Lately, we have had topics comparing MyInfo with UltraRecall and MyBase with Surfulater. If anyone has tried both InfoMason and Ultrarecall, any comments comparing the two would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

-c

Cassius

InfoMason? Would that be the Crimper's perfect Christmas present? ;)

UltraRecall and IdeaMason are "apples and oranges", or at least lemons and limes. UltraRecall is a knowledge and information management tool, in many respects one of the most sophisticated available but also possessing one of the steepest learning curves, in my view. IdeaMason is an excellent drafting and writing tool, aimed at the academic and general factual markets. Both stand out in their niches.

I would not want to use IM for knowledge management on any significant scale. I have tried to use UR for writing, but it's really far from ideal for this, and there are much better writing tools, including IM.

H

Hugh, what would make UltraRecall a better writing tool for you?

I agree with your assessment of the difference between IdeaMason and UR.

But I think there are times, with UR being such a good knowledge manager, that I would prefer to do my writing there, as long as I didn't need the academic references.

I recently wrote the UR group that I would like to see the option for a ruler in text, as well as multiple windows.

What else might be helpful?

I wonder whether UR is new coming close to that killer ap, the all-in-one, that golden grail of CRIMPERs? I thnk ADM had had the chance once until they so gloriously shot themselves in the foot. And given the profound round of silence from Arne, I suspect ADM is now working on the other foot.

Daly

Hugh Pile wrote:

Cassius

InfoMason? Would that be the Crimper's perfect Christmas present?
;)

UltraRecall and IdeaMason are "apples and oranges", or at least lemons and
limes. UltraRecall is a knowledge and information management tool, in many respects
one of the most sophisticated available but also possessing one of the steepest
learning curves, in my view. IdeaMason is an excellent drafting and writing tool,
aimed at the academic and general factual markets. Both stand out in their niches.

I
would not want to use IM for knowledge management on any significant scale. I have
tried to use UR for writing, but it's really far from ideal for this, and there are much
better writing tools, including IM.

H

Daly,

I can't stop laughing!
I really hope they get both foots back on service.

UR can be used as a writing tool as long as you don't need academic references.
The possiblity to open several topics in tabs is very useful for the writing/brainstorming process.
Further, as I am working with MS Word, the possiblity to open a topic in word and do the editing and layouting there is also a plus. Yes, I hear you asking 'But when I am not using Word?'. Well, I don't have the answer yet but I will try to open an UR item in the Writer of OpenOffice. Update will follow.
I am not sure that Kinook will add any more features to the text pane in UR as they want to keep it as simple as possible.

Dominik

PS: Take care of your foots! (still laughing...)

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Hugh, what would make UltraRecall a better writing tool for you?

I agree with your
assessment of the difference between IdeaMason and UR.

But I think there are times,
with UR being such a good knowledge manager, that I would prefer to do my writing there,
as long as I didn't need the academic references.

I recently wrote the UR group that I
would like to see the option for a ruler in text, as well as multiple windows.

What
else might be helpful?

I wonder whether UR is new coming close to that killer ap, the
all-in-one, that golden grail of CRIMPERs? I thnk ADM had had the chance once until
they so gloriously shot themselves in the foot. And given the profound round of
silence from Arne, I suspect ADM is now working on the other foot.

Daly

Hugh Pile
wrote:
>Cassius
>
>InfoMason? Would that be the Crimper's perfect Christmas
present?
>;)
>
>UltraRecall and IdeaMason are "apples and oranges", or at least
lemons and
>limes. UltraRecall is a knowledge and information management tool, in
many respects
>one of the most sophisticated available but also possessing one of
the steepest
>learning curves, in my view. IdeaMason is an excellent drafting and
writing tool,
>aimed at the academic and general factual markets. Both stand out in
their niches.
>
>I
>would not want to use IM for knowledge management on any
significant scale. I have
>tried to use UR for writing, but it's really far from ideal
for this, and there are much
>better writing tools, including IM.
>
>H

Daly

What would make UR a better writing tool for me? I spent quite a while thinking about this last year. The answer came to me when I read a thread in this forum called something like "An Outliner of Outlines". UR would need an outliner of outlines, explicitly within the software. (But actually I don't think it should have one, because I don't think UR is or could be a top-notch writing tool.)

I think many people write in a non-linear fashion, gathering bits and pieces of research, writing up their own "best bits", adding bridging material, tucking in project to-dos and so on. If one works in this fashion, and wants to stay in a single piece of software (of course one doesn't have to), one needs a repository/library/database/binder for the bits, and then separately one needs a true "structural" outliner to fit them all together. (The repository doesn't have to be a heirarchical tree; it could work with tags.)

