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WhizFolders and Graphical Front Ends
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Posted by Ian Goldsmid
Jul 14, 2006 at 09:03 PM
Derek
Yup, I have licenses for ContentSaver/Web Researcher, NetSnippets, and UltraRecall.. Ultimately I found that UltraRecall was and is able to replicate every web page I throw at it perfectly, looking identical to the original - I really like that. Also UR provides a much greater range of metadata, or tagging with dirrerent attributes such as dates of various kinds, keywords, pick-lists, notes and on and on.. Its extremely well engineered, the developers are constantly improving it at an impressive rate, they are incredibly responsive to users….. AND Saved Web pages can be easily mirrored on your hard disk by exporting them. To keep copies synchronous what I do is create a saved (advanced) search: “Create Date is equal to or greater than [the date at which I last saved my web clips to disk] ” AND “Doc Type = [1 OR 2….]- which then means its real easy to keep a synchronised copy of all of that on my hard disk. ALSO, UltraRecall are now developing an iFilter for Google Desktop Search so all the insides of UR will be exposed to GDS search. I expect that will be available in the not very distant future. http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=993
NetSnippets, hasn’t been updated for two years, and the developer looks to be putting all his eggs in eSnips…Nevertheless is a very neat product - but merely because it saves data to hard disk isn’t enough for me. Also with Contensaver, its real easy to export/mirror your stuff to disk if you need to link it into other applications. With hard disk being so low priced, who cares?
So, yes, I also agree with Stephen, WF has a really excellent editor, (and full text search by the way) - but clearly isn’t a contender as a collector and manager of all your data/document types - and of course its external links could equally well be pasted into UltraRecall - and ZOOT! In fact it (would need to be the latest alpha) could now be used to instantly overcome the rtf shortcomings of ZOOT, just write up all your notes in WF and create links to them in Zoot.
Cheers, Ian
Derek Cornish wrote:
>Ian -
>
>> have been using UltraRecall mostly… as i have been saving hundreds of web
>pages - and UR, I have found through extensive trial and error, is absolutely the best
>for this (even better than ContentSaver - much better actually). I don’t like the fact
>though that UR only indexes keywords - so this is quite a big limitation (no practical
>phrase searching for example) - and it also doesn’t highlight search terms - so you
>search once to find the Item, then again in each item to find the
>text.
>_____________________________________
>
>I was very interested in your
>comments about Contentsaver (now re-named Web Research [WR]), since I am seriously
>thinking about switching back from it to Net Snippets Standard. Given that Ultra
>Recall has many of WR’s limitations, why do you think it is so much better?
>
>
>Incidentally, my reasons for returning to NS are:
>
>- doesn’t contain data within a
>proprietory database
>
>- easy to index and search - especially pdf files - without
>having to export them first, using external program (e.g., dtSearch - my
>favourite)
>
>- offers a rudimentary bibliographic feature
>
>- many ways of saving
>web-pages, extracts, files, links, etc.
>
>- works well with Firefox
>
>- can make
>separate notes (stored as htm files) with html editor
>
>- provides for comments and
>other metadata
>
>- offers keywords (but not virtual folders - so can’t “permanently”
>organize files on basis of keywords; only gather temporarily when doing a keyword
>search)
>
>- can easily send file as attachment by email (neat)
>
>- can keep on adding
>clips to existing snippet
>
>- can “hoist” working folder by zooming in, and de-hoist
>by zooming out.
>
>Many of the above are also offered by programs like Surfulater and
>WR, of course. And I like the visual elegance of WR’s three-pane display, and its
>categories; but getting at its data from third-party programs is just too
>complicated.
>
>As NS uses the Windows filing system to store files, not only is
>indexed searching easy, but there is no need to tag files with special URL-type
>addresses in order to hyperlink them to the outside world. It’s easy, for example, for
>Zoot to make file-links to them.
>
>Down the line there is promise that these problems
>of proprietory databases will be solved by Windows desktop search, xml, or whatever.
>At the moment, though, I am leaning back) towards NS again as the only viable current
>solution to integrating scattered data. Firefox’s Scrapbook is another potential
>candidate, too, as it doesn’t use a proprietory database either.
