In the 'Ountline Filk "Missing in Action"' thread, Graham Rhind said, "... I decided I had better things to do in my life than move my data from one program to another as developers lost interest and something different turned up. So I’m sticking with just a few programs which satisfy 90% of my needs at the present time - Whizfolders, Evernote and Flashpaste.

"But I do check out all the new versions which other readers post about! So, don’t stop posting! Perhaps soon I’ll be moving my data to yet another set of programs ... :-( "

I agree! With few exceptions, wholesale moving of data is an insane waste of time. There are a few "almost exceptions": Inspiration does a pretty good job of moving data to and from RTF, but it is so clunky to use. NoteMap is supposed to export to RTF but that is imperfect and I doubt the latest update fixed the problem. GrandView, which has been extolled for many other features, has/had a wide range of import and export options, but alas it is DOS and MS has decided to penalize DOS programs by making them difficult to use in the Windows environment.

For a time, one could search across different PIMs/file structures using a general search engine, but now many PIMs compress their data files, pretty much killing cross-PIM searches.

So, it seems that one has, perhaps, four choices:

1. Stay with software that has a long-term future, that is, it can be expected to have future updates to keep it current with new versions of the OS and printers.

2. Stay with software that may not ever be upgraded and run it as long as possible--like some people are doing with GV.

3. Same as 2, but stay with the OS that the software runs well on and hope you can find printer drivers compatible with the software, your printer, and your hardware.

4. Give up and stick with the "standards" such as MS Office, Open Office, etc. Macros may be able to enhance the "standards" to add needed capabilities.

-c

Cassius wrote:

4. Give up and stick with the "standards" such as MS Office, Open Office,
etc. Macros may be able to enhance the "standards" to add needed capabilities.

Never.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

Cassius

So, it seems that one has, perhaps, four choices:

1. Stay with software
that has a long-term future, that is, it can be expected to have future updates to keep
it current with new versions of the OS and printers.

Who can tell what companies really have a long-term future?
Microsoft, IBM, and a few others come to mind. But as we all have seen: Even these companies are quick to drop products they do not see a business value in.

As far as outliners, PIMs, info collectors are concerned: Who do you trust to stay in business for the next 5 years?
And, after all, most "companies" in this field are one- or two-person companies. What happens when the developer of product A has a serious accident? Loses interest? Cannot afford to work on the product?

2. Stay with software that may
not ever be upgraded and run it as long as possible--like some people are doing with
GV.

This is the strategy I pursue: I'll stick with Infoselect although Zoot, UR, MI, et.al. may be "better" or at least look more modern. The trouble of getting my data out of IS and into a different product is not worth the trouble in my eyes.

Just recently, I considered using Zoot or UR for a new project that will probably run for more than a year. I decided against it, because it would have meant having IS, Ideamason and the third product always opened to be able to drop new notes and snippets into the database for the corresponding project (I am sure you can imaging the conflicts resulting when various clipboard tools such as IS shooter are run concurrently).

3. Same as 2, but stay with the OS that the software runs well on and hope you can
find printer drivers compatible with the software, your printer, and your
hardware.

Wouldn't help in my case: I usually deliver digital data. Printer drivers are not important for me.

4. Give up and stick with the "standards" such as MS Office, Open Office,
etc. Macros may be able to enhance the "standards" to add needed capabilities.

Ahem. "Standards" and MS Office in one sentence?

What Microsoft "standard" do you mean: Word 6.0 (DOS), Winword 2.0, Word 95, Word 97/2000/XP, Word 2003 XML or "OpenXML"?

OpenDOC may become an option in the next years. But they would have to add a few things for making it suitable for the kind of data storage we talk about here (not to speak of the rudimentary outliner implementation).

So: Standard text formats are Ascii TXT and RTF. TXT is fine for pure text, RTF is not really satisfying as far as consistent formatting is concerned.

Franz

Franz said, "Ahem. “Standards” and MS Office in one sentence?

"What Microsoft “standard” do you mean: Word 6.0 (DOS), Winword 2.0, Word 95, Word 97/2000/XP, Word 2003 XML or “OpenXML”?"


Usually, when a product such as Word updates with a format change, the new version automatically imports files in the old format and converts them to the new format. (The Maple PIM is an exception, which is why I dropped it.) A difficulty with a new file format is the problems that arise when one is collaborating with others who are using an older version of the software. Several years ago, when I was co-lead on a joint FAA-EUROCONTROL project, this problem arose. The Europeans were using an older version of Word than was I. I was able to find an MS conversion program that converted my, newer format into their, older format. I do not know if MS still provides such conversion programs.

-c

Just had an incredible success w/ converting from outliner to outliner that I thought y'all would want to hear about.

I've been looking for something to convert from ADM to. I'm trying NoteMap this week.

I took one of my more important and complete ADM outlines, and used ADM's Print/Export function, and then copied the entire outline (>1500 topics, up to 12 levels deep) to the clipboard. I then created a new outline in NoteMap, selected the root topic, and just hit Ctrl-V to paste and see what happened.

It worked perfectly! The entire outline was immediately in Notemap, and all the levels are in the correct place. The only glitch is that Notemap only supports 9 levels, so it converted all my levels > 9 to level 9, and provided a nice warning dialogue to alert me to that issue. Of course, my metatada, links, and rich text notes were all lost in conversion, which I personally can live without.

So, I guess there's one outliner->outliner conversion you can count on if you just want to convert the outline itself.

dan7000 wrote:

Just had an incredible success w/ converting from outliner to outliner that I thought
y'all would want to hear about.

I've been looking for something to convert from ADM
to. I'm trying NoteMap this week.[snip]

That worked but did you notice that Notemap doesn't have any/much in the way of exporting.
--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

Dan,

Amazing!

