Despite the number of Zoot afficianados here, I still have trouble grasping the virtues of Zoot. Most people associate Zoot with its "smart folders," but in discussion, one learns that what _really_ sets Zoot apart are the miraculous ways it handles text. Obviously, one would like to know what actual operations Zoot uniquely can accomplish with text. For some reason, the discussion never proceeds to this level of specificity.

Could a Zoot user fill the rest of us in on what exactly Zoot does with text that is so remarkable?

Here are a few off the top of my head:

1. Extract delimited text and display as column/field value: Email messages may contain standard formatting or web clips from certain sites may all have a standard or similar format. I've used this feature to extract property information from real estate listing email messages and showing prices of books I want to get clipped from Amazon.com, for example.

2. Manipulating arbitrary fields: Actions based on rules can modify text-delimited and other types of field values automatically.

3. Manipulate text automatically: Text can be massaged in various ways automatically; removing white space, inserting or removing line breaks, finding and replacing, etc.

There are other things that aren't strictly about the item's text: automatically moving items around, natural language date parsing, quick access to add and find info without having the main program window up, etc.

Chris

Also, I think Zoot is one of those that tends to make more sense when the details of specific usage scenarios are discussed, rather than just a summary of features. Perhaps that could be said of any software, but Zoot's features tend to be stealthy rather than obvious.

What do you think causes features' stealthiness? Or Zoot's features in particular to be stealthy? Can Zoot be characterized as a program with great features but a terrible interface, in that hiding the important features partly defines 'poor interface'?

I've found Clipmate 7, a clipboard manager, to have personally more useful text smoothing features than dedicated text manipulators (such as Text Monkey) or even text editing programs. ClipCache 3 is also strong this way. How would you rate Zoot relative to these clip managers for basic text smoothing?

For manipulating text in ways more related to substance, plain text programs easily do more than rtf, which seems to have to do with plain text itself having a generic relationship to a plain text file. So you can do some things I think pretty cool with plain text, although I seldom actually have used them. For example, some plain text programs easily take a file and insert its content into a clip, in one stroke. Or allow you to split a clip and create a new clip or a new text file from part of a clip in one stroke. These operations strike me as appealingly elegant, but somehow haven't been appealing enough to motivate my using them. (Which means little, because you cannot overestimate the force of habit.) The best plain text only clipboard manager, AceText, does these sorts of things very directly and transparently. I wonder how its prowess in this particular range of functions compares to Zoot.

One other Zoot question. Has the limit on item size been overcome in the 32k version? (If so, why isn't this a cause for great celebration among Zoot users? If not, what are the plans and prospects?)


Chris Murtland wrote:

Also, I think Zoot is one of those that tends to make more sense when the details of
specific usage scenarios are discussed, rather than just a summary of features.
Perhaps that could be said of any software, but Zoot's features tend to be stealthy
rather than obvious.

One other thing. AceText gives you to manipulate text is the use of regular expressions. I have never used them, but they appear very powerful. Does Zoot offer this mechanism for manipulating text.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

What do you think causes features' stealthiness? Or Zoot's features in particular to
be stealthy? Can Zoot be characterized as a program with great features but a terrible
interface, in that hiding the important features partly defines 'poor
interface'?

A lot of Zoot features are tucked away in menus or dialogs. Much of the power is hidden away from the main interface, in that there isn't a button or visual indicator for everything you could possibly do. Actually, hiding features until needed is good interface design - it makes for a cleaner interface since you don't have to see fifty buttons on a toolbar when a keyboard command or popup menu will suffice. And every user will have a different idea of which functions are important.

I think there is also something about Zoot where the combination of core features when added together become functionality not quite expected from the start. In other words, a few abstracted tools, when used in tandem, allow functionality that may not be evident when just examining each feature by itself.

Perhaps "stealthy" wasn't quite the right way to put it; it might be better to say that Zoot's power unfolds over time as you become acquainted with all the features that aren't front and center and the usage of all those features in concert.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

I've found Clipmate 7, a clipboard manager, to have personally more
useful text smoothing features than dedicated text manipulators (such as Text
Monkey) or even text editing programs. ClipCache 3 is also strong this way. How would
you rate Zoot relative to these clip managers for basic text smoothing?

I don't use clip managers, but since I am a programmer, I do have text editors running all day (my favorites are Notepad++ and e). Zoot does not massage text to the level that a dedicated text editor does, and I don't use Zoot for the same kinds of text manipulation. Manipulating text items in Zoot is mostly about making the information more useful to me within the world of Zoot - getting a grid view that I want or being able to set or retrieve field values from the text. It's lightweight text manipulation that's usually focused on other Zoot-related stuff.

For extensive text manipulation features, you can't beat a dedicated text editor. And, in fact, it's nice to have several.

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
http://www.e-texteditor.com/
http://www.editpadpro.com/

Zoot doesn't support regex, but most text editors do (although each may use slightly different syntax). I would say learning regular expressions is probably beyond the purview of most non-technical users, though.

Zoot has neat little twists that shows he admiral knew what he was about.

For example, the-pre-selected columns, and the way the first line of a note also becomes the subject or title if not otherwise changed.

The Zooter -- even in 16 bi form -- was one of the most reliable ways to get material from A to B.

The interface ain't pretty, but neither is a Humvee -- both get the job done. And I kinda like the interface now --probably for the same reason I liked ADM's -- it doesn't have the typical Windows look. Zoot, of course doesn't have colour -- or much, anyway, -- to speak of.

Daly

Chris Murtland wrote:

Here are a few off the top of my head:

1. Extract delimited text and display as
column/field value: Email messages may contain standard formatting or web clips
from certain sites may all have a standard or similar format. I've used this feature to
extract property information from real estate listing email messages and showing
prices of books I want to get clipped from Amazon.com, for example.

2. Manipulating
arbitrary fields: Actions based on rules can modify text-delimited and other types
of field values automatically.

3. Manipulate text automatically: Text can be
massaged in various ways automatically; removing white space, inserting or
removing line breaks, finding and replacing, etc.

There are other things that
aren't strictly about the item's text: automatically moving items around, natural
language date parsing, quick access to add and find info without having the main
program window up, etc.

Chris

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

What do you think causes features' stealthiness? Or Zoot's features in particular to
be stealthy? Can Zoot be characterized as a program with great features but a terrible
interface, in that hiding the important features partly defines 'poor
interface'?

In most cases the stealthy features are not essential functions of the program. They are simply handy tools. For instance, the "rename" function which allows you to make selected text the new title of the item.

Steve Z.