Hi all,

TreeProjects 2.5 now supports database password protection. Protected databases are encrypted, and although the encryption is strong, it is fast and completely transparent to the user.

Also, since version 2.4, web capturing has been improved, drag-n-drop support was extended, and support for Outlook email message format was added, along with other improvements and bug fixes.

http://personaldatabase.org

Thanks!

Yaroslav (the developer)

Thank you Yaroslav, TreeProjects is indeed progressing nicely!

I have a question re file items, which also relates to the wider safety issue: if I choose to edit such an item in-place, I assume that a temporary file will be created for editing with the external application, and this will be re-saved when I am finished. Will TreeProjects delete the temporary file afterwards, or will a cleanup --e.g. with CCleaner- be needed?

Hello Alexander,

TreeProjects will delete the temporary files automatically when it exits. There are some corner cases where temporary files may not be deleted, like loss of power or exiting TreeProjects before exiting the external program. That's why in the future I plan to:

(1) make the temporary file folder separate and configurable by the user (with different defaults in portable and installed modes);
(2) keep track of temporary files between sessions to enable reliable clean-up and recovery, like Office products do.

Yaroslav

Since Treeprojects is quite similar to Kinook's Ultra Recall - and their development has stopped - would you be able to develop an import process for .URD databases?

Thanks,

Ian Goldsmid

Hello Ian,

I definitely want to be able to import other programs' files. Most probably, this will be achieved through an intermediate step like exporting to OPML or disk folder first (do you think it would be too cumbersome?). Actually, even now TreeProjects seems to do a decent job importing data of other outliners exported to a disk folder, as it preserves the tree structure and infers item types from file types. This is not yet ready for real use though.

Yaroslav

Yaroslav

The most important extra elements for importing/exporting (for me) are the attributes and their values, that are associated with each item. I was recently able to do a csv export from Milenix Myinfo to Ultra Recall (UR) - because Myinfo enabled: export of document/item title, any URL associated with any item, and all the column headers (attributes) and their values. Then I could import that using UR's csv import. It saved me countless hours of re keying information.

I guess that leads me to a further point. Being able to add attributes and various value types (text, date, yes/no, multi-pick etc) to any item (not just tags) I would have thought is essential for anything beyond really basic information management - because a tree structure, even with tags is very constraining. Both Myinfo & Ultra Recall (and Zoot) are very strong here.

Cheers, Ian

Ian, when you say Ultra Recall development has stopped, do you mean the company simply hasn't added any features for a while - or can an inference be drawn from what you say that Kinook is having problems?

Thanks.

Daly

Ian Goldsmid wrote:

Yaroslav

Since Treeprojects is quite similar to Kinook's Ultra Recall - and their
development has stopped - would you be able to develop an import process for .URD
databases?

Thanks,

Ian Goldsmid

I'm certain Kinook is a thriving company - other than that everyone on the planet has "problems" - so I've no idea what you are talking about really. I suspect that the market for personal information managers is way less than other products they develop - if you get my drift.

In my opinion no one since Kinook, Milenix, or Zoot, and perhaps ConnectedText (although this has a somewhat different purpose) has come up with a PIM that is fundamentally better. Each of these tools recognizes that the user needs to get very creative with custom views of the data. I suppose Personal Brain is an attempt do do this in a uniquely visual way - but it falls far short of the customize-ability of those others.

Thanks, Ian.

I wasn't talking about anything, other than asking a question prompted by your comment about UR and development.

Daly

Ian Goldsmid wrote:

I'm certain Kinook is a thriving company - other than that everyone on the planet has
"problems" - so I've no idea what you are talking about really. I suspect that the
market for personal information managers is way less than other products they
develop - if you get my drift.

In my opinion no one since Kinook, Milenix, or Zoot, and
perhaps ConnectedText (although this has a somewhat different purpose) has come up
with a PIM that is fundamentally better. Each of these tools recognizes that the user
needs to get very creative with custom views of the data. I suppose Personal Brain is an
attempt do do this in a uniquely visual way - but it falls far short of the
customize-ability of those others.

Ian, there is no support for custom item attributes in TreeProjects - only fixed attributes such as tags are currently allowed. TreeProjects is more geared towards full text indexing and search. For example, as far as my tests indicated, neither MyInfo nor UltraRecall standard editions, which are priced similarly, allow searching in file attachments like PDF files. This is because initially I developed TreeProjects for own use in software project management, where storing and managing heaps of documentation in various formats was essential - and no existing PIMs at that time could reliably offer this functionality. Now that TreeProjects' development is driven mostly by user requests, custom attributes for items are on the road map.

Yaroslav Pidstryhach wrote:

custom attributes for items are on the road map.

Great news!

And column based views with filters?

Ian Goldsmid wrote:

And column based views with filters?

Yes - item attributes will be database table columns, so arbitrary filtering/selection will be possible via SQL queries. Of course, users won't type SQL - there will be GUI to do that.

TreeProjects already has a tree-column view, albeit only modification date and item type are currently shown. It can be turned on in Settings - Display.

Given that the infrastructure underlying many contemporary outliners (mostly 2-pane) is some kind of SQL or other database with tables and the like, it is rather surprising that so few offer custom columns / metadata.

An explanation may be in their roots organising textual information, to be used alongside word processors and the like. Also, I understand that most 1-pane outliners didn't have a database infrastructure to begin with. So even though the technology allows it, the accepted paradigm didn't foresee it.

P.S. I believe Brilliant Database is a tool that has taken the opposite route: it is a fully faetured database management system (and therefore allows unlimited customisation of tables and queries) but also allows organisation of information items in hierarchical folders, as far as I understand.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Given that the infrastructure underlying many contemporary outliners (mostly
2-pane) is some kind of SQL or other database with tables and the like, it is rather
surprising that so few offer custom columns / metadata.

Even with an underlying SQL engine, there are many corner cases to think about. Consider, for example, a database where custom attributes (columns) A, B and C are defined by the user. Now you want to copy and paste an item from the database to a database with attributes X, Y and Z. Should the destination database be amended with attributes A, B and C immediately? Or should these attributes be discarded? Or should attributes be strictly per-item (which doesn't play well with simple relational models)? Or should the user be asked what to do in each case? When there's a solution, it must also be presented to the end user in a simple, non-technical, straightforward manner. So this feature might not be as simple as we'd like it to be...

Yaroslav Pidstryhach wrote:

Even with an underlying SQL engine, there are many corner cases to think
about.

Thanks for the feedback; indeed, I had not considered such borderline issues.

In any case, if you want suggestions for the software's preferable behaviour, you've come to the right place :-)

I would very much like suggestions about this feature.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

In any case, if you want suggestions for the
software's preferable behaviour, you've come to the right place :-)

Yaroslav Pidstryhach wrote:

I would very much like suggestions about this feature.

My own preferred approach when combining/importing databases from different formats (or, as in this case, different arrangements of fields) is to provide some option for 'mapping' fields from one format to the other. I don't expect the software to be able to guess what corresponds with what.

The second option for me would be for the end result to include all custom fields, i.e. a/b/c/x/y/z, so I can then decide what to keep and adjust it manually.

Last, some Query By Example (QBE) tool could be useful for facilitating the automatic updating of fields, but I would only put this in the long term wish list.