Such "integrating" applics are of the highest interest.

So, before knowing iqtell was a cloud applic, I tried to create an account - big button on their site -, but was put off, on several occasions : Seems my "private invitation" or something was lacking. Anyway, asserting "your data is safe" from an unknown offering, well... it's not that I fear dishonesty, it's abrupt going out of biz I fear, and I'm not into the cloud yet.

But then, the concept is worthwile, or is it ? Their explanations, incl. the video, alone didn't get the info to me, and the "detailed" descriptions are interwoven with many a marketing speak, not giving technicals details I'd need for evaluation. And then, on their site, "Example: Find all the emails, documents, and conversations you had with your real estate broker. All you have to do is perform a quick search and all the related information will be grouped and displayed within seconds!" - This would be aleatoric in a way, not being stable, prefigured virtual collections ?

Of course, and as I've developed in the MI, UR, PB forums in length, the best thing we could get would be a program that flows over all our files - sort of a file manager then... but a task launcher at the same time, see below - and in which we'd group files (of any kind, and indeed, enclosure of mails would be highly appreciated, or more precisely, would be necessary), and that'd allow us to launch such groups by one command.

This would create different workspaces, be they for "projects" and / or for various referencing purposes. Example, you'd have some "project" (or whatever you name such a collection) of all your files (e.g. outlines in any outlining program, holding various web clips) of the technique of photography, and you'd then have sub-groups such as "all files regarding photo processing / "development", etc., etc. - in your everyday work, you'd load such subgroups almost exclusively, and file names would best (but not necessarily so) be encoded by (main) group affiliation - you even could do aliases, or include the "secondary" (and tertiary) group affiliation of a file in its name, e.g. tpd(csp).xyz being a file in the group technics - photography - development, but also in the group computer - software - photography ; individualization of files could be realized by further naming : tpd(csp).onething.xyz. (Or have the classic example of your car insurances, being in the groups "cars" and "assurances".)

Now, such workspaces would go into the hundreds, so you need a tree for their management. At this time, and not having any better third party prog for that (and necessarily renouncing of including my mails into that system, except for important mails as copies within AO items - a bad solution, but the best one available for the time being), I use an ActionOutline tree just for this "group" management, putting the various groups into the tree, and putting the lists of files into the corresponding items ; a macro then loads all those files belonging to the given workspace (and belonging perhaps to several attached progs) into memory.

Of course, there is quite a lot of "manual" checking involved : Whenever I rename a file, whenever I delete it, whenever I move it from one directory to another, I'll have to run macros doing the necessary adjustments in order for the "launcher macro" to get all file names right, question of avoiding orphaned "links".

BTW, all "task launchers" I've ever trialled, only launch ONE link at a time, do NOT load file GROUPS into memory, even of the same kind (allowing for the same prog), and ListPro developers, e.g., didn't even deign to answer when I explained to them the high (financial) interest (for them) to launch SEVERAL files with ONE click in their prog.

Of course, these "task launchers" don't allow for a "select all" command either, and if a group - provided they allow for groups - contains 12 or 20 files, you'll have to click on 12 or 20 files, one after another. Better even : After each click, the screen will shift to the prog opening the file, and it'll be no less than an alt-tab that'll bring the "task launchers" back to the screen (or revert focus to it, the problem is the same) : So, for PM or whatever, at least those task launchers I've trialled, are CRAP.

Now for the file managers. xplorer2's got drop boxes that are good for temporary grouping of files, but there is no realistic way to have a bunch of say 50, 100 or 500 virtual folders, let alone the combined launching of those files then.

The German file manager SpeedManager also has such boxes for temporary storage, but its functionality is even less and much worse, and the developer does NOT answer questions about better implementation of this feature.

The Swiss product TotalCommander - together with xplorer2 (paid version), it's the only one of three dozen of relevant products that did find "European chars" in UR files in my trials - seems to have a third party virtual folder add-on but which I never succeeded in installing, let alone trialling, and users (from their forum) that got hold of it, didn't seem to be happy with it.

Directory Opus has got virtual folders indeed, and it is said to be able - if you run it in the background at any time that is - to detect, and to proceed, name changes, deletions (?) and even the moving of files into other directories, i.e. the links in your virtual folders would NOT be orphaned then, but updated by DO (whilst in xplorer2, they would be orphaned, or not orphaned by renaming, but orphaned by moving the original files - I asked the developer but some time ago).

I never succeeded in bearing DO trial version more than some hours, anytime, since DO has the utmost nagging behaviour of all trials I've ever trialled : After installation, I feel the urgent need to do a new Windows installation, and people say DO continues at least parts of this behaviour even after you'll have paid your license. Hence my lack of experience with DO, going further than just the most primitive basics.

On the other hand, and as explained, DO seems to be that prog out there that's got nearest a real task launcher, but I don't think it will allow for a "select all" in those virtual folders, and then an "Enter" would launch all those files : That would be universally known, since that would make that prog be world-class and totally unrivalled.

I could live with its unfriendly licence policy, but not with its constant nagging, or only if it provided group launching. That's to say, group launching (as realized within my AO file, if graphically very unsatisfying, etc.) is much more important than checking and processing renames, etc., since that group launching is a daily task, or more precisely, you'll group launch, within a workday, perhaps 5 or 15 such "groups" one after another, working on different "projects", etc., whilst deleting, renaming and moving of physical files could be restrained to the bare minimum if you plan your directories and your naming systems well, from start on.

A quick word on PB since by some, it's used as a task launcher. Of course, the free version doesn't do it, and of course, 249 dollar for a task launcher would be somewhat hefty a price, but anyway : I'd pay that price for a file groups launching prog as elegant as PB (they renamed it, again : it'll be TB now, as it had been in the past). But then, even the 249 dollar version, being able to group several files with each item, does NOT allow for launching them as a group (as of my experience ; as always, I appreciate my possible errors being rectified).

Thus, if anybody knows of a better task launcher than all those I trialled in vain, even if it does NOT check for deletions, renames and movings, he's warmly invited to share his exclusive knowledge with us. For the time being, I do NOT see that iqtell does group launching, so it might be better than many other integration softwares, but for real PM, it's as unsatisfying as those existing programs that promise integration of our various tasks.

( This being said having no access to a trial version, so any rectification will be welcome even if I personally, considering it's a cloud applic, shall not come onboard even if it really is that unrivalled applic that'll make our workspaces a jump ahead in ease and quality. )

P.S. Would software developers cease to implicate the term "IQ" in their information management softwares, please ? Information management even at its very best will NOT enhance your IQ, so luring prospects with that lie is just dishonest ; what it can do indeed is enhancing your work speed, and your work results, in spite of your (partially) lacking IQ, but that's quite the contrary of what they promise. Another obvious example being InfoQube, currently abbreviated IQ. Let's be honest and overcome our limitations, by creating the best tools imaginable, but don't tell us by choosing IQ-progs, whatever named in their specific ways, we join a select group, that's marketing speak in spite of excellence in software architecture, that excellence being judged upon arrival, i.e. by its workspace value, not by elegant programming NOT enhancing our capabilities. (If you want real, impenetrable chaos in your head as on the screen, buy PB/TB.)

