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Posted by Cassius
Feb 14, 2007 at 07:07 PM
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
Posted by Jan Rifkinson
Feb 14, 2007 at 11:21 PM
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
Posted by Franz Grieser
Feb 15, 2007 at 11:59 AM
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
Posted by Cassius
Feb 15, 2007 at 05:29 PM
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
Posted by dan7000
Feb 25, 2007 at 04:26 PM
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.