I have some Notemap news, but will start a new thread for it

-c

Cassius wrote:

Usually, when a product such as Word updates with a format
change, the new version automatically imports files in the old format and converts
them to the new format. (The Maple PIM is an exception, which is why I dropped it.) A
difficulty with a new file format is the problems that arise when one is collaborating
with others who are using an older version of the software. Several years ago, when I
was co-lead on a joint FAA-EUROCONTROL project, this problem arose. The Europeans
were using an older version of Word than was I. I was able to find an MS conversion
program that converted my, newer format into their, older format. I do not know if MS
still provides such conversion programs.

There's a new format with Word 2007. Users of older versions (2003 and I think 2000) are automatically prompted to download a conversion program from MS when they try to open the file.

Tom S.

Tom S. said, "There’s a new format with Word 2007. Users of older versions (2003 and I think 2000) are automatically prompted to download a conversion program from MS when they try to open the file."

SHAME on MS. The conversion should be automatic. So much for "user friendly." A good reason NOT to buy Office 2007.

-c

Jan,

Yes, I tried the "send to word" from NoteMap. It was incredibly slow - I thought my machine was hung. And the outline levels were a bit screwed up after the export. Why can't anybody get this right??

- Dan

Dan7000 said, "Yes, I tried the “send to word” from NoteMap. It was incredibly slow - I thought my machine was hung. And the outline levels were a bit screwed up after the export. Why can’t anybody get this right??"

Dan, please see my notes in the thread "NoteMap 2.1.011."

-c

Cassius wrote:

Tom S. said, "There’s a new format with Word 2007. Users of older versions (2003 and I
think 2000) are automatically prompted to download a conversion program from MS when
they try to open the file."

SHAME on MS. The conversion should be automatic. So much
for "user friendly." A good reason NOT to buy Office 2007.

Ummm. Isn't it a little hard to build an automatic conversion into an old program when the new one hasn't even been designed yet? In fact, I can't think of a single program that as ever done it. The best you can usually do is get the person with the newer program to save the file in the older format and resend it.

I'm having a pretty hard time thinking of a more conveient way MS could have done it.

Tom S.

dan7000 wrote:

Just had an incredible success w/ converting from outliner to outliner that I thought
y'all would want to hear about.

I've been looking for something to convert from ADM
to. I'm trying NoteMap this week.

I took one of my more important and complete ADM
outlines, and used ADM's Print/Export function, and then copied the entire outline
(>1500 topics, up to 12 levels deep) to the clipboard. I then created a new outline in
NoteMap, selected the root topic, and just hit Ctrl-V to paste and see what happened.

Dan, here's something else you can try.
UltraRecall
Import as RTF
There are various options to distinguish between topics, Ex: 2,3,4 spaces, page break, any other constant charcter. This is excellent if you are disciplined in how you added info to your ADM DB

The other option is to save as an ADM rtf file, then add page breaks where ever you want so on importing to ULtraReca will create separate topics.

HTH

It worked perfectly! The entire outline was immediately in Notemap, and all the
levels are in the correct place. The only glitch is that Notemap only supports 9
levels, so it converted all my levels > 9 to level 9, and provided a nice warning
dialogue to alert me to that issue. Of course, my metatada, links, and rich text notes
were all lost in conversion, which I personally can live without.

So, I guess
there's one outliner->outliner conversion you can count on if you just want to
convert the outline itself.

Perhaps I misunderstood Tom S. when he said, "There’s a new format with Word 2007. Users of older versions (2003 and I think 2000) are automatically prompted to download a conversion program from MS when they try to open the file."

I thought Tom meant that if one wishes to open, say a Word 2000 file using Word 2007, one has to use a separate conversion program. If Tom meant that to open a Word 2007 file using, say Word 2000, then he certainly is correct in saying that a separate conversion program is needed. This is what was done when I was working with the Europeans, who had an older version of Word than did I.

-c

Cassius wrote:

Perhaps I misunderstood Tom S. when he said, "There’s a new format with Word 2007.
Users of older versions (2003 and I think 2000) are automatically prompted to
download a conversion program from MS when they try to open the file."

I thought Tom
meant that if one wishes to open, say a Word 2000 file using Word 2007, one has to use a
separate conversion program. If Tom meant that to open a Word 2007 file using, say Word
2000, then he certainly is correct in saying that a separate conversion program is
needed. This is what was done when I was working with the Europeans, who had an older
version of Word than did I.

My apologies for not being clearer.

I should point out that the downloaded program does the conversion automatically whenever you try to open the newer format with the older version. I made it sound like it was a separate program that you had to run first. It is, in fact, pretty seamless and invisible. They've actually done a decent job.

Sorry about that.

Tom S.

In the ADM thread, Dan 7000 wondered about the longevity of NoteMap. I now don't think there is much hope for substantial updates, if any at all.

I had started this thread believing that the latest version had fixed problems with rtf export, but after learning that export to WORD was as bad as ever, my memory of earlier uses of NoteMap began to return. I am now pretty sure that rtf export in NoteMap ver. 2.0 always worked well. In fact, I now seem to recall suggesting to CaseSoft that it could fix the WORD export with a very few lines of code... just change the WORD export to the rtf export followed by opening the rtf export in WORD, The fact that neither CaseSoft nor Lexus-Nexus would not do even this extremely simple fix (or entirely drop the flawed WORD export) suggests that this version of NoteMap is likely the final version.

-c

Cassius

I wouldn't mind testing Notemap's export to Word 2007. Is there a model outline somewhere that would constitute a rigorous test?

Jack

Jack,

I'll send you a NoteMap Outline. Please send an email to me at werauntie@yahoo.com. Put the word NoteMap in the subject line. I'll reply with the outline attached.