I would like to invite all forum participants to try the latest version of ConnectedText (www.connectedtext.com). I will be glad to hear any comments about it and discuss its features. If you find here is not the the proper place to do it, you can post in our forum.

Best regards,
Eduardo Mauro
ConnectedText

I am glad and a kind of pride, as I've just visited your site and realized that your company is Brazilian -- and you, of course.

I am from Brazil too and I will surely try your app

Congratulations!

Jorge

Thanks Jorge! BTW, I have a good friend with the same surname as you.

Eduardo,

Congratulations. I'm looking forward to trying CT 5.

Steve Z.

Dear Eduardo and readers,

I downloaded ConnectedText V5 for a quick trial, and all I can say is... WOW! This is one of the most powerful, full featured information management programs I have ever see. I am shocked that I never found or considered it when looking for my own "perfect system".

My quick impressions might not get some features correct, and hopefully Eduardo can jump in and help correct me both where I lack expertise and where I have some questions myself.

ConnectedText is a personal wiki system, which adds an enormous feature set. Some things that jump out: rich editing of pages, collapsible headings, outline view (making a 2-pane outliner of sorts), topic and categories with hierarchical structure and autotagging, map overview of content (navigator), linking of multiple kinds of content (both within and files/images), different views (ie. outline, navigator, topics, files, etc.) that are dockable anywhere, excellent search, a Python API for scripting, history, versioning, a comparison tool for revisions, and many other tools not mentioned.

There does seem to be a learning curve due to the power of the application. My impression is that this will appeal to all individuals who like the ability to build their data abstractly, as you aren't locked into a tree navigation structure as with most outliners. Having said that, I personally like a tree: UltraRecall, for example, has a strict structure of the tree, but is flexible with the content, especially though the attribute system. ConnectedText is flexible with both, but without the ability to embed some content/file types as far as I can tell. The outline also requires a bit more work to work as a traditional 2-paner, presumably because that is not how it is intended to function. This software is ideal for those who want to build up their data, and interconnect it in a flexible and organic way.

One main limitation, as far as I can tell, is that there is no ability to embed certain file types (like PDF) and index them. Unfortunately, I seem to be comparing ConnectedText to UltraRecall, my tool of choice, but UR also has a very handy system of making forms that then act as repositories in the "child items" window, for cataloging of information. This type of feature might be difficult to implement in CT. Lastly, writing in the wiki style seems a bit time consuming.

I plan to stay with UR since one main function I need is to embed PDFs, e-mail and other docs for cross-referenced search. I hope to find a way to incorporate CT in the future though, as it provides a scripting system to search across information, something I hoped to do at one point.

Again, congratulations on creating such a fine product, and I do hope that people investigate this for their workflows.

Best, /Pavi



Eduardo Mauro wrote:

I would like to invite all forum participants to try the latest version of
ConnectedText (www.connectedtext.com). I will be glad to hear any comments about it
and discuss its features. If you find here is not the the proper place to do it, you can
post in our forum.

Best regards,
Eduardo Mauro
ConnectedText

Thanks Pavi for your comments.

Other users also requested to add indexing of PDF files. We will pay attention more carefully at such request, to see how it can be integrated in a wiki system.

Speaking of Brazil, unlike the U.S. government, Brazil protects its home industries. For example, it just added a 30% (or more) import tax on automobiles to prevent cheap Chinese cars from decimating its home automobile industry.

Cassius wrote:

Speaking of Brazil, unlike the U.S. government, Brazil protects its home
industries. For example, it just added a 30% (or more) import tax on automobiles to
prevent cheap Chinese cars from decimating its home automobile industry.

Cassius, that is not entirely true. In fact the government is trying to avoid that local companies (not local but subsidiaries) fire people since they are not selling well right now. But the prices of the cars produced here are an absurd. For instance, air conditioning most of time is an optional item (in a tropical country). The local companies are suffering from the competition from Korea and China car makers offering products with more standard items at lower prices. The government move also makes companies in uneasy position. No one would invest money in new factories if the horizon is not clear enough. By the way, what the government did is illegal since the tax can only be charged after 90 days of the resolution and they started to charge right now. Cherry, a Chinese car maker, obtained permission from a court to not pay the tax right now. I don't like Chinese cars but they are offering cheaper products with many items not available in standard cars here. Just one example of the local car makers. Volkswagen produces a car named Kombi which its project dates more than 40 years with just minor cosmetic changes.