Re virtual folders: I have found Tabbles http://tabbles.net/ to work quite well. I don't have it installed in my current PC but as I recall it should not have trouble with 'European characters', it's a European program itself.

Re task launcher; I am personally a keyboard guy, so I launch everything via SlickRun.

I didn't mention tabbles because I simply had forgotten it. It regularly reappears at bitsdujour, I think its kindergarten graphical approach is heart-rending, it does NOT allow for any group launching which would have made me accept anything else.

As for the task launcher you mention - I forget the name, and posting here is not seeing any other post -, it's been in my trial lot, and it doesn't allow for any group launching, as dozens of other task launchers I've trialled with it.

Let's specify : Group launching of a group of files belonging to - opened by - ONE prog's rather easy, instead of a "link" to a file, you do an inbuilt macro opening a list of files, then transfer ONE command to the prog in question. Group launching of files to be opened by different progs'd mean the task launcher does batch work, opening that disparate group of files in opening several sub-groups (put together by the task launcher, in order to spare the user to enter / order the files of the group by prog affiliation), one after another.

Of course, minor programming would result in chaotic opening, for e.g. 20 files to be launched, belonging to perhaps 4 progs, the task launcher passing 20 "links" in any given (non-) order in an unspecific row - but everything would be better than to have to launch 20 files one after another, by clicking on them / clicking on 20 different "links".

Generally speaking, links were invented for url's, and today, any file on your system can be treated as a "link", but seemingly nobody seems to have realized that "links" should be able to contain more than just one single target.

Re my P.S. Much of the (relative) success of progs like UR and PB/TB is due indeed to the "select crowd" feeling of those progs, to which their real usefulness is decidedly inferior.

I forgot : The possibility of file group launching - which, again, is NOWHERE realized at this time to my knowledge - would be the foundation of people's willingness to split up things into self-contained (but rather tiny) chunks... that then would be much more able to be re-grouped in many various ways. So, the current necessity to open files one by one HINDERS people to make their stuff re-arrangeable, the most obvious excesses being monster files in UR that won't make it into a corporate environment, asking - if you stay within that concept - even more monstruous files even UR cannot deliver.

And : People need to BREATHE for better thinking : Why do you think so many people / corporations (!) pay so much money for that leading mind mapping prog, MindWhatever : it's real, big business now, they state 7-digit (paying) customers figures. That program allows to simplify, yes, but it also, and in the very first place, it allows for breathing while thinking on adding branches here and items there.

And that's exactly why all this hoisting, etc. in monster databases do not work for many a user : While working in your hoisted part of your tree, you KNOW that there's 50k of items behind, and that knowing comes into your way - whilst real segregation of your stuff into different subjects means, all the other stuff, not needed, is NOT there : you're temporarily FREED from it. But again, such a fractionizing wouldn't really be possible but by group launching progs.

And then, why do you think seemingly 99 p.c. of people do NOT use outliners, but MS Word files, etc. ? Because of that same phenomenon, the need for "breathing space", which they instinctively know will get lost when they'd build up (relatively) monstruous outliner files -

of course, they do NOT have all the relevant information at hand, since their fractionizing (without the necessary re-grouping) makes room to breathe, but doesn't supply all that information that could help treating the particular core subject.

The solution I've found (but not yet thoroughly realized), is multiple outlines of often only 50 items, but in groups that make available any needed info for my respective work... and not more.

But as we see, I couldn't do that without my macro system doing the group launchings for me.

BTW, I also tried "all" - a dozen of - those mind mapping progs (and not only PB/TN) as front-ends to my file collections, and, "of course", they all allow for links, and none allows for links launching grouped files... (and not speaking of ubiquitous impossibility to manage deletes / renames / moves of such files resp. their links within those mind mapping progs.)

No, one of the most needed softwares that'd revolutionize computer usage of many people, is simply and thoroughly absent from the market. But then, of unnecessary progs, you can buy or download for free in hundreds of variants.

A last precision : The above-mentioned encoded naming of files is in emulation of a corporate filing system, except for doing each "digit" as a char (= up to 26 possibilities at each position, with mnemonic possibilities - do the mnemonics for all positions, before the first point, then give an additional (but short) "real name", before the suffix (as stated above). Of course, it would be possible to do longer filenames, but perhaps also at fourth position only, since too individualistic file naming necessitates too heavy sub-foldering to put all those chaotically-names files in, which evidently increases the file management difficulties when renaming / moving files.

And there is screen space : If you've got 20 tabs, with 20 file names... In AO, this isn't possible but with very short names ; in other progs, you'd need several rows of tabs then - but much more important :

Your launching prog MUST be on the screen, at every moment, since if it's not, you'll think twice before doing the inevitable alt-tab (or a direct launch, which is possible alternatively), thus renouncing on information for not leaving your comfort zone but for "really important" additional information. If, on the other hand, your file list is always prominent, it'll be just a click to get even "minor" information contained in those listed files, and so you'll take much more advantage of your file groups in your work, and that's an important aspect of the system.

And, finally, such a system should allow for those little additional information bubbles, in case you heavily use encoded / short file names, in order to give the written-out partial names of your file when hovering with the mouse over any given name ; this also could be automatted, i.e. allowed abbreviations for those file names (= before the first point after which individualization would be allowed) would be entered into the system upon request, by a (human) file manager, the system would propose such abbreviations (1-"digit" chars) for subjects, and since only "allowed" chars would constitute the first part of any given file name, those bubbles would automatically give the "written-out" denominations of those file encodings, e.g. file name "ce.whatever.xyz", bubble "Computer - Editors - whatever".

And any corporate search system would search within such file groups, or within groups of files having common denominators : eg. "search within all files ce?.xyz" or "search within all files c*.*.xyz" or even within all files c[dhmo]?.*.* (regex within name and all file types, or another regex within the suffix) - please note that such a system allows for / imposes a COMMON denomination system for ALL type of files and integrates MS Excel tables and .pdf files like a charm.

So there'll be a lot of room for improvements for making such a system a perfect corporate environment, even for 100k staff corps, but for the time being, there isn't any applic on the market, to my knowledge at least, that provides us with the barest minimum of all this.

And for the IQ lies : Mozart in the cowshed's a lie, too.

Fredy wrote:

why do you think seemingly 99 p.c. of people do NOT use outliners, but MS Word files,
etc. ? Because of that same phenomenon, the need for "breathing space", which they
instinctively know will get lost when they'd build up (relatively) monstruous
outliner files -

I see it differently. 99pc of people don't use outliners because 1) they've never been taught to develop and use and outline for writing; 2) they don't know outliners exist; or 3) their minds do not work hierarchically (artist-types who think visually).