>
>Derek
Posted by Derek Cornish
Jul 15, 2006 at 05:10 PM
Steve -
Before I d/l Whizfolders, can you tell me whether it has:
- any single-pane outlining features
- ability to import .HEAD outlines (e.g., to import Grandview files)
- ability to export outlines to Word
- tabbed interface as well as notes tree (e.g., like Keynote)
- ability to work with URL-type address hyperlinks - e.g., like “biblioscape://RefID=28” - in order to link with data from other programs
- ability to add marginal-type comments to text
As you can see I am struggling hard against my addiction. OTOH, so many tree-type organizers, so few major differences amonst them…
Derek
Derek
Posted by Derek Cornish
Jul 15, 2006 at 06:44 PM
Ian,
I very much appreciate your discussion of Ultra Recall - much food for thought. I’ve d/l it a couple of times, but never really gave it much of a workout. One problem is the tree-organizer concept: great for browsing files, but soon cluttered for organizing purposes. I found this true of Contentsaver, now Web Research [CS/WR], too, although it does have categories as an alternative permanent way - almost like Zoot’s virtual folders - of organizing content.
Choosing between UR and Zoot as data-central is a difficult one. While Zoot avoids screen clutter with its excellent virtual folder system, its browsing capabilites are confined to its internal text notes. Although files can be linked to these notes, browsing through the linked files is slow and awkward. And one does need to be able to browse. OTOH, I am not sure if the goal of being able to browse through notes AND files at the same time can be a realistic goal, unless a proper virtual folder system with Zoot-like capabilities is implemented - the Zoot 5 we are all waiting for.
As a consequence, at the moment I tend to keep note-taking and file organizing/browsing separate. I broadly mirror the basic organization of Zoot’s virtual folder system - e.g., book chapters and section topics - in my Windows filing system (as far as that is possible), use Net Snippets to collect web data, and my file manager - Total Commander - to do my quick browsing through the Windows folder system (which, of course, include the Net Snippets folders and subfolders).
I was hoping to use CS/WR for web-capture and browsing - especially because of its use of virtual folders - but (a) Zoot doesn’t handle the URL-type address hyperlinks to CS/WR properly, so the two programs won’t communicate; and (b) having to export the contents of CS/WR in order for them to be indexed and searched (especially pdf files - the bane of all our lives) is an awkward solution to the problem of how to search across one’s hard disk. I think I’d find the same problems with UR.
But it’s all swings and roundabouts. The combination of Ultra Recall plus Whizfolders definitely has its attractions, too, as does Infohandler, which I also periodically download.
Derek
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 15, 2006 at 09:10 PM
Derek,
See my responses in brackets.
Derek Cornish wrote:
>Steve -
>
>Before I d/l Whizfolders, can you tell me whether it has:
>
>- any single-pane outlining features [No]
>
>- ability to import .HEAD outlines (e.g., to import Grandview files) [I don’t believe so]
>
>- ability to export outlines to Word [only RTF, text and HTML]
>
>- tabbed interface as well as notes tree (e.g., like Keynote) [While notes are visible in the notes pane, you can also open notes in a separate editor window, which provides access to more formatting buttons on the tool bar… You can have individual notes open and accessible through tabs in this editor window. However, access to various notes databases (what WF calls documents) is in a separate window altogether… So you can access individual notes through tabs, as well as clicking on the heading in the tree, but you do not have tabbed access to various trees.]
>
>- ability to work with URL-type address hyperlinks - e.g., like “biblioscape://RefID=28” - in order to link with data from other
>programs [I’m not quite sure about this. When I dragged and dropped a file from my desktop onto the editor, this is the code that WF inserted
[~JumpFileShowText AP ad draft.pdf::..\..\AP ad draft.pdf]
When not in edit mode, that link looks like this
AP ad draft.pdf
But is, underlined like most links.]
>
>- ability to add marginal-type comments to text [No]
>
>As you can see I am struggling hard against my addiction. OTOH, so many tree-type organizers, so few major differences amonst them… [I agree with that statement. I may have overstated the power of the editor in WF. It has extended selection, which is rare these days. But it doesn’t have outlining or footnoting or the powerful features of Word.]
>
>Derek
>
>Derek
Posted by Derek Cornish
Jul 15, 2006 at 09:52 PM
Stephen -
Thanks very much. I’ll take a look, I think (trans. I just must take a look now).
Derek