Forum Posts Feed
Not-Standardized Project Management : IQTELL, Directory Opus, etc.
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 2, 2011 at 01:50 PM
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?
Posted by Fredy
Nov 2, 2011 at 01:51 PM
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.
Posted by Fredy
Nov 2, 2011 at 02:45 PM
@ 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.
Posted by JBfrom
Nov 2, 2011 at 03:08 PM
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.
Posted by Fredy
Nov 2, 2011 at 03:15 PM
@ 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.