Dr Andus wrote:

I see it differently. 99pc of people don't use
outliners because 1) they've never been taught to develop and use and outline for
writing; 2) they don't know outliners exist; or 3) their minds do not work
hierarchically (artist-types who think visually).

I would add that (4) many people tend to be change-averse; having learned specific tools, they are unlikely to try out new ones if there is no strong incentive from outside, e.g. professional obligation.

This is changing however; the web 'forces' users to continually learn new tools and interfaces. See the recent changes in the Google applications interfaces, or how Facebook keeps changing. In this context, tools like workflowy are gaining good momentum.

Fredy wrote:

P.S. Would software developers cease
to implicate the term "IQ" in their information management softwares, please ?
Information management even at its very best will NOT enhance your IQ, ...

I would have thought that the IQ used in software names means Information Quality (which they can enhance) and not Intelligence Quotient (which they can't).

Graham

I don't have any problem with programs using IQ or intelligence related buzzwords.

In my view, IQ is like the bore of the artillery an army has.

Whereas the productivity system is like the logistical infrastructure of an army.

You may have big guns, but without reliable logistics they won't be putting much firepower on the target.

By the way Fredy, it really sounds like you're trying to create an Emacs Org-mode setup.

It can search within word docs, across your whole computer, etc.

You can embed tags in all your .org files that Org-Mode builds into custom agenda views.

It's easy to extract reports for stuff like hours worked per project over a time period, and extract only the billable hours from that, versus non-billable tasks.

Just very very powerful, will grow with you as your needs change.

@ Graham

Interesting aspect, I never thought of this variant (lack of IQ, assuredly) and think you might be right, which invalidates my argument then.



@ Alexander

Since you mention Tabbles, that makes me remember Evernote, the "only" one of these outliners, etc., I only know of mentions by others. It's simple : The old, residual version wasn't available anymore when I started to gather information about all those systems, and the new one was cloud-based.

Tabbles didn't allow for group file launching, and thus, with its graphics, I lost interest in it, thus not knowing much of it, but let's specify, perhaps it's a virtual folders prog, perhaps - and more probable - it's a tagging prog ; btw, I trialled a dozen or so of those tagging progs also, and I remember "trialling" Tabbles within that context.

But where's the real difference between the two concepts, beyond naming ? I think the idea behind tagging had been to cluster material "spread anywhere", especially as an overlay to any pre-existing real - physical - classification system, but not necessarily so : you can tag anything out from a flat items' collection then, and if you then get your tags within some superposed - e.g. tree - structure - as Evernote is said to do -, you can even tag 50k or more items within a flat (no-) structure ; btw, EN is said to allow for some 2 or 3 levels in a rudimentary tree structure, hence not imposing really chaotic storage of your material (if I understand it well).

Whereas a virtual folder system is, in its basic conception, technically identical (?) but implies / superposes (by conception, not by technical need - in theory, all those things could well be in one big flat directory) a pre-existing physical storage system, DIFFERENT from this superposed, ADDITIONAL, secondary filing system. In the end, the only difference is by their starting points : Virtual folders were created to overcome the limitations of the Windows' physical file storage system not allowing for storing - and good managing - one file in several folders / subfolders it belonged to, so they were a file managers' thing, whilst tags were invented for the same purpose - in dedicated tagging programs -, but also for tagging / clustering not files, but ITEMS, within some outlining progs.

( I cannot claim co-paternity of the tagging idea, but in my experimental outlinining system back in 1997/98, I co-"invented" the virtual folders idea, with cloned items put into as many virtual folders as you needed, i.e. I created such folders / clones without knowing they had already invented them by others. ;-) )

Regularly, the tagging idea is discussed within a context of "keywords", whilst the virtual folders idea is commonly discussed within a context of physical folders not being enough for flexible information management, and then comes UR and does (in the finest way possible) clones anywhere within the tree (as said, in my system, it was clones into separate virtual folders, not within an all-englobing tree, or more precisely, my system was a big, virtual tree never to be seen, on screen you only had "subtrees" (but including that famous, superposed "zero" tree I'm speaking of in so many occasions) cascaded by a suite of panes into which sub-collections (e.g. all (real or virtual) siblings of any one of those siblings were loaded, i.e. clicking on an item showed the sub-items within the same pane or another additional pane, etc.

This is to say, in my system, there wasn't any difference between "real" positioning and "virtual" positioning of any such item, as there isn't such differenciation today in UR's cloning feature : once an item has been cloned, there isn't any "original, real" item left, and then it's clones, but the source item, and its clones are all equivalent. Please note that a real virtual folders system is conceptually different, since there's always a physical, real instance of the item, and then possibly one or more, virtual, clones of that, NOT having the same physical quality (I did it in a flat ToolBook "pages" collection, whereas UR does it with a flat database, in both cases the program being a front end to a flat items' collection).

(For reasons laying within the instability - bad memory management - of the then ToolBook programming language (well documented of many complains of other ToolBook programmers in the web), the program went unstable for most operations beyond some k items, and those "record fields" within these (unvisible) "pages" where content was stored, only allowed for 32k of content, so the system wasn't marketable even for that reason alone... and even today (= at least some months ago, they've got another brand-new version lately I don't know for that), that 32k limitation has not been lifted.)

There WAS a real tree in my system indeed : when exporting. In order to make that possible, I always had the system check for recursion : Anytime I moved / cloned an item, a procedure was triggered checking if such moving / cloning was allowed, or would create recursion, and if so, it told me why this recursion would then occur - thus, it was impossible to make a child of something the parent of something other item logically the uncle of the first item, etc., etc. - thus, the global tree was observed at any time, even when never be seen on screen. And I must make another correction, to observe this, I had "natural children" and "adoptive children", only the former were considered for possible recursion problems, I might suppose (I didn't touch the system for 10 years now, but it worked flawlessly for these core functions of it).

(I remember now, the speciality of the export tree was that it was built up exclusively upon any "natural" children, not also following "adoptive" children, thereby upholding a strict 2-dimensional quality, necessary for managing the exported (sub-) trees in any target program, whilst in my applic itself, any 3-dimensionality was allowed (and flawlessly managed).

The fractionizing of the big tree (about 8k items then) into multiple flat lists (updated anytime upon any renaming / deletion / moving / cloning of an item in real-time) made it easy to do clones, etc., since the target lists could be "open" / displayed on screen as well as the source lists, concurrently (and even group handling / batch jobs were available for these maintenance / management functions) - whereas in systems like UR, it's not as easy to do is if you don't make heavy use of hoisting parts of your big tree in multiple tabs, lately.