Eduardo, the change log is indeed impressive, as is the imagery. One point of concern from my prior testing of Connected Text (I will be happy to test this version as soon as I get my PC cleaned up again) were the rather limited ways to get info in and out of the program --though the HTML export in particular is very good. Has this been addressed somehow?

Alexander,

CT can import Text, HTML and RTF files. It tries at its best to convert HTML and RTF to its markup commands. Topics can be exported to Text, XML, HTML and HTML Help. CT also has an auto-backup feature: every time a topic is written in the data base, a text file is generated as well. So if for some reason you lose the database, all your data can be rebuilt using these files.

I think the most important aspect of CT is how text can be tagged (as a link or as a property) enabling several commands to collect and summarize your topics. It is not a Swiss knife and some user may not be feel comfortable using markup commands. However, markup can be seen as a method to transfer knowledge to your text in orthogonal way. This simple act of creating a link indicates the importance of the selected words.

Eduardo Mauro wrote:

I think the most important aspect of CT is
how text can be tagged (as a link or as a property) enabling several commands to collect
and summarize your topics.

Yes, Connected Text appears very powerful in this respect. I have a specific use in my mind, namely the collection and cross-referencing of a large number of my own texts. I had considered wikis in the past, but Connected Text also provides a visual presentation of interlinkages which I miss in ordinary wikis.

However, I would note that my starting point (quite possibly along with others in this forum) is rather peculiar. I have already partial collections in various other tools, from which the transfer to Connected Text is not evident. These collections represent considerable effort, so I would prefer to not have to transfer texts one by one.

It would perhaps make sense to be able to grab information directly from some popular tools, such as Evernote.

Alexander,

I have just purchased the upgrade to CT5 because I am considering (strongly) shifting from Zoot to CT. I exported a database from Zoot of about 180 records, each of which became a stand-alone .txt file. Importing this whole group into CT was a snap, each individual file becoming its own document. The whole process took me about two minutes.

This was probably a pretty elementary import compared to what you have in mind, but I just wanted to report on how easy it was.

Steve Z.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

However, I would note that my starting point (quite possibly along with
others in this forum) is rather peculiar. I have already partial collections in
various other tools, from which the transfer to Connected Text is not evident. These
collections represent considerable effort, so I would prefer to not have to transfer
texts one by one.

It would perhaps make sense to be able to grab information directly
from some popular tools, such as Evernote.

Steve, thanks; interestingly, Zoot was the program I originally had in mind, though I have since decided it is overkill for such work.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Steve, thanks; interestingly, Zoot was the program I originally had in mind, though I
have since decided it is overkill for such work.

I love Zoot, or at least the concept. Old Zoot was great, quirks and all, but I'm losing patience with the new Zoot 6 XT. It does quirky things, that may be related to all the previous installs I've had, but I've tried everything to fix them and to no avail. And we've been waiting endlessly for some kind of help file to explain new features. So switching to CT is an experiment. I think there are ways to emulate a lot of what Zoot does with CT, so I'll see what happens. Ah, CRIMP!

Steve Z.

Stephen,

If you need any help we will be glad to help. I recommend posting in our forum in order to avoid discuss matters not related to Outliner Software.

I would love to use CT but I can't get past the big premium for the USB version (which I would need to use at my workplace).

I think the pricing has been mentioned here before.

Jack

I own the SuperCombo (single user + USB) for around $115. Upgrades are less than half of that I think. Anyway, I can appreciate your hesitation to pay that price to "most" software vendors. However, with Eduardo, you will certainly get every penny's worth. He is very responsive, constantly updating and improving the software, and truly concerned with helping users achieve their individual goals (within reason, of course.) Having spent money in the past on IdeaMason, ZuluPad, and others, I view the product fee for CT to be one of the most secure investments I've made thus far.

-- Glne

Must be Friday afternoon's happy hour - I can't even spell my name correctly.
-- G L E N

Am fearful to post about Connected Text because once when I did one of the professors on the list got his knickers in a twist & left - and he was someone whose work I respected, and continue to respect.

I've no doubt that Connected Text is great software product - I've seen examples of its use for tracking ideas, references, seemingly unconnected pieces of info, etc.

My problem was - and continues to be - that I am unable to conceptualize how to start using it. While I wish the developer had some intro material geared to people like myself, I also recognize the problem is probably at least in part some limitations I have in learning something which at first seems abstract. (Interestingly, I began taking karate a year ago, and have noticed some changes in how my mind works, but it hasn't yet generalized into the sphere of learning new software.)

Perhaps I will give it a go again.

