Forum Posts Feed
Not-Standardized Project Management : IQTELL, Directory Opus, etc.
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Fredy
Nov 2, 2011 at 12:14 PM
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 http://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.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Nov 2, 2011 at 12:29 PM
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).
Posted by Fredy
Nov 2, 2011 at 12:40 PM
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.
Posted by Fredy
Nov 2, 2011 at 12:46 PM
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.
Posted by Fredy
Nov 2, 2011 at 01:14 PM
@ 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. ;-)