Now back to Evernote :

If I understand well, and EN "coming from" the outlining idea, EN's tagging system has originally be meant for tagging items, and since tagging 50k of items within a flat list isn't possible, they allow for ( but only some, 2-3 ? ) levels of tags, within a tag tree (if I understand well). But now, why fall into the trap to tag items only within EN, why not also tag files with it ?

The big advantage of EN is it's (if I understand well) incorporation of mails, and so, why not, instead of trying to cramp individual items into the EN system, make it tag your MS Word / Excel files, your AO (or whatever) outlines, etc., etc., on top of some "Inbox" kind of items directly and temporarily put into EN.

So, the only missing function to make EN the perfect overall system would be a group file launching system : right-clicking (or whatever) on a sub-collection heading would launch the contents of that sub-collection. Again, the advantage of such an EN system over a corresponding task launcher system would be the incorporation and the management of mails within those sub-collections, whilst a (= any current) task launcher would not (?) be able to list single mails within such "task" groups to be launched as a group.

( I'm aware that Outlook could be enhanced in such a way, Outlook being perhaps the system the most suited to do such an integrative task, since mail management within any other such a program, not coming from the "mail managers" crowd, would have exorbitant problems to handle mails well (= in an automatted way). And then, EN's a clown applic now, which I cannot accept for me personally, but we're discussing concepts here, not my special, additional, individual requirements. )



@ JB 1

To stay within your image : But the Commanding General is the person with the highest IQ, thus ensuring that all logistics and deployments are at the highest possible level, and optimizing strategy. ;-)

@ JB 2

It has been your contributions here, and especially your developments on your site then, that made me come back here, I highly appreciate thinking things thru.

My impression on your site are :

- For most people (if not for me, cf. my background), your findings / questioning things must be brand-new.

- You're asking the right questions (see below).

- But you don't give the best possible answers to those questions : And how could you do, since nobody, world-wide, has given the right answers up to now (or in private then, possibly within big corporations like Oracle or something, in order to construct, for some big corps and for 7-digit prices and more, ace software we might all be unaware of).

If I understand your expositions (on your site) well, you try (but for the time being, with means "nobody" could adopt) to resolve the problem that ideally, not only we'd need info access in that third-dimensional way any "cloning of items / files" system" is trying to provide, but on a much more "atomic" level.

The same problem lies behind wiki conceptions, and the German leading Kant specialist - having left this forum for the same reasons I'd left it, some time ago, prevailing babble instead of thinking things thru here (but this has considerably improved lately as I'm happy to acknowledge) - touting CT does that touting precisely because CT's tries to assist such making-available of atomized-chunks-of-information ; btw, MI's possibility of referencing paragraphs also, not only items, goes into that same (and right) direction ; and with my own prog late in the nineties, I tried some sort of such a thing indeed, but failed by my lacking programming background :

The real and utmost problem behind such functions being the maintenance of the integrity of such "deep links" when those "atomized" info bits are altered, later on : no prog of my knowledge does do anything about that problem, and I, in my time, wasn't technically up to resolve the problem I had very well seen.

BTW, there are some DTP progs that handle such deep links rather well (from both sides), but then, they're meant as intermediary processing tools between your "work space" and the target, be it publication on paper, in the web or whatever.

And the second problem - but that should be resolved more easily than the main problem - with "deep links" is, they trigger the "lost in hyperspace" phenomenon - and that's why I do not touch any wiki as for now in general :

That information is well there, but it's only made available but by leaving your core information.

Those bits should made available, then, in the same way as any other additional info : In a link list, in a pane gathering all secondary / related information that contains files, mails, items within your core file or any other file... and of course, there should be (by several click variants) several ways to view those info bits.

[

Another original feature in my nineties' prog never adopted by any other developer : do "full row select" for your lists, then make your prog check where in the row a (normal, or right, or middle, or double...) click occurs : e.g. within the first 15 p.c. of the (total, so no problems with different lengths of different entries) line's length ? then show it in the principal pane = change that content ; within the range of 25 to 85 p.c. of the line's length (= the normal behaviour) ? show the element in the additional pane, your core file remaining available for further editing, in the core pane ; within the last 10 p.c. of the line's length ?: replace the content of any additional (3rd, 4th) pane with your selection, or open the bit in a 4th pane if you've got already info in 3 ! (I had divided my list panes into 4 sections indeed, and they worked like a charm, right at the beginning, right at the end, before (and including) middle (for the principal pane), after middle.)

(I explained this in length in the MI forum last year ; in the same way, you can have 3 right-click menus instead of one, each of them with a bunch of commands belonging together, and rather short, instead of having one such lenghty menu with disparate commands of all sorts).

Today's screens get bigger and bigger ; when I asked for just an additional "history" pane in the UR forum (allowing for clicking on that precise item to view again, instead of having to enter "go back" an undetermined number of times), I was informed that UR had too many panes altogether as it was - let alone any possibility to show such an item within an extra pane, leaving your core item intact...

]

This is just part of what I had to offer, and of which not a single element has been then be realized of better, real programmers.

But any system to be adopted by "anybody" and being able to resolve these problems must deliver both : the programming capacity, AND a viable GUI. The latter, I've had realized 13 years ago already, the former you're trying, in vain, to "sell" today.

As said elsewhere, pompously, I'm certainly an ace software designer (but an awful programmer) ; but then, most software developers out there are just awful software designers : that second assertion being a fact.

And by design, I mean GUI, AND the unseen architecture behind. Or let me repeat one of my favorite sayings here :

In order to keep a program simple but functional, there's a lot of complicated programming to do, behind the scenes ; that reductional equation "keep it simple on the outside - by keeping it simple within the source code" is just another lie.

I forgot :

The solution of IM (information management) does NOT lie in a systematic fractionalizing of your info into an "atomic" level ; I halfway tried, then, with articles of laws. Even so, having articles often spanning many lines (which you couldn't call "radical slicing up" then, having a lot of paragraphs within some articles held together), I got aware that in many laws, there were GROUPS of articles naturally "belonging together", being deeply intervowen by their respective contents (and in any of your own texts that might be similar : you can dissect into chapters, sub-chapters of any indent level, but not really into single paragraphs, in real life).

So, even the formula "1 article - 1 item" wasn't really realistic, since there are these "natural combinations" all over the place you should NOT tear apart then.

On the other hand, on a given occasion, you'll need perhaps only one single paragraph out of such a "natural combination" of 3 or more articles of a law : Would you like to have that spliced up into 37 individual paragraphs of which you'll need then, most of the time, the whole combination ? When fractionizing goes over the top, the re-combining of those "natural combinations" will demand much too many efforts, day after day, not speaking of all the clutter you'll have then.

I can give an example of totally cluttered information, cluttered to the point of illegibility, today : I'ts www.beck-online.de

Of course, they do it - each margin number of a legal commentary is a distinct item there - in order to charge you the max by obstructing, as much as they can, any possible re-assembling of their material into "workable chunks" (If their material was less fractionized, you could subscript to their services for some weeks, gather the material you'll possibly need, then spare your dime.) - but real work with those tiny bits naturally belonging together in rows when in fact artificially separated by them, is a pain in the a** : Perhaps, it's slightly okay for searching purpose, but then, you'll need the printed material again (and legal commentaries easily come 1 euro a page).