Daly

I was so glad to rad this post Daly. I am intrigued by CT, and have seen many eulogies about its value, from people who's other words have proven wise and useful to me [including certain professors] - but I simply cannot get my head around how to start with it.
I open it up and just sit there, frustrated at my own seeming simplicity! Takes me back to my undergraduate days and ANOVA, etc.
Perhaps I too should take up karate.
Jeff

Very understandable issue, Daly.

I've been dismissive of ConnectedText in the past, though I decided to give the new version a proper try. The reason I have so disliked older versions if that I just cannot understand why any program like this would not have a WYSIWYG interface. Version 5 has not changed much for me in that respect. Some commands can be achieved with a button press, but many cannot - one needs to learn a whole markup syntax. To do something I can do with three mouse clicks in Word, for example, requires at least 36 key strokes in CT. Word processors are WYSIWYG, as are many HTML editors, and I haven't had to do any markup since the 1990s, so I don't understand why CT won't move in that direction (though without removing the editor window as that is good for power users).

That said, having delved into the program, I can see its use and its power. I remain very hesitant though. If it's going to take me two days to mark up each few pages of text, given that one of my books is 1500 pages, I would have to be very sure to start on such a road.

As for learning it: the whole problem with wikis are a lack of a procedural structure. The links just click you away from what you're working on and you lose track of what you're learning. Great for reference, a pain for a novice. In the end I decided to read the first steps and other training chapters as though they had not links, so that I could actually get a proper overview, and that certainly helped. I also think that if the settings on installation were better thought through (e.g. that the editor pane colouring was set to on instead of off, so that you see text with structure rather than just a mass of plain text and mysterious tags) it could be much more learnable.

I do detect a slight whiff of software snobbery from the CT users in that respect - just like with Zoot - if you can learn to use it, you're part of the gang. Otherwise - begone!

Graham

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention: it's the same issue with Wikipedia. If you want to contribute, you have to know how to mark up your contribution. So Wikipedia is open to all ... provided they can master wiki markup!

I've been hearing a lot about connectedtext and even trialed it on Ubuntu, where it didn't impress me, although perhaps that was partly due to Wine and the giant "trial" text splashed across everything.

It's just a wiki with some additional metadata and search features, right? Am I missing something?

One thing I didn't like is it requires learning a markup, which interferes with exporting your formatting. Tiddlywiki lets me edit in html and transfer between wordpress (requires a plugin).

Daly and Graham,

I never meant or said that CT is solution to everyone. And is quite understandable that not everyone likes its approach (we say: what would be of the blue if everyone liked the red). As I said in a previous post, it is not a swiss knife. For instance, if you think it as a text editor with formatting capabilities, and surely it isn't, there are many other programs that offer a much superior set of features. But, if you like wiki and wants to add thousands of notes, creates links between them, and search them using a boolean query operators with a rich set of predicates, I can say that CT is an excellent solution and offers many unique features like auto tagging or automatic detection of texts similar to the one being read.

Before creating CT I tried to use PersonalBrain. I was amazed with its user interface. But then, when I started to create links, I felt somewhat limited. I know many people who loves PersonalBrain and make a good use of it. For me, the best software is the one which provides what I need no matter what others think about it. So no matter you like CT or not, I read your posts with vivid interest since they can lead to new ideas.

I do detect a slight whiff of
software snobbery from the CT users in that respect - just like with Zoot - if you can

I don't see such software snobbery. Perhaps, I am wrong. But if you read the posts in our forum you see that CT users are quite helpful. I am always amazed with the contributions I receive from them, specially when they correct my use of English. So, if you have any question about CT I will most happy to answer them. I invite to try it. If it doesn't suit your needs, no problem. Just let me know what do you think about it. We will continue working hard on it, as we did in the last 7 years.

I apologize for my little digression.

Best regards,
Eduardo

Eduardo,

No digression as far as I'm concerned!

I do agree with you about Personal Brain's connections limitations. On the other hand, I can cut from Word (RTF) and paste into PB (HTML) and not have to do any reformatting. Import RTF or HTML into CT and you have a huge markup job to do to restore anything other than the basic formatting. As CT translates all the time from wiki markup to HTML it's a shame that the translation the other way doesn't work as well. So a user has to be sure that CT is going to be a tool of choice for them before going down that road.

On the other hand, one of my weaknesses is that I don't tag anything, so finding my stuff in, for example, OneNote, is a thorough nuisance. A tool like CT would more or less force me to spend a lot of time thinking about how the data/information needs structuring and adding links, so it enforces better habits.

At least, that's my hope! ;-)

Graham