In testing ITSD Organizer I am finding the semi-opaque floating collector window (which remains on the desktop even when the program is minimised and to where text and files can be dragged to to be added automatically to the task list) a really useful feature, and, if my memory serves me correctly (it's been a while) ADM has/had one of these too.

Would the members kindly refresh my memory about whether there are other packages which have this feature that they know of?

Thanks in advance.

Graham

Graham Rhind wrote:

In testing ITSD Organizer I am finding the semi-opaque floating collector window [snip]
Would the members kindly refresh my memory about whether there are other
packages which have this feature that they know of?

ADM & Zoot. Also Ariadne has a variation of the theme, i.e. you can drag to systray w useful options. Ariadne is outline, calendar, reminders, small footprint, etc. However, I don't believe it is in active development altho it has not been abandoned either.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

Sorry forgot to say Kinook told me they were going to add something along those lines as well. Didn't forcast date, tho. -jr

I believe the first PIM program to offer this kind of functionality was ECCO Pro, with its Shooter. The Shooter is very similar to the Zooter in Zoot -- clearly, the Tom Davis liked the idea. Both of these are small icons that float at the top of the active window and pop up a very handy menu of tools for collecting data from the screen.

Black Hole Organizer then introduced the icon that is similar to the ADM folder icon, and (I guess from your comments) the ITSD folder. BHO is still available, but does not seem to have developed much in recent years.

Another program with a similar approach is My Notes Center (www.mynotescenter.com), which has something called the Text Collector, which floats about on the screen waiting for you to drag and drop info into it.

BTW, ECCO Pro is a pretty good task management tool, even today, despite the fact that it's been 10 years since development stopped. It may be worth a look... the only thing it lacks from you list of requirements is Outlook sync, and actually, it may have that but I'm not sure.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I believe the first PIM program to offer this kind of functionality was ECCO Pro, with
its Shooter. The Shooter is very similar to the Zooter in Zoot -- clearly, the Tom Davis
liked the idea. Both of these are small icons that float at the top of the active window
and pop up a very handy menu of tools for collecting data from the screen.

Black Hole
Organizer then introduced the icon that is similar to the ADM folder icon, and (I guess
from your comments) the ITSD folder. BHO is still available, but does not seem to have
developed much in recent years.

Another program with a similar approach is My Notes
Center (www.mynotescenter.com), which has something called the Text Collector,
which floats about on the screen waiting for you to drag and drop info into it.

BTW,
ECCO Pro is a pretty good task management tool, even today, despite the fact that it's
been 10 years since development stopped. It may be worth a look... the only thing it
lacks from you list of requirements is Outlook sync, and actually, it may have that but
I'm not sure.

Steve Z.

I thought of Ecco Pro too, but I don't think it will sync with Outlook (before Outlook's time) but it will sync with a Palm.

Scrivener, whose praises I'm always ready to sing, has a floating scratchpad for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac note/databank programmes, such as DevonThink).
It's a desirable for any self-respecting writing or information management tool.

Hugh Pile wrote:

Scrivener, whose praises I'm always ready to sing, has a floating scratchpad
for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac note/databank programmes, such as
DevonThink).

Do you know of a similar writing tool for windows? Thanks.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

Jan Rifkinson wrote:

Hugh Pile wrote:
>Scrivener, whose praises I'm always ready to sing, has a
floating scratchpad
>for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac
note/databank programmes, such as
>DevonThink).

Do you know of a similar writing
tool for windows? Thanks.

I have never used Scrivener, just looked longingly at the web site, but I don't believe anything in the PC world comes close. The only software I can think of that packs so many writing tools under one "hood" is Liquid Story Binder. But LSB doesn't integrate its tools very effectively. The developer, Jesse Walls, does seem to work at breakneck speed to the point where it is difficult to keep up with the latest version. There's a beta of the next generation LSB, which looks promising, but still not the tool Scrivener appears to be.

Steve Z.

Jan Rifkinson wrote:

Hugh Pile wrote:
>Scrivener, whose praises I'm always ready to sing, has a
floating scratchpad
>for rapid thought-recording (as have several Mac
note/databank programmes, such as
>DevonThink).

Do you know of a similar writing
tool for windows? Thanks.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

Jan

There's nothing on the Windows platform that rivals Scrivener as a fiction drafting tool, in my view.


