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Structured Document Editors?
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Posted by Derek Cornish
Jul 22, 2010 at 12:19 AM
Dave,
Thanks very much for explaining this. Now that we are in email contact I’ll send you a piece of the file in question.
Derek
Posted by Derek Cornish
Jul 22, 2010 at 10:23 PM
Just to update the forum on this…
I sent the developer (Dave) a portion of a longer Brainstorm outline for some tests. There were some inital problems with BS’s html export file - a question of some invalid character errors (curly quotes in this instance) but these were sorted out.
There are still some issues with how Sense can best handle BS’s html outline layout.
Derek
Posted by dan7000
Jul 22, 2010 at 10:40 PM
Just wanted to add some praise for Sense and the developer Dave Ewin.
After seeing this thread, I downloaded Sense. I ran into a pretty esoteric problem involving my practice of logging in to my laptop on the work network, then disconnecting and continuing to use my laptop on the go without logging out. I emailed Dave. In the past day, we have exchanged 10 emails and he has diagnosed the problem and provided a solution. At the same time, he has apparently been posting on this thread and solving problems for others. I’m impressed at his responsiveness, so I thought he deserved some public praise.
I also like the program. I am probably going to register the pro version - 29 bucks is a good price for this. I have an article I’m drafting in Work 2010 outlining mode right now, and I will transfer it into Sense and let you all know how it goes.
As an aside, Word 2010 outlining mode is something you all should all try out if you haven’t. It is pretty great in theory and actually does exactly what this thread is asking for: it lets you work totally in an outline (you can collapse, promote, demote, and drag all outline elements)—and then switch to regular mode to see your work in a normal Word document. But something about the workflow feels wrong to me. It’s missing lots of keyboard shortcuts, and moving outline elements around is not smooth. I like that Sense lets you see both the outline and the document at the same time in 2 panes, so maybe that will be better.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 25, 2010 at 08:17 PM
dan7000 wrote:
>Just wanted to add some praise for Sense and the developer Dave Ewin.
I’ll second that; I actually owe it to Dave after going public with my initial negative impression from a failed registration email address. I wish more developers were as responsive, and recognised the wealth of ideas available in this forum.
That said, there’s a couple of issues I believe should be dealt with:
- The registration process is unnecessarily cumbersome; first get a Registration Code, mail it to the developer and then get a Product Key that will actually unlock the program. Dave has said that at some point the online registration will be enabled, hopefully automating things.
- The license is only valid for one PC; in this day and age I believe that at least two PCs (office and laptop) should be covered; it should be able to license by user rather than PC. I personally wouldn’t mind paying a higher price for a user license covering more than one PC.
Re importing/exporting; as mentioned in this forum, the two more popular formats for sharing data from different outliners are OPML and tab-indented plain ext. I believe that both formats would be useful for Sense, and that at least one should be directly supported.
Posted by Dave Ewins
Jul 27, 2010 at 04:50 AM
Firstly, many thanks to everyone for their comments.
Noted and accepted comments on registration and volume licencing - the volume licensing will be easier to implement than the online registration in the short term.
With regard to Import/Export a generic (BrainStorm) Html Import solution (via SenseToWebpage) is scheduled for trial version availablity later this week or early next.
OPML is very similar to RSS xml. The SenseToRSS tool provides Sense document templates for authoring various feeds. Xml element names (and attributes) are declared in Section headings. In every template, the top level section with the RSS version and namespace declaration (defining feed type such as blogchannel and itunes-podcast) is mandatory. All other sub-sections are in principle optional allowing great flexibility for RSS feed customization and extension. - some sections are essential though for feed validation. Sense OPML support could be provided using a similar document format. Please let me know if this document format is acceptable? If so OPML editor support could be provided quite quickly. More info on the tool http://www.silvaelm.com/sense-to-rss.shtml
For text files, I’m sure there must be ideas regarding tab and space indentation, their usage and significance? It would be useful to know this to define translation to expandable/collapsible sections and paragraphs,etc within Sense?
Dave