Zoot News

Posted by Derek Cornish
Nov 19, 2008 at 08:55 PM

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

>On the way, I found that background information could be more easily
>sucked into a dedicated application like Surfulater (for web sources) or the file
>system (for PDFs).I also found a dedicated writing environment such as that offered
>by Brainstorm unsurpassable.
>

Since Zoot32 came along I find I’ve tended to move in the opposite direction. I used to use Web Research for downloading web pages, but now I use Zoot’s “Archive Web Page” - which is now bug-free (at least using XP, my OS) - or the Zooter’s other features for d/l text snippets. “Archive Web Page” stores the page as an mht file, indexes it and provides a text-only copy as a linked item. I now find WR, which was always slow and cumbersome on my setup, to be completely redundant. Zoot can also be linked to existing pdfs and can import them as text-only copies. Same for doc files. With the upcoming rtf editor, highlighting of text in the text-only copies of mhts, pdfs, etc. will also be possible - though probably not on the original files.

Linking in this way also has the advantage of not locking up data in lots of different places, but keeping it instead in the Windows filing system, where it can be linked into and used by Zoot but also still available for disk-wide indexed searches, or for use by other programs. For example, when I want to browse quickly through my project pdfs, jpgs and so on, then instead of using Zoot - which would be very tedious - I flick through the relevant project file folders using TotalCommander’s plugin viewers to display them. (It’s actually a lot quicker than was using Web Research for the same task.)

Whether Zoot will end up providing a dedicated writing environment is another matter, and depends on the quality of rtf editor it uses. If it’s an off-the-shelf one it may well do for many purposes, but will be unlikely to have outlining features - at least, of the single pane variety. But Brainstorm is primarily an outliner, so it doesn’t really fit the bill for a complete writing environment either.

What I’d like to see for Zoot eventually is (i) a single-pane outliner as part of the rtf editor, and able export into Word’s outlining mode; and (ii) the ability to open up a large number of floating item panes at one time, and a means of arranging and re-arranging these - like index cards on a corkboard, along the lines of SuperNotecard. Zoot already can display items side-by-side in separate floating panes, but that’s about as far as it goes at the moment…

Derek