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Citavi in everyday use
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Posted by JJSlote
Jan 21, 2011 at 04:57 PM
This remarkable program merits its own thread. I use it as a knowledge manager; its capabilities as a reference and citation manager are, for the moment, secondary.
Citavi’s key capability for me is the ease of previewing multiple semi-random items simultaneously while editing. It uses a three-pane model. The tree is reserved for categories; items, as single-line core statements, take a second pane; selected previews stack up and scroll in a third. This design facilitates unlimited cross-referencing without the tangle of recursivity.
Citavi would benefit from better user options for font size and background color, and a more compact and floatable Thought editor. And some way to add to the spell-check dictionary. Importing is also a weak spot. I haven’t been getting much traction in Citavi’s own English-language forum, so I hope some folks here will participate there as well to help achieve a critical mass of expert interactive feedback.
Power user tip: Items within a category appear in their pane in user-set order, with optional subheadings to break them out, a terrific feature. They can’t be automatically sorted, far as I can tell, but they appear alphabetically in the Publication Assistant (on the Citation Menu or F7). From there, you can select and assign them to additional categories, thereby initially alphabetizing them in those categories.
Citavi is a desktop program that is free-of-charge for up to 100 *references* per project or session. That places no obvious limit on the knowledge items, URLs, or file links and previews in the free edition. The developer’s Partners, such as academic database firms, help pick up the tab; use of Citavi no doubt boosts the activity billable to their subscribers.
Highly recommended.
Jerome
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 24, 2011 at 09:16 AM
JJSlote wrote:
>It uses a three-pane model. The tree is reserved
>for categories; items, as single-line core statements, take a second pane; selected
>previews stack up and scroll in a third.
I would note that this 3-pane approach is in my view the most effective when organising large numbers of items, where the tree navigator of more ‘traditional’ 2-pane outliners quickly becomes overcrowded.
I find it curious that this design is used so rarely in the tools discussed here, when considering that it is standard in e-mail clients. As far as I remember, apart for Citavi, I have only seen it in Normfall Manager, Sycon IDEA! (both German products like Citavi) and Zoot.
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Jan 24, 2011 at 03:18 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>I would note that this 3-pane approach is in my view the
>most effective when organising large numbers of items, where the tree navigator of
>more ‘traditional’ 2-pane outliners quickly becomes overcrowded.
>
>I find it
>curious that this design is used so rarely in the tools discussed here, when
>considering that it is standard in e-mail clients. As far as I remember, apart for
>Citavi, I have only seen it in Normfall Manager, Sycon IDEA! (both German products
>like Citavi) and Zoot.
In InfoQube, the Properties pane can be used as a third pane, making it a 3 pane outliner…
Cheers !
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 24, 2011 at 04:44 PM
Pierre Paul Landry wrote:
>In InfoQube, the Properties pane can be used as a third
>pane, making it a 3 pane outliner…
I think it’s a different concept. Other outliners, such as UltraRecall can also display additional panes, such as properties or notes, but this doesn’t necessarily help in uncluttering the tree.
The approach implemented by the programs I mentioned follows the principles below:
1st pane: hierarchical outline/tree, categories only, no individual info items
2nd pane: list view of items
3rd pane: details of the selected item
In InfoQube, as far as I understand, the outline includes the info items.
In UltraRecall (funny I hadn’t thought of this before), it is actually possible to use the Child Items pane as the 2nd pane above and navigate through the items there. This doesn’t literally unclutter the tree, as the individual info items are still there; however, one can maintain the parent folders unexpanded, which provides the same uncluttered view in practice.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 24, 2011 at 05:00 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>As far as I remember, apart for
>Citavi, I have only seen it in Normfall Manager, Sycon IDEA! (both German products
>like Citavi) and Zoot.
Evernote also has a similar concept, but loses on the first pane where only a flat list of notebooks is available, i.e. no structure. New releases promise ‘stacks’ of notebooks http://blog.evernote.com/2010/12/15/evernote-2-0-for-mac-is-now-available/ but this only provides one additional level of organisation.