TreeNotes, ActionOutline, etc. = not even the strict minimum

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Posted by Fredy
Aug 8, 2012 at 10:06 AM

TreeNotes (45$), not to be mixed up with TreeDBNotes (free), will be priced at 10$ (= “78% off”) at bits. Since this site has got extraordinary exposure with google (= whenever you search for something, bits of opinion here are within the first 3 or 4 hits even when they are devoid of any info on the corresponding subject), it might be some bits prospects look here to see if TreeNotes is worthwile the 10 bucks.

It’s not. There is a strict minimum feature any outliner should have, in some variety, and that’s alternative views on (bits of) the same material. In fact, you can succeed at this by several alternative means, and if, as a developer, you offer more than just two alternatives, all the better, but two such views are the strict minimum.

Why? I explained all this in detail in my AO review on cnet (just google “actionoutline review”), and the same considerations apply to TreeNotes of course or any other outliner that doesn’t offer any alternative view. Please note that Evernote, as basic as it might appear otherwise, DOES present such an alternative view.

Some of the chaos in the outliner market is certainly due to that absence of standards: Even for the most basic things, there is no common understanding that yes, such a feature MUST be present in order for an outliner to be taken into consideration in the very first place, hence all those inferior offerings that blur your sight if as a newbie you try to make your possible choice. Chances are you get the wrong thing, and chances are you’ll go back to MS Word et al.

Btw, another hint for data processing with editors, you can sort (by one field, or by a dozen “fields” in exactly that order you like), THEN you’ll filter. Muse a second on the possibilites this will give you, and you easily understand why most outliners simply don’t have it for me and for other power users.

(And a correction: If you code your “subtitles” with £ and your data with # or anything, i.e. differently, you’ll get two blocks for processing which is hinted at in order to cut subtitles out (and preserve them in a second file) as soon as the data lines are coded accordingly to them, but afterwards, when restituting your original data, if you don’t want to have to do that by hand, you’ll have to “replace” your ££ with something like “pretend the subtitle is a normal data line, but with paragraph number 000”, then you sort normally by beginning of lines - so it’s evident that you should simplify things and code subtitles as normal data lines right from the beginning, but with paragraph number 0(0(0(as many as you need there))), then you simply filter by “paragraph number zero”, and you cut that out to your second file, inserting that again at the very end of your work, and sort again normally. Hope this is comprehensive.)

So, if any bit TreeNotes prospect got here to see if TreeNotes is worth his 10 bucks, read my AO review in order to understand why it’s not in your interest to put your stuff into any such program even when there are free. There are some minimal standards, and if developers don’t meet them, they shouldn’t lure newbies into proprietary formats where their data isn’t that much accessible in the end. Even DOS-askSam in 1990 was better than such progs are in 2012, just realize.

Posted by MadaboutDana
Aug 8, 2012 at 10:27 AM

That’s impressively fierce, Fredy, but I agree with your views, especially about TreeNotes and ActionOutline. And about askSam, too. Reminds me of that most majestic full-text DBMS, Idealist, now long expired, alas…

Standards in the outliner world is an interesting topic. Maybe that’s something we CRIMPers should actually sit down and try to work out? Except that it’s become evident that we all use outliners in a multiplicity of different ways (hence the clearly vast popularity of ConnectedText, which falls right outside the scope of many more conventional outliner specifications), so I wonder where we should start? Perhaps with some kind of taxonomy. I think Steve would be the perfect person to lead off on that one… ;-)

Cheers,
Bill

Posted by Fredy
Aug 8, 2012 at 12:57 PM

A Richard Blake on bits 14 months ago: “Fine for $9.95, but how soon will I decide I have outgrown it?” “Answer” by some Ray Costanzo: “Richard, if you outgrow it, you’re talking about $9.95. Bits du Jour discounts mitigates such risks with such discounts, no?”

Which means the notion of TCO hasn’t entered the minds of individual sw buyers yet. Which is one more big diff with the corporate sw market. Or, in order to not have the howlings again that I’m sooo wrong when I just overdraw in order to make things evident: For perhaps 80 p.c. of individual sw buyers, TCO is irrelevant / not taken into consideration / not thought of, whilst in perhaps 80 p.c. of corporate sw buyings, it is.

Which means to individuals you can sell almost any sh** you want if it’s a little bit pretty. And originally-serious/-decent developers see this and think, well, am I crazy to spend my time by throwing pearls before sw***? Not so much, it’s good enough as it is.

= Another hint at what I said lately: Developers should try to seek a niche in the corp market; anybody addressing individuals will end up a cynic or a fool. Because two things come together: Unwillingness of individuals to pay accordingly, for good stuff, and their propension to accept almost everything as soon as it’s simple enough for them to understand without reading even a 2-page leaflet.

(Things like UR and CT being quite another special niche again, but where there isn’t real money either - and it’s a niche so special (mind-wise, I mean) that they just don’t get it: They firmly insist on their products remaining iq tests, instead of streamlining them and enhancing them in any productive way, in order for corporates to happily snap in. But that’s another, once very passionate subject I tried too much in the past to work on with third parties (in AS, MI, UR forums, not speaking of this one) and that I’m really fed up with now (= there simply won’t be any smart sw coming from that side if you refrain from physically torturing them into it) - I hear your roaring relief.)

Thank you, Bill, all the more so since I remember very well your unique stance at my collective stoning here some 10 months ago (a feat in group dynamics, with all possibles roles rightly represented, not only by quality, but also by quantity - a splendour thus in its representative value for every such thing - oh, they call that a “textbook example”).

This being said, let me make this more clear again: It’s not about “I want this, you need another feature, so we can expect these whenever we got some followers for our individual requests”, but it’s a philosophical question: What are computers for, what could they reasonably do? And whenever there’s an offering in the kind of, “Here, in 2012, I offer you a paper stack with intermediate sort sheets of different colors (= the various indentations within the tree), AND with search!”, I say, so what, 30 years now of personal computers, and you offer me electronic search alone, over what I did with paper 30 years ago? That’s preposterous, that’s treating me like dumb sh**. I got more than this in 1990, so offer me more. And I think that alternative views on your material is the strict minimum, search alone is just too primitive as your goodie from the information age. But as said, people accept such a treatance, AND they ain’t willing to pay more for offerings offering them another world of processing their data.

(And, ironically, in editors, with just some lines of scripting, you can do so much more, but it’s simply not pretty enough on the screen, but I said that already. On the other side, even this year, I begged MI’s Petko to develop on the strength of his baby, those alternative views - to no avail: Even when these developers do something right, it’s by accident it seems, and they don’t fortify their highlights. It’s quite disgusting: They simply ain’t in search for excellence, and be it for “here’s my work, now I can die in piece” reasons - writers’ minds and developers’ minds seem to be quite different - and when I look upon the pace of development of such progs like MI, I could swear all these developers have a 9-17 job indeed and do some programming in their spare time… but not in view of leaving traces I might say. ENOUGH. Anybody really being interested in specifics should read my developments in the UR forum, most of my hints there are perfectly transferrable to any workflow you might have chosen, and can greatly enhance any such disparate workflows.)

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