So the persistent atomization of your material, then unfruitful and cumbersome tries of re-combination of the bits, is NOT a worthwile solution, not for legal texts, not for (almost) any other material (we're not speaking of customers' data records here, of course, or of spare parts' data records).

Hence the need for some "deep-link" system (of whatever technical realization), the mistake within that concept just being the conventional, much too basic kind of linking.

And, as said above, MULTIPLE such possible lists / panes seem mandatory to me, since there'll always be the task of GROUPING, of constituing those clusters of material, and then, it's highly advisable to have lists of items / files / bits of materials to include in your core list then, and it seems important for your core list to stay on your screen at any time you're adding some new such element from anywhere, i.e. I'm speaking of a GUI here that allows for some comfortable BROWSING within any other material to add, or even just to have a look into, instead of heavy shifting back and forth.

Again, modern screens are big, and are becoming even bigger, whilst the width of your text pane should be limited to some 60, perhaps 70 chars (while no such prog offers columns in any practical way yet) - thus, there's plenty of screen real estate to fill with that browsing opportunities, without hiding your core work again and again. Finally, tabs are not a solution, as UR shows in plenty.

With all due respect, Fredy, there are literally dozens of more or less competent multiple application launchers out there - a quick Google is all it takes. Not so many of them associated with competent information management applications, but I'm sure you'd find those, too, if you looked hard enough. Here are just a few for your amusement:

1) Utility Launcher (http://www.jfbpage.com/
2) Whole bundle of freeware launchers, many of them supporting multiple launches: http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/system/fwtoolbars.html

You could certainly set up a suitable set of batched commands (= macro) to launch multiple applications, too, although I agree it's a bit cumbersome. There's a nice description of a straightforward approach here: http://cybernetnews.com/cybernotes-create-a-shortcut-to-launch-multiple-programs/ (no reason you couldn't embed a batchfile in your favourite information manager).

I forgot to include this remark again and again, so it'll have its post of its own now :

I've spoken of "room to breathe" while writing / thinking / constructing anything / elaborating on something, citing mind managers that allow for exactly, citing UR that hinders that imo (and people say UR's not the ideal prog for the final draft - it's "that bulk behind, always present in your mind at least" that makes them flee that prog for the final, real thing, for their "real production", imo : it's their subconscious, and rightly so, it's certainly not the limitations of UR's editor, which ain't that monstruously crippled after all).

You'll remember that just in the last days, in this forum, there were many posts of people reporting just that phenomenon : They said they use prog xyz for information gathering, etc., and then, for the real work, for really WRITING their works, they put the core material into another prog, e.g. Scrivener or whatever. Without them calling it by its name, their need is to leave all the non-core things behind, in order to get, finally, some room for thinking, and within traditional outliners with their "all your stuff in one big bag" concept, that seems to be as impossible to them, as it is to me, hence the necessity to create a lighter system, but providing for all the material in your demand, the moment you'll ask for it, and not anytime ; hence the need for a superposed super-system, an overlay system, a "zero level" (consisting of several levels in itself, since we're speaking of a zero level system being able to contain many different such "projects" or whatever in the same time, at acceptable availability notices) -

my expositions in the MI / PB / UR forums and here, during the last several years, were nothing more than pleading for such an overlaid super system, and since there isn't any, your posts here in the kind of "First, I use this prog, and then another, and sometimes I go back, and then I treat the underlying outline in a third prog, and then again re-import, and-so-on ad infinitum.

It's time some developers having the necessary programmin capabilities try to realize what I'm dreaming of, especially since it would incredibly serve the man of letters as well as the 100 k staff corporation : there's fortune in it.

Thank you very much for your post, Madaboutdiana, I'll check all those. All I can say for now is that I trialled every single task launcher I found, and none of them was able of group launching - or then, I overlooked perhaps those capabilities in some of them. So, when you say there are dozens of them that can do it, I stand with my mouth wide open. If you're right, it'll be well worth the time to check them (again) with more precision. Dozens, really, when I found none ? I'll report back, will take some time.

@ Doctorand

I thought as you think before touting outlining within my circle of friends, etc., and be sure I made sure they understood how outlining's working, and I offered to help with any question that might arise. NOBODY was interested. So it's NOT lack of knowledge of outliners, it's an inherent, spontaneous aversion against them, and I suppose people might have an instinctive presentiment they'll be confined to very close borders - when in fact, when you do outlining with "light outlines", 50 items, 80 items, 25, 120 sometimes - there'll be enough room to breathe even with outlines, the organizational benefits as a surplus.

So much for your arguments 1 and 2. your argument 3 doesn't hold any better since all those mind mapping progs impose a normal hierarchy indeed, but just APPEAR to do otherwise, AND the industry leader alone's got, from their own speaking, a 7-digit (paying) customer base - all artist types in all those big corps ? Course not. It's just replacement of NOT-immediately-available OR immediately-available-but-cluttered-then elements by some graphical (and very well hierarchical altogether) representation of the same elements but which allows for easy browsing, your eyes wandering back and forth over a flat design where elements are spread upon a white background, calming down any unrest that might arise when getting stuck at any "problem" element : You instinctively know that you can insert other elements between, offering possible solutions / other aspects.

Whilst the indentational structure of outlines appears as compact as multiple fences, by that appearing frightening instead of supporting - and that's why I lately try to hold my outlines short, rather flat, and as expanded as possible, hence their multiplication.

The right and the left hemisphere brain types (of which you didn't expressly spoke, whilst implicitely making allusion to them), I'm not as convinced of the assumedly almost mutually exclusive occurence of those "thinking types" as many of us were when these ideas come into the market, in the seventies and thus, a little way back now.

If you were right upon those types, the mind mapping industry leader wouldn't sell within the 7-digit range, and most of their business with big corporations (= even in big corps, those strategic development, etc. specialists ain't but a handful), AND it'd be outliners (!) that would be sold in big numbers, not mind mapping progs, and mostly to those big corps, i.e. corporate types, i.e. straighforward, "logical", "thinking-in-hierarchies" types.

Sorry for being too old as to fall into common thinking behaviour, then, but preferring just logical thinking which isn't an antagonism to creativity, but just part of it, or the other way round, or both components being siblings within a more general element of creation. ;-)

Fredy,

I'd be interested to know which program you created in the '90s but I expect that would give away your identity, so I respect it if you prefer not to share it.

You raise a very broad range of issues, including several philosophical ones which have indeed been missing from this forum for sometime.

