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Mind versus tree navigation; html versus rtf editing
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Posted by Graham Rhind
Mar 9, 2007 at 09:07 PM
Two threads in one ....
I was playing around with I-Navigation today (http://www.exswap.com/ - looks good on the site but was a disappointment to me when I tried it), when it struck me that the outliners with all the power (ADM, Whizfolders, Surfulator, Zoot) and many others all have tree based navigation systems. Programs with sophisticated mind-like interfaces have weak data storage and management capabilities. I-Navigator makes a great mind map, but what can be stored at each node is very basic. Personal Brain, which has great potential as an interface, is still really just a novel way of finding and opening files - a graphical Windows Explorer plus a little note taking - and it has hardly moved on in years (though I know a new version 4 is being created). Other programs have been designed purely for mind mapping, which is not something I have much use for and which only scratches the surface of what might be done.
I can understand that developers of these swish navigation systems have been putting all the work into making the graphics look good, but I think adding the note taking or information storage abilities of a program like Whizfolders into a program like Personal Brain would be a real boon.
Is there a program which has the power but uses a non-tree based navigation system?
Which brings me on to my second thought (I must have been having a good day ....). There are programs which base themselves on rtf, such as Whizfolders, which gives great editing and export possibilities but brings limitations such as poor image support, poor table support and inability to properly store html snippets. Then there are programs such as Surfulator which harness the power of html but don’t allow the editing flexibility of rtf systems. Are there any outliners which have managed to merge the two environments successfully?
Graham
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 9, 2007 at 09:42 PM
Graham Rhind wrote:
>There are
>programs which base themselves on rtf, such as Whizfolders, which gives great
>editing and export possibilities but brings limitations such as poor image support,
>poor table support and inability to properly store html snippets. Then there are
>programs such as Surfulator which harness the power of html but don’t allow the
>editing flexibility of rtf systems. Are there any outliners which have managed to
>merge the two environments successfully?
Graham,
The first program that came to mind when I read your question is The Journal (http://www.davidrm.com). Like all these programs, it too presents a compromise, but I think David Michael, the developer, does a pretty good job in coaxing the power out of his application. The editor is very robust and seems to handle graphics and tables pretty well. The “outliner” is fairly cumbersome, but is useful. All in all, The Journal is a nice application for writers, with multiple notebooks that can be accessed through tabs, automatic daily journal pages, and a host of other tools. As has been stated about Whizfolders, in The Journal you can apply keywords (what The Journal refers to as Topics) to individual sections of text for later searching.
As for your other observation about slick navigation PIMs having limited power for editing and data management, I think you’re dead on. Not only are the editors usually pretty rudimentary, they usually lack meta data capability. I’ll be interested to see if anyone suggests a powerful PIM with a slick navigation system.
Steve Z.
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
Mar 10, 2007 at 12:54 AM
re Personal Brian - I have been playing with V4 beta now for about 2 months… In the past few weeks there has been an extraordinary acceleration of powerful features and a lot more to come - so it now combines a new, brilliant dynamic graphical user interface with increasingly powerful information management functions - its much, much more than a pretty way to navigate your files!
See the new forum here: http://forums.thebrain.com/tool/mb/thebrain.
One way also of using it, if you use UltraRecall, and/or Whizfolders, EverNote or OneNote, which all provide the facility to copy external links - is to place such links in Thoughts in TheBrain - the Brian uses these links as if they were web links, and launches them with no problem navigating you straight to the linked location in whichever application it is…
Regards, Ian Goldsmid
Posted by Cassius
Mar 10, 2007 at 05:09 AM
Graham,
MyBase ver. 5.3 with the plug-in WebCollect uses both RTF and HTML, will search both, and, I think, edit both. Note: The developer [www.wjjsoft.com] says that it runs under Vista but WebCollect sometimes has problems when used with IE. Developer suggests using FireFox with WebCollect if you have Vista.
Ian, thanks for Info on Brain. It certainly appears to be the kind of thing Graham is looking for. EverNote certainly has a different interface…or can one even call it an interface? More of a dumpster, I think. In DOS days, the creator of MaxThink also created a program that linked among nodes pretty much any way you wanted.
Even back in DOS days there were PIM programs that let you create hyperlinks to anything along with a path back. While the idea appeared marvelous, I found that, in practice, flitting from one item to another, to another, to ... via hyperlink soon led to my becoming lost, even with the bread crumb path back. I’ll let my brain flit, but I need some structure for saved information.
[Shouldn’t butterflys be called FlutterBys?]
-c
Posted by Tom S.
Mar 10, 2007 at 12:47 PM
Graham Rhind wrote:
>Personal Brain, which has great potential as an interface, is still
>really just a novel way of finding and opening files - a graphical Windows Explorer
>plus a little note taking - and it has hardly moved on in years (though I know a new
>version 4 is being created).
I think PB 4 may be your break through. I believe its been released but I’m not sure. In any case my understanding is that they have added many functions which will make it much more convenient as a PIM. For instance I think there’s some kind of calendar-type view.
PB 4 is also probably the best designed for this. The way the interface centers the current item really helps.
Tom S.