I'll leave aside IdeaMason, which is primarily a non-fiction tool and has been discussed previously here. I'll also leave aside MS Word, which I think is still better than any competitor for short-form writing and for polishing any kind of writing. Nothing on either platform competes with Word's "track-changes", "compare-documents" and annotation tools.

The remaining programmes tend to split between those that are "prescriptive" in one way or another, and those that allow the user more freedom. In both cases their output is plain text, or at the maximum RTF.

I think the prescriptive programmes were amongst the first to be developed; they often deploy story development tools to channel the user into writing according to particular theories, formulae or models: Hollywood's three Acts/120 pages, or the Joseph Campbell/Star Wars mythic formula for example. At the least they provide templates for character, location, plot and scene or "beat" attributes and point-of-view. They sometimes offer metrics for plot tension/emotional intensity. Probably such software programmes were, and continue to be, attractive to newcomers.

More recent programmes tend not to bother with these approaches but, like Scrivener, focus instead on providing basic practical drafting tools such as a full-page view, a binder that is often combined with an outliner, a scratchpad or notepad, and various kinds of metadata (for synopses, tracking and editing). . These are the ones that in general I prefer, because they don't confine me and their tools are the tools I use on a daily basis.

There are at least five of these that are being actively developed for Windows. They are:

- PageFour http://www.softwareforwriting.com/pagefour.html

- Liquid Story Binder: http://www.blackobelisksoftware.com/Preview.htm

- WriteItNow: http://www.ravensheadservices.com/

- yWriter: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter3_Version.html

- Writer's Cafe: http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/

Of these five, I favour PageFour, which is a simple but steady piece of software with possibly similar potential to Scrivener, and yWriter, which has the merit that it is free.


There are others, such as New Novelist and WriteWay Pro, which fall more into the prescriptive category.

There are others still, like Power Writer and RoughDraft, that appear to be no longer under development.

And then of course there is also a whole basketful of fiction outliners such as Power Structure, Dramatica, StoryView, StoryCraft and Save the Cat!, most aimed mainly at the wannabe-screenwriter market, that will offer to structure your story for you according to any theory, or none.

H

Hmmmm. Looks like I have a lot of playing around to do. Thanks for taking the time to lay all that out for me. Basically, I write newspaper/magazine articles based on research which I gather, etc. I'm sure you understand the drill. I used to use ADM which had an outline & the facility to hoist multiple windows of notes like 3x5 cards which could be re-arranged, etc. Unfortunately I can't do that w UltraRecall... I wish it weren't so. -jan

MyBase has an optional tool for saving snippets. When turned on, you highlight whatever you wish and copy (CTRL-C) it to the clipboard. A menu then pops up giving you a number of options for where to place the clipboard contents. Of course, MyBase can also easily save complete Web pages and it does`so almost instantly (at least on my new laptop with 2 GB RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 2 GHz. My previous machine had 200mb RAM and a very slow processor.)

MyBase occasionally crashes, but I've yet to lose a MyBase data base or any part of one, even when it crashes right after saving a Web page...when I reopened the data base, the just-saved page was there.

-c

Jan Rifkinson wrote:

Hmmmm. Looks like I have a lot of playing around to do. Thanks for taking the time to lay
all that out for me. Basically, I write newspaper/magazine articles based on
research which I gather, etc. I'm sure you understand the drill. I used to use ADM which
had an outline & the facility to hoist multiple windows of notes like 3x5 cards which
could be re-arranged, etc. Unfortunately I can't do that w UltraRecall... I wish it
weren't so. -jan

Jan,

To be honest, as a former journalist, I'd do the following in your position.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with the software I've listed. All of it, apart possibly from Scrivener and Liquid Story Binder, is best suited for long-form - books, scripts, plays and doctoral theses - and for creative writing rather than press and magazine articles.

Instead I'd build on UR, using the James Fallows "Atlantic Monthly" template for Zoot, adapted for UR. James' template is designed both to store research and to structure articles. I'm sure it could be easily re-designed for UR. I'd probably team it with a simple text editor, such as Editpad Lite, or possibly DarkRoom for the full-page view facility, and a spreadsheet in Excel to track my submissions.

H

Hugh Pile wrote:

Instead I'd build on UR, using the James Fallows
"Atlantic Monthly" template for Zoot, adapted for UR. James' template is designed
both to store research and to structure articles. I'm sure it could be easily
re-designed for UR. [snip]

Sounds good. I converted all my data from zoot into UR so it shouldn't be a problem. I've d/led it from the zoot_forum. Thanks for the tip.