At this point, I prefer to comment only on the tags vs. virtual folders concepts. I agree with the historical principle, but believe there are now cross-paradigms of what you mention, e.g. Surfulater provides both a traditional tree with clonable items, and an independent tag tree http://blog.surfulater.com/2008/05/30/surfulater-pre-release-version-29200-tagging-moves-ahead/

On the file front, there are several tagging programs such as Tagged Frog http://lunarfrog.com/taggedfrog/ Tag2find http://www.tag2find.com/ Detalizer http://www.detalizer.com/en-us/ etc

At the same time, as 'files' are moved to the cloud, they become database items in some SQL server. Microsoft may still not have delivered the database file system originally announced for Vista (I think) but Joe Average does have access to such a file system via the net. In this context, tags and virtual folders are differentiated more as visualisation mechanisms than anything else, no?

I forgot :

A possible (co-) explanation for this "room-to-breathe" phenomenon in mind mapping progs and the ubiquitous use of just some MS Word files, might be that well-known limitation of your mind - depending on important parts of your IQ - not being able to "held in waiting" - let alone process !!! - more than some 3, 4, 5 - and only for the most intelligent people out there, more than 5 - elements, 5 being VERY good indeed, myself being somewhere between perhaps 3 and 4 - the "common knowledge" of it being currently 7 has been straightened out long ago, and my personal assumption is that those who can treat 7 elements, more or less, are the ones that get 7- and 8-digit revenues as CEO's.

So, when your eyes wander upon a mind map or anything - business graphics in general -, your range of vision goes more or less hand in hand with the number of (neighbored) elements in your graphic, and you feel (inconsciously) competent with dealing with those 3 or 4 (or perhaps 7, in your case) elements you concurrently see and "ingurgitate" to some level (triggering associative "thinking" / "remembering" / "low-level searching" in your mind, with these 3/4 / 7 elements being the search terms if you allow my staying in this picture) ; hence the thinking-enhancement effect of graphics (for everybody, not just for artists).

Whilst on the other hand, with material presented in a crowded, obviously (!) hierarchically, "embarras de richesse" way (= just too many material available, so there're getting decisional problems in your way), you'll probably inconsciously feel incompetent = incompetent to handle all this oversupply spontaneously, and indeed, you couldn't !

So, finally, it's not so much the white space "behind" the elements of a mind map that trigger your thinking process (even if it certainly helps), but it's the compactness, stuffing too many elements in too little a space - and thus getting into your core field of vision, and by this triggering the "OMG effect" - "how ever to handle this ?" - -, of usual outliners that interferes with any "creational" thinking, and this cramped presentation of too many elements your brain cannot process, just by the look of any traditional outline, might put off possible outlining prospects.

The same phenomenon goes into the conventional piece of wisdom, "don't make lists any longer than 7 elements", with 7 elements already too many if it were really for that ; depends on the list, alphabetically (or geographically or in whatever order) ordered but lenghty lists of clients, prospects or spare parts are perfectly sane, especially if you make plenty use of divider lines, whilst, for thinking enhancement, deep-levelled jungles of multiple subtrees, even when you carefully observe the rule "no list longer than 7/6/5/whatever", won't do anything good for you.

(And PB/TB is badly constructed since it just superposes a (lately even directional again) arrow system upon another flat but monster mind map, by this pretending to be 3-dimensional, which it is of course not, since the management of such links will NOT gather NEW entities then - proposals of re-constructional help they answer with silence...)

No, sorry again, I won't fall for false "evidence" anymore, I happen to think beyond.

@ Alexander

All 3 tagging progs you mention, I've trialled them, to no avail (but I didn't check all those dozens of trialled progs again and again, in the meanwhile, so there's hope). Surfulater I know, of course, and even if those "keywords" are being put into sort of a table, into "columns", in MI - and many guys're awaiting for UR to do exactly that, we've got here two other progs with a superposed tagging system while being outliners from start and in their core concept, so Surfulater isn't as outstanding in this respect - its web downloading capabilities being said far superior, though.

I'm Fred Jansen, my prog in the late ninetees was called "Manuscript" and another name I even forget in the meanwhile, I tried to market it over the German book stores, in several version, the "Manuscript" one even including sort of a "Final Draft" concept, with lists of personnel, locations, props, themes, etc., being able to be displayed within the multiple panes, and being able to be directly accessed by the keyboard, with correct (but direct, not preset-formats based) formatting. My thought was, the number row on the keyboard will not be used within novel, screenplay, stage play writing, so it can be used for triggering (in-built) "macros", and this, depending on the context - and in those panes (in the special edition), the list entries were numbered-on-the-fly, so pressing the (non-keypad) "4" key entered the person under "4" in the personnel list, and a "04" changed you location to location number 4 in the list - this numbering was made upon loading of those lists, and then redone after any possible changes within, and the lists were loaded with a given project, i.e. I assumed some people might need to work on several plays or whatever at the same time.

I finally sold just a handful of LIGHT versions of my progs then, all versions put together, and considering the above-mentioned limitations of the worst-chosen programming language that couldn't be overcome, I dumped the project - dozens of k of programming lines within many files in a "library", incl. help with dialling, provision for incoming calls / disturbances / independent notes within other projects, half-automatted distribution of such "inbox" elements, a whole big delegation system, to projects and / or to collaborators, I had multiple list panes, but, at wish, one or two (formatted by .rtf) text panes, together with or without the corresponding lists - and if the same item appeared in other open panes / lists on the screen, an automatism provided that this item got a special background color in every such list - question of putting the same elements within multiple contexts, then, and not loosing your mind notwithstanding -, and the respective behavior of all those panes was indicated by different light background colors, chamoix, beige, light orange instead of white reserved for the "normal behavior", etc., etc. - there are very few elements in today's contenders that I hadn't provided for... except fo one thing, I didn't make provision for any web page import whatsoever since that was beyond my capabilities (and those of ToolBook's programming language : I've to admit that I simply wasn't aware then of the possibility to use / integrate third party components within my ToolBook-programmed-only applic) ; but then, the combined effect of those things, nobody buying, me not being a programmer, but having had to re-program all of my stuff within a "real" programming language (of which I didn't master any), and my knowing that web integration would be mandatory in the future whilst I didn't know how to realize that, made me dump that sw well ahead of its time (and created from scratch, without having knowledge of possible Zoot or other progs, and without having web access then) - in retrospective, it's evident that it was the lack of any knowledge of "similar" programs that made it possible for me to "invent" (= as you "invent" the wheel, perhaps, for some of those "new" and "unheard-of" functions) totally new elements / concepts for what was basically

"an outliner exploded".


