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What a good Outliner should have
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Posted by Cassius
Mar 7, 2010 at 12:25 AM
Glen Coulthard wrote:
>May I ask you both for your reasons re: choosing myBase? There seem to be many, many options—MyInfo, MyNoteskeeper, Treepad, KeepNote, WhizFolders, InfoQube, etc., >etc.
>Glen
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I can’t comment on many of the PIMs you mentioned.
First and foremost for me: I have an extreme amount of personal and general information saved in MyBase and another PIM (Jot+) and am loath to start saving info in a third, new PIM and then having to search 3 PIMs for specific information I’ve saved.
Over the years I’ve used many PIMs, but finally realized that I was being “CRIMP-foolish.”
I don’t think TreePad Business saves Web Pages.
As I am now retired, I have little need for a PIM to collect and “massage” notes for a work project.
As for MyBase. I’ve used it for years and still haven’t made use of all of its capabilities. It saves Web pages quickly (although very occasionally there is a page that it cannot save or cannot save properly).
It has indexed searches both of just the tree and of an entire database. However, if you search for, say, “big top,” it will find all items containing either “big” or “top.” I’ve asked the developer about this and hope search will be enhanced in the next version.
Data bases (files) are ZLIB compressed.
Printing functions are somewhat limited as are export facilities.
One can add attachments.
Each tree branch has associated with it two tabbed panes: One for saved Web pages; the other for RTF notes and copied graphics, photos, etc.
One can include links to files and folders outside myBase and between items within myBase.
As I said, there are many, other capabilities that I have not made use of. (20+ years ago, I became a virtuoso “playing” GrandView. It was a “single-pane” outliner, but had many other functions that I now really do not need.)
I’m certain that MyInfo, InfoQube, UltraRecall and several (many?) other PIMs have functions that myBase does not, but in testing some of them, myBase saved Web pages more rapidly and pretty much has all the functionality that I need.
Note: To save Web pages in myBase, you also need to own WebCollect.
-c
Posted by grendizer
Mar 7, 2010 at 10:14 AM
Hello again
I’m surprised a knowledge base software is called a “PIM”. “PIM” stands for *personal* information manager. I already use Outlook for personal things, like appointments, tasks, emails. A knowledge base is different, it is much less personal, as parts of this knowledge base can be shared with others. I don’t use Outlook and MyBase for the same purposes. I also imagined the word “outline” was refering to the tree view of all the articles.
Reasons for choosing MyBase: it has most of the features of an “ideal” Outliner / PIM , as suggested in my first post: tree view, 2 panes, viewing the file on a mobile device, quick creation of a web site from a branch of the tree.
In my opinion, what makes it stand out is the mobile device compatibility. Being able to check my knowledge base on my phone has been many times very useful to me. As far as I know, the only other Outliner that offers this advantage is OneNote, and it also offers synchronisation, which is way cool. But OneNote is a one-pane software , so it does not fit to my needs.
But as for MyBase, so far I have just been reading my knowledge base file on my phone, I have never tried to edit it yet. I don’t know how editing behaves on the phone, and how it affects the file when it is copied back to the PC.
I hope Windows Phone 7 will be supported in MyBase v6.
Exporting a branch to create a small web site is also a mandatory feature, in order to “make public” a part of the tree and to share it with co-worker. I.M.O. it’s more important than saving a web page into the knowledge base file. I usually select some text in a web page and paste it , unformatted, inside the MyBase article. So I don’t use “web collect”.
Pierre, very interesting article, I have saved this into… my knowledge base file ;) This article will help me to test other Outliners / PIM’s, and it is true that there are many of them.
Gz
Posted by Hugh
Mar 7, 2010 at 12:20 PM
I’m with Cassius on the difference between an outliner and a PIM. It’s always seemed to me that, strictly speaking, an outliner is mainly used for outlining a structure before writing, and a PIM is mainly used for information storage, although of course there are lots of users who use both terms for both, and lots of applications that bridge the gap. Each to his own. However, on the strict definition, it seems to me that what the OP is talking about is storage not writing and therefore a PIM, or if you prefer, a “a personal database”.
Incidentally the interesting taxonomy from Wave could usefully include some more applications for the Macintosh, beyond Opal and Scrivener: (for example) TAO, which is probably one of the most comprehensively featured outliners (by the strict definition) on either platform, Tinderbox, OmniOutliner, and DEVONThink, Eaglefiler and Together, which some people claim to use for outlining, but fall more into the personal database category.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 7, 2010 at 02:12 PM
I agree with Cassius and Hugh. There is a substantive distinction between an outliner and a tree-based information manager or what I’ll call a personal knowledge system (PKS). The truth, of course, is that all applications fall somewhere along a spectrum. Take a solid tree-based PIM like the old Treepad (which is still a great little application). You can surely use it for outlining, as well as information management.
So why bother with the distinction? I think it helps one choose an application if you can imagine how you want to use it. An outliner, in my view, is primarily a thinking and writing tool. As such, it should facilitate the capture of your own thoughts and ideas, allow you to explore them with quick, easy re-organization tools. It should allow you to change the scope of the view of your information quickly, zooming in on details or zooming out to get the bigger picture.
A PKS, on the other hand, should facilitate the capture and organization of information. It should provide tools for categorizing that information and finding it later. It should help you establish connections between various bits of data. It should make extracting that information easy. It should have powerful search functions. And, in this day and age, should synchronize across multiple computers and PDAs.
I don’t believe you will find one application that can perform really well as both an outliner and a PKS. Some come close—Whizfolders might be an example, or Brainstorm (if you don’t need text formatting and image-capture).
Most writers, I think, will want to have two applications. One for outlining and one for managing their research. Scrivener for the Mac is an interesting application to study in this regard. It has a fairly robust tree-based system for organizing writing, but it also includes an outlining function, demonstrating that at least this developer sees a distinction between how you organize your writing and how you think about it. And most Scrivener users also use a separate PKS.
In the end, however, all that matters is finding what works for you. I’m just suggesting that thinking about outlining and knowledge management as separate activities may help you find the right system for you.
Steve Z.
Posted by basilides
Mar 7, 2010 at 03:02 PM
I have been keeping a close eye on an intriguing MS Excel 2007, 2010 add-in called XLNotes (http://www.xlnotes.com/). I use it to add notes and images to Excel spreadsheet cells. It’s a vast improvement over Excel’s cumbersome cell comment feature. The programmers are currently working on a new version that they said will come out soon. The program has great protential.