increased their “expectancy of functionality”, thus rising their “demands to functional sw”... but no:

Inertia, on (98 p.c. of) “customers’” side, is, at the end of the day, one of the best-guarded secrets of anybody’s offerings of any kind… an’then to hell, with those remaining 2 p.c. of malcontents…

That’s how sw “functions”, and that’s how politics “function”, an’thus, any “help from the outside”, in ANY “field”, is casting pearls-before-swine - please note this is an idiom to design “it’s totally futile”, and not, in any, no, way, some hidden invective.
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Currently, I’ve got much better, i.e. much “nobler”, things to do, than to learn Net 7, etc., but be assured that I have discovered all the secrets in/of IM in-between (incl. the “response” to all our “third-dimensional” queries of any kind, and on both the technical and the conceptual (sic!) sides, instead of my (“above”-detailed) “taxonomy in-betweens”, which had just been some “production engineering minute”, but then again, today’s “consumers” pay subscriptions (sic!) for, yes, even inferior sw, so “sharing code” that would make co-“consumers” really productive in the end: why should anybody, and indeed, nobody currently does… and I’d be a fool to do so.

That, folks, is the ugly-truth behind the inertia of today’s sw development in general: Any coder out there has “got” it: folks don’t value real value: they even - now - pay for your it’s-as-good-as-it-is sw: so what, they say to themselves, and any look by them into politics will fortify their impression: so what, for people who obviously don’t make the difference anymore: between treated as real customers - voters who empower their delegates to decide THEIR way -, who have expectations, who have rights, who have dreams (e.g. of that mythical “better life” for their children… right? remember? when you were young?) -, and then “consumers”, who, from now on, here in the EU, will even eat… bugs… (and again, without thinking).
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Some days ago, I viewed “Mirage” (Dmytryk 1965); and that “Save the Cat” moment of which Snyder (see “above”) wrote, came early: the janitor of the highrise in which the hero (Gregory Peck) works, tells him (my words, from memory): “Of all the clerks around here, you’re the only one who recognizes me [and gives me the time of the day].” (i.e. subconsciously, for the audience: “whenever you doubt of’our’hero: remember”...)

Obviously, Snyder (57-09) wasn’t a fool either, and I bet he would not have had “shot” his offshoot.

(Oh, and in https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9858/0/by-what-do-you-in-parallels-structure-woof-woof , when I spoke of the “essence”: of course, you’re free to just have some “synopsis-in-front”, i.e. to work on the “essence” in some place, then write-it-out in some other sw: it’s just a matter of your memory(‘s capabilities) if you need those “reminders” within your “body text” you then write, or if, e.g. you print out multiple copies of your “essence directions”, then continuously switch between reading’n'writing; just bear in mind: work on the “essence” of your story: amend it, optimize it, PERFECT IT; THEN do the (re-)writing(s).

An’yes, an’very sorry again: That “essence” will necessarily be a MESH, NOT an “outline”, any “outline” then comes “later on”, as some “stringent result” only; and that’s the character of ALL things good, and that’s more or less the opposite of what “they” call an “agenda”: Since real (sic!) work on that “essence mesh” will lead you to the right outline then, and the right “timeline”, too.

Be them pretty horizontal or functionally-ugly vertical then, they will not comprise shots - be them final or not - against laboratory-puffed-out mirages…

In other words: outlines as come-first are either a fallacy or even a crime: use’em just as an instrument to get your mesh into time, into what they call “instrumental order”, but be “open”, i.e. honest and communicative, about your mesh, and everything will be fine, since:

“Agenda” is a Latin plural and means, “the things to do”, and thus was a purely technical term, which should have been developed into a synonym for “outline” - whilst in fact, it’s become a synonym for what I call “mesh”, i.e. the conceptional stage, and that’s where “le bât blesse”, as the French say: where it all goes wrong: including for your brats if you don’t stop’em that is.)