@ Doctorandus / Re my last "I Forgot"

In my own prog then, it was my technical / intellectual incapability then that made me scissor up my behind-the-scenes-only "big tree", for screen use, instead of it pouring in any tree there, into separate (and as said, freely sizeable, rearrangeable, and whatever-context-loadable-into) panes, but then, since within those panes, there weren't any trees but only flat lists, and separated with divider lines, and of course it was easy to rearrange those items in those lists, within or beyond such a separator lines-created "sub group", I'd got some of that "breathing space" effect within my information system : I got the core pane, almost any number of additional panes (including, of course (!), a history list (in which I even had programmed the elimination of any anterior entry by new access of any item in it, being put up on the top - all I can say that those programming efforts made me familiar with multiple array handling...), and since my chunks were splattered, not any one of them ever got frightening for me, as I think outliners today frighten away people from their inherent "compactness", felt "weight" (on your shoulders, that is).


@ Madaboutdana

I've got macros myself, as stated ; I'm looking out for a more elegant solution providing, I hope, additional management capabilities, i.e. checking for renaming, etc., but up to now, I did not find any task launcher launching several "tasks" with one command, which is different from "giving a list of different tasks to choose from" - I'll continue checking out, and shall give my test results.

Lol Fredy, I love you man. You're more crazy about this than I am... and that's hard to do.

You really, really need to check out Carsten Dominic's work. I couldn't make out everything you were saying, but it seems like everything you want is there.

@ madaboutdana

I didn't trial Utility Launcher, perhaps for (too) quickly discarding it at the time (don't remember), but then, it promises group file loading by clicking on a signet on your dektop. Well, my desktop is cluttered with multiple symbols for progs, and we're speaking of a multitude of "projects", so how could these be triggered from 100 or more DT symbols, let alone the impenetrability of such a system for adding files to those projects, let alone deletions / renames / moves.

etc., etc., for many a program, I'm sure (I'll give a list)

BUT you're right, the very first prog in your snapfile list is able today to load a group of files, my problem being that I've reviewed those file launchers a year (or even 18 months) ago, and that there are hundreds of them, so even reviewing a lot might not be / have been sufficient. But reviewing anew those leading progs within the leading sharewares site, will certainly find more of that kind, and that's what I'll do (btw, even yesterday, google for "open / load into memory several / multiple files into memory" and some variants of this did not bring me any results).

Right to the spot, Madaboutdana, many thanks, this time my searching / trialling will bring results !

@ JB

;-)

But seriously, I know that I'll have to delve into your stuff as soon as time will allow me - but since I know that this won't be a task of some hours, so...

But I'll eventually do it, that's promised.

You'll forgive me if I respond to your thesis on the limits of simultaneous cognition: 3-4 vs 7-8, because I find the topic fascinating.

First of all, I agree with pretty much all your insights. We agree about how the brain works. I just disagree with part of your conclusions about how this impacts PIM design.

What's actually happening when a brain interacts with a software presenting interacting information is far more complex than a simple attempt to simultaneously apprehend all the elements on the screen, as you acknowledge.

What you don't mention is that in almost all situations simultaneous apprehension is overkill. Let's say 3-4 is a practical limit. In a list of seven, it only takes a few passes to consider all groupings. And you can cut the number of passes down further by applying common sense heuristics.

Now I agree with you that deep nested outlines of 7-or-less are pretty useless for PRESENTING information.

However, the use case that you don't address is the initial ORGANIZATION of that information.

For that, I think organically built nested outlines of 7-or-less is the ideal.

Reason being, you can gradually build a complete structure by making decisions involving no more than 7 on-screen elements at a time.

Once you're done, you'll need to distill it into a longform text to be human readable by someone who didn't learn the material by building the outline himself. And you'll need to distill it further into general principles or "hooks" and action points if you want to remember it and act upon it.

But the nested outline approach is by far the best way to bring structure to a big mess of text info.

And it can also be handy for refreshing yourself on specific topics, by diving deep into the outline branch that you need. Assuming you're the one who built to outline.

Well, I have to disagree with Dana. After reading Fredy's latest posts, I think I understand what he's asking for, and he's right: it doesn't exist.

Cyborganize is sort of a patchwork attempt to create this, along with some workflow innovations that are unrelated to what Fredy's asking for.

What he's asking for would be cool, but the great challenge is accomodating different working styles while maintaining a non-programmer friendly experience.

To be clear, Org-mode can accommodate a lot of this, and a lot more depending on how technical you want to get, but yeah I think there's no way to get all the way there.

Lol Fredy, the language and expertise barrier is driving me nuts. I see vast amounts of concepts flying by without being able to fully grasp them.

If you want to Skype, I'd love to hear your opinions on the major flaws of Cyborganize and how they might be addressed, beyond the obvious "too hard for people to use." I'm interested in design concepts. Basically I've had nobody to talk to about those issues, ever. Doesn't matter if you disagree with me, I just want to understand what you think.

To answer some of this in a limited way - I rejected 3d interlinking as too complex and potentially limitless for current software and interface and users. I just accept the loss, and make up for it with rich longform text and "best fit" 2d outlining. I think you might need AI or intelligence augmentation to make comprehensive 3d interlinking practical.

The exception being T1 wikis, which are already rich longform text, so there's lots of conceptual interlinking handled there. And managing the wiki links is not that onerous since you typically don't produce that much volume at such a highly polished level.

The whole "interlinked nuggets" concept was something I explored in different ways, but it just seemed they were too slow and cumbersome to manipulate. Pop open a nugget, read it, see that it's not really what you want, repeat, etc. That eventually evolved into a T3 blog devoted to longer posts with multiple tags. But I still don't rely heavily on that except as an archive, because manipulation is cumbersome. It's mainly a resource for writing T2 posts.

For now I mostly accept the limits of the subconscious brain to form a richly interconnected map, and of course whatever you manage to distill into T1 form.

And yes, managing the evolution of those nuggets is a whole 'nother absolute nightmare. Yeesh. Frightens me just thinking about it.

Cool man, take your time, no hurry.

Sorry Dana, I didn't realize you were only talking about the program launching aspect.

@ Madaboutdana & JB Re Program Launchers

I've spent the last 6 hours or so reviewing about 70 program launchers, many of which I had had reviewed early last year if I remember well (I had made the usual clippings, but without doing a time stamp - that's a thing I'm up to integrate in my macros.

Unfortunately, Madaboutdana, your optimism wasn't justified ; my not having looked into these things for about 18 months or so made me hope you might be right, but I didn't find a SINGLE decent of such tools that might load a group of files, let alone any "management" like checking for and updating after deletions, renames, moves : none.

I couldn't trial all those applics, but I did not content myself with the info within the downloading sites, but went to the respective homepages, then to the respective product pages, incl. "features", "screenshot", etc., in order to "search" for any indications they might load file groups.

About 60 of these progs didn't seem to do so ; for some, I was / I am in doubt (MadAppLauncher, LaunchBar Commander, CodySafe, StartMenu XP, etc., Unlimited Menus), for some I thought they offered the feature (Quick Cliq, Executor, True Launch Bar, Fast Launcher), even if none of them seemed to offer any of the above "management" features, thereby offering any advantage over my macros.

