Interesting article from the co-founder of Scrintal

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 15, 2024 at 11:51 AM

Dormouse, don’t take this as a criticism of what you’ve written here. I intend a sincere discussion of what we mean when we say, “workflow.”

To be honest, though I’ve used the term myself, I really don’t understand the concept of workflow.

Yes, I get that projects that are identical in nature can have similar processes that we can think of as workflow. An author gathers ideas, chooses one, collects research, noodles the research into something coherent, writes the first draft, edits until complete (I’ve undoubtedly left out a few crucial steps). But that is a far cry from the process the editor goes through to edit that piece, or a publisher goes through to bring a new book to press. I go through all three of those types of work and others in my job. I can’t have a “workflow,” but need several different workflows, each needing different software tools.

So yes, I guess I am taking exception to your characterizing Heptabase and Scrintal as having no intention to contributing to a workflow. Of course they can contribute. Scrintal for instance could be used to plan a writing project, gather the research, build an outline or first draft. I wouldn’t actually write the final draft in Scrintal, but it certainly could fit a writing workflow.

I’m not trying to tell you or anyone else you should use Scrintal this way—I don’t myself. I am just trying to make a point that—in my opinion—the term “workflow” is very squishy and feels meaningless to me unless it is put into the context of the job at hand.

Does that make sense or am I just howling in the wilderness?

Dormouse wrote:
I liked Obsidian’s Canvas, but it was never enough. And I stopped using
>Obsidian anyway.
>So in 2022 I decided to check Scrintal out with a year’s subscription
>(I’m always slow, trial periods are never sufficient for me). And then
>thought to make it meaningful that I ought to do the same for Heptabase.
> >I liked Scrintal’s description better than Heptabase, and its described
>workflow. In practice, I found Heptabase always worked better. My
>impression was that Scrintal had launched before its engineering had
>caught up; maybe that’s changed, idk. I liked many things about
>Heptabase. But I couldn’t persuade myself that there was a productive
>workflow in either program - or that they were working towards one. So I
>never renewed either subscription.
> >I’m not surprised to see Heptabase describing itself now as “empowering
>you to visually make sense of your learning, research, and projects”,
>and Scrintal being “playground for the mind”.
>Doesn’t sound as if either have any intention of contributing to a
>workflow.
> >I have been gradually, slowly, reluctantly moving to using Lattics in a
>substantial way. Mostly because what it has does contribute to a
>productive workflow for me. (There are substantial glimmers of my
>reluctance here -
>https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=54676.0 ). It says
>it has a whiteboard in the works.
> >But even without it, you can achieve similar outcomes.
>There’s a card view (view options are summary, summary with image and
>preview).
>Any you can load any cards you want onto a mindmap. Join them with
>arrows. Use colours. Add new ones for new thoughts. And finally build
>out the mindmap itself - using transcluded text from the cards as
>desired. Finally switching to the outline, filling out, completing and
>editing the text before exporting into formatted docx, pdf etc.
>Admittedly the cards on the mindmap aren’t as pretty and don’t have as
>many options as with Heptabase and Scrintal, but it all leads to a
>product. And maybe the whiteboard feature when it comes will be much
>better.
> >Of course my product is words in sequence. If your needs are different,
>it may be no more helpful than Heptabase or Scrintal. And I’m willing to
>accept the limitations that come with the program.
> >