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Index cards software
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Posted by Derek Cornish
Aug 12, 2006 at 04:35 PM
Wojciech -
> Does anobody know a program of this type (I mean: based on index cards concept ) that allows for completely free design of > cards? During years I have developed my own system of making notes using cards and would be happy to reproduce it using > computer instead of ajusting myself to actually fixed templates created by a developer.
How is your search going? Did askSam provide the features you needed?
Derek
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Aug 12, 2006 at 10:30 PM
Wojciech wrote:
>
>Does anobody know a
>program of this type (I mean: based on index cards concept ) that allows for completely
>free design of cards? During years I have developed my own system of making notes using
>cards and would be happy to reproduce it using computer instead of ajusting myself to
>actually fixed templates created by a developer.
>
>
Steve’s suggesting Ask Sam some posts down this thread makes me wonder whether Zoot could work for you. The new note forms in Zoot even resemble cards, and with the use of fields I should think—hypothetically rather than on the basis of knowing what I am talking about from experience—that you could get what you wanted.
Also, my sense is that Zoot would give you probably more ways to slice and dice your data than Ask Sam.
Daly
Posted by Wojciech
Aug 14, 2006 at 12:41 PM
>Derek Cornish wrote:
>How is your search going? Did askSam provide the features you
>needed?
Derek,
No, unfortunately not. While askSam is certainly a great program for collecting/searching different kinds of information, it is not flexible enough for my purpose. I mean that I want to able to change not only the number and structure of custom fields but also to design specific graphical layouts to imitate paper index cards. Besides - and of course this a matter of taste - the whole look of askSam is too stark for me, and the support seems to be poor (I sent them a message with some questions but never received their answers).
At the moment I use ndxCards, which I find quite useful for collecting several types of notes (bibliographical, quotations, paraphrases, ideas etc.) and than manipulating them using some outlining possibilities. And there are very supportive people.
However, the more I search and exercise various pieces of specialised software, the stronger is my feeling that designing… simple tables in Word (or WordPerfect) and making use of its different views - something that Peter promoted a couple of months ago - could be the most clear, fast and productive solution in this respect. In a table-card I can have as many cells-fields as I need and in a place I want, then I can insert any text, format it (I like different size of letters), use various colors and add arrows and shapes - both extremely important for me.
Wojciech
Posted by Wojciech
Aug 14, 2006 at 12:47 PM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Steve’s suggesting Ask Sam some posts down
>this thread makes me wonder whether Zoot could work for you. The new note forms in Zoot
>even resemble cards, and with the use of fields I should think—hypothetically
>rather than on the basis of knowing what I am talking about from experience—that you
>could get what you wanted.
>
>Also, my sense is that Zoot would give you probably more
>ways to slice and dice your data than Ask Sam.
Daly,
Many thanks for this advice. I’ve never tried Zoot seriously waiting for the ‘magic’ 32 bit version. I will have a look at it as soon as I can. The only problem is that my trial period is over and this is quite expensive piece of software for me.
Wojciech
Posted by Derek Cornish
Aug 16, 2006 at 02:43 PM
Sorry that askSam did not work for you, Wojciech. It seems strange that nobody is producing software with the type of features you mention. Maybe one of the traditional database programs (e.g, MS Access) might be worth looking at. They usually have reasonably good form-design features and, of course, excellent data-handling.
Derek