So I trialled these latter sw's, and one was even more awful than the other, you'll have to manually enter whole command lines, at best, for every given file to load, in awkward dialog screens, and then - I haven't even been able to try them all since I didn't understand the awful GUIS / "help" files - some didn't even allow for what they promised.

I'll give an example : Fast Launcher, a very neat applic at first sight, and it says, "This item launches one prog or doc" vs. "This item launches several other items" : Cheerio, or not ? You can't enter any file there, but you must click on "Add", and then you'll be presented with a short list of possible commands : "System - Explorer", "System - Sound Volume", "Tools - Paint", and so on, not even a dozen ; it remains me of early MS mice that were presumable "programmable" but that could only trigger prefetched commands just like this, but no way to trigger some key combination or some other element of your free choice ; it's buggy on top, since "System - Explorer" only brings "System - Sound Volume" (but not vice versa)...

The overall quality of these programs, free or shareware, was so awful I'm really devastated. (Perhaps some of the progs in the "perhaps they do it" category are better and do it indeed, but I've given up trying since, as stated, even such a prog that'd function as promised, would only do the bare minimum, and that my macros do indeed.)

You were RIGHT, Madaboutdana, in telling me, stop, look again, since my (thorough) knowledge was almost 2 years old. But you were erroneous in stating they're dozens of such progs : There might indeed be 2, 3 or 4, and they are ugly, poorly constructed, perhaps unreliable on top, and they offer just what you'll get in a macro, with much more fuss than creating another standardized macro line.

Hence PB being right in saying, that lack of sw is real, let alone management features... which again shows us that Directory Opus, that HAS such management features, is top-notch, if only by direct comparison to all those minor progs not being worth your time, let alone licence fees.

@ JB Re your sw : It'll take me perhaps 3 days in a row, and so realistically allow for first days of 2012... sorry, but why making promises I then won't be able to live up ?

@ JB Re Item / Indentation Counts : You are perfectly right to make the distinction creation / presentation / looking up of reference material, I just wanted to clarify some common misconceptions in that area, and also give some of my personal obervations with regards to my own reactions to such material :

In fact, the creation process and the presentation process is highly intervowen, since at any given moment of your (further) creational process, the context material you'll have created up to then,

"is set in presentation mode for you",

so to speak. And I've made the observation that slicing up material will allow me to "breathe", to not feel the weight of all those other criteria out there not immediately related ; for a criterion to be taken into a account, be it a problem, be it a lack of knowledge / information (!) (and that cannot (yet) be overcome by getting the relevant information, be it aleatoric, be it a contender's secret, be it by simply not being able to buy that info !), of course, you must do an extra item "Beware" or something, but that part of the decisional process will be treated in a fuzzy logic way : Have it in mind, even if you don't know what to do about it !

And remember, most people abhorr outlines (even in Europa, where outlining is NOT mandatory in school! ) - and that most outlines fully take (false) "advantage" of infinite level building ! Perhaps there, also, is a co-reason for that rejection by the general public !

I know there are printed scientific works that go into 2-digit indentation levels, which imo is just ugly, and will, most of the time, fractionize matters of subject into too many separate pieces too far away one from the other ; a flattening out up to the higher levels of the tree system seems to be a very elegant way of doing thing ; whenever I see a scientific work not constructed in the way "2.4.3.7.4.9.6" (or worse than that, and that's the usual way, if you use Arabic digits or alternate between minor / major Roman / Arabic / a-z chars / etc., etc., no importance) but in the way "? 1"... "? 48" and then, within those "flattened-out chapters", just 2 to 3 indentation levels at a max, I'm highly interested in reading, since I suppose the author's a smart guy knowing in which way to present his material.

The same goes for outlines and such, and I didn't want to be understood that such list should be kept short ; in fact it's a psychological problem only since a lengthy list with 3 divider lines is technically identical to another indentation level superposed, with 4 subtrees - but reading, BROWSING, thinking things over, for me, is much more easy, fluent, unrestrained, than when I'm being presented with

hardcore indentation

, even when it's me the "author", and people fleeing outlines must feel the same way, I suppose. BTW, AO's trial isn't crippled by total amount of items, but by allowing only for 7 siblings at any given level, and it's the most horrible experience for anybody, I suppose, to be confined to such an artificial system - at least it had been for me, so I didn't wait for the trial month to have passed, in order to pay for my licence, but did it after a very short week, being relieved then to be able to flatten out my outlines, finally.

You say, in a way, thinking is a little bit more but just contemplation of the elements that a screen presents to you ? Are you sure ? What is thinking, then ? Isn't it

rolling over, over a GIVEN "mental representation", and your IQ deciding how many elements that (always preconscious if not totally inconscious) mental representation will contain, some elements being replaced by others, any time ?

And isn't a computer screen but an external source for such elements, and when it's getting crowded, you'll have stack overflow, with no results, with poor "thinking" not being rightly fed ?

If I speak of, here and there, lengthy lists with divider lines, I'm speaking of browsing the different parts of that list, one by one, easy-going, not of trying to ingurgitate the whole list in one shot ; if the list is broken up into a second indentation level, there's a psychological barrier to let your thinking flow (= to replace those 5 elements of 8 within the chunk, some floating elements continually replacing others in order to stay within the 5 (or the 4, or the 3...), by the next chunk, going back again..., from one such sub-level to any other.

It's the universal acclaim of those (highly reductional) business graphic progs that made me think our brain's presented with some elements, then considers them, subconsciously.

Re PB/TB / 3rd dimension / arrows : Well, in its current realization, PB produces chaos, on-screen and within your head, imo. But then, many a programmational effort would be asked for in order to realize the (very good) basic idea behind that prog in a way that wouldn't produce chaos anymore, but, on the contrary, would trigger

new order

, completely other views of your material, other perspectives as they call it. For that, there must be uncompromising (virtual) slicing off of many parts of the material in any such given situation : when you've got 5 key elements within 50,000 related together, you cannot hope presenting their connections in any useful way if you think that current PB mean will do for that.

(There are other such graphics progs, beyond PB, all experimental software developed within university institutions ; they all fail when it comes to slicing off the IR-relevant elements.)

(My approach would be, present sub-webs-to-be-possibly-cut-off in intermediate screens, for your manual yes/no decisions, and for your possible decision, "I'll snap off manually (= subtrees at any indentation level, that is), store these intermediate sets, for further processing here, for making the AI system "learn", and for making pre-sets that will be presented by preference at any further such occasions ; that way, further (sw-assisted but more or less) manual hitting your way tru the jungle will get more and more easy, with each (simlar) further such making your way(s).

I asked them for integration of AI into PB, and offered my help ; as said, they didn't even answer me, and of course, there IS AI in PB, with for the spatial reproduction of all that chaotic staff, not for any new re-arrangement in order to get rid of the chaos... ;-)