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Interesting article from the co-founder of Scrintal
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Posted by Dormouse
Dec 17, 2024 at 10:37 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Being able to do a lot within the same tool is a major workflow
>advantage, because it reduces conversion/migration tasks, which can
>constitute bottlenecks and/or one-way streets, both of which impact flow
>efficiency.
Theoretically true. But it assumes that the parts are good and work well together, which isn’t always the case. I well remember Liquid Story binder which was a great deal less than the sum of its parts. And you have to make sure that the program you select isn’t weighed down by features you don’t need.
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>To give an example: as much as I despise the bloatware called MS Word, I
>find that it can support just about any work related to producing
>longform “rich” (integrating formatted text and images) documents. Most
>importantly, it does not impose a specific workflow —e.g.,
>finalise text first, then format— as one can go back and forth,
>drafting, editing, enriching, refining, versioning, etc.
I used to despise Word. It was always bloated from a writers pov because it was a program designed for typists. And it actually missed many features useful to writers. I only used it when I had to and for the later stages of reviewing etc.
But then I learned other ways of using it and discovered that many of the desired features that I remember it not having were now there. And it robustly worked with massive documents that some plaintext editors struggled with. And focus modes were actually great. And it worked well with OneNote (still an acquired taste, but better than the note features in most editors). I’m not sure when that happened. And I don’t find the “bloat” weighing it down. I have great respect for it now.
If it weren’t for Lattics I’d be doing most of my writing with it. With outlining/planning in Mindomo. There were two big reasons for switching. One being that I don’t work only in one long document for days on end - I have many projects and I tend to switch between them according to pressure and inspiration (or the lack of it) - Lattics is designed to manage multiple projects. The other being the going back and forth: my optimal workflow isn’t outliner/planner > editor, it’s going back and forth between them. That works in Lattics but not so well in Mindomo/Word.
Posted by Amontillado
Dec 18, 2024 at 12:50 AM
I’ll second this - nice topic.
(Insert standard fanboy gushing about Easy Data Transform here, all the stronger and an even more incredible resource in its new release. Tyrants quail before data disambiguated with Easy Data Transform.)
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
Fascinating discussion!
>
>We could consider Theory of Contraints…
I had a license for Flying Logic for a while. Interesting concept, but the problems I untangle aren’t good candidates for ToC analysis. It seemed more of a presentation tool, actually, than a design utility.
Posted by Amontillado
Dec 18, 2024 at 12:50 AM
I’ll second this - nice topic.
(Insert standard fanboy gushing about Easy Data Transform here, all the stronger and an even more incredible resource in its new release. Tyrants quail before data disambiguated with Easy Data Transform.)
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
Fascinating discussion!
>
>We could consider Theory of Contraints…
I had a license for Flying Logic for a while. Interesting concept, but the problems I untangle aren’t good candidates for ToC analysis. It seemed more of a presentation tool, actually, than a design utility.