Not many programmes have this dual outliner functionality. IM does. Scrivener (for the Mac) does. UR doesn't. I thought I'd made a small breakthrough last year, when, as I wrote in this forum, I'd put MS Word into UR and was able to template its outliner in UR. But Word lost its menus (not its buttons) in the process, and the functionality seemed a tad clunking. For me it wasn't a solution.

An ideal writing tool would also require such functions as simple ways of importing and exporting text, RTF and Word files, smooth handling of citations, project and document targets, timers and word counts, a recent history pane, versioning/snapshotting, a word usage counter, formatters that help with basic writing styles (academic, novel, filmscript, TV stage-play), revision/review/tracking tools, annotation tools, and several other widgets and gizmos that would make the writing task easier and more pleasurable. For fiction, a lot of people would favour formatted character and location sheets and the like, but personally I think that's a Nineties fashion which I'm glad has passed.

But the fundamental requirement would be an outliner of outliners. Once I'd have tried to encourage the developers of UR (and similar programmes) to go in this direction, but now with the emergence of such tools as IM and Scrivener (and probably others that I'm unaware of), I think that's unnecessary (and probably potentially bloating for perfectly good knowledge-managment software).

H

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Hugh, what would make UltraRecall a better writing tool for you?

Here is my highly subjective opinion on this question: I don't think any program that has its outline discreet from its editing panels is ideal for writing. In other words, the ideal writing application would be a single-pane outliner the way that GrandView was and NoteMap is. NoteMap fails as the ideal writing application for other reasons. One of these being that in NM you can't have inline text associated with but separate from a heading. In GrandView an outline consisted of hierarchical headings, and each of those headings could be the home for pages of text. This text could be viewed as part of the outline, it could be hidden, so only the outline was visible, or you could zoom in on just the text. I hope I'm being clear. It was this ability to zoom in on one part of the overall project, or zoom out to see the entire project that made GrandView unique and so powerful as a writing environment. Good writing requires the ability to concentrate on what you are currently working on, but to also see your work holistically. I don't think writing in UltraRecall or any of the two-pane outliners gives you this holistic view.

This does not mean that you can't produce good writing in a program like UR -- of course you can, just like you can produce good writing on a typewriter. You just won't be taking advantage of the potential benefits that technology should provide. Of course, the fact that there isn't currently a program with the features I describe, does sort of force you to make compromises. I'm not altogether very familiar with IdeaMason, but I recall that it provides a feature in which you can view your work as one long, concontenated document. This isn't perfect, but it is better than most applications provide.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth -- and I am probably over charging.

Steve Z.

Steve Z said of NoteMap, "NoteMap fails as the ideal writing application for other reasons. One of these being that in NM you can’t have inline text associated with but separate from a heading. In GrandView an outline consisted of hierarchical headings, and each of those headings could be the home for pages of text. This text could be viewed as part of the outline, it could be hidden, so only the outline was visible, or you could zoom in on just the text. I hope I’m being clear. It was this ability to zoom in on one part of the overall project, or zoom out to see the entire project that made GrandView unique and so powerful as a writing environment. Good writing requires the ability to concentrate on what you are currently working on, but to also see your work holistically."

If I understand this correctly, NoteMap can do most of the outlining operations that GV can. For example, if you create an outline heading (=topic=node), and press CTRL-ENTER, you can type in a separate paragraph within that heading. You can have many paragraphs (= lots of text) associated with that heading: Just use CTRL-ENTER to start each new paragraph.

NoteMap's Outline/Fold menu command will hide the paragraphs (text) and just show the heading, But I don't think NoteMap has GV's ability to show the text without the heading.

NoteMap can also hoist/de-hoist, merge and split, mark and gather, etc.

NoteMap negatives include: No graphics, no links between items within an outline, and if one pastes a block of several paragraphs into NoteMap, each is treated as a separate outline heading. This can make pasting clippings into NoteMap a PITA (=irksome).

Inspiration has several nice outlining capabilities, but the more mundane editing features tend to be clunky/irksome.

-c

Cassius wrote:

NoteMap can do
most of the outlining operations that GV can. For example, if you create an outline
heading (=topic=node), and press CTRL-ENTER, you can type in a separate paragraph
within that heading. You can have many paragraphs (= lots of text) associated with
that heading: Just use CTRL-ENTER to start each new paragraph.

NoteMap's
Outline/Fold menu command will hide the paragraphs (text) and just show the heading,
But I don't think NoteMap has GV's ability to show the text without the
heading.

NoteMap can also hoist/de-hoist, merge and split, mark and gather,
etc.

Cassius,

You are right. I had never thought of those work arounds. It's not clean the way GrandView was, but it would probably be effective. Thanks for the insight.

Steve Z.