Because of The Brain's policy of emasculating web output from The Brain in favour of using their cloud service, I'm stuck with version 6 and its idiosyncracies and weaknesses mean I want to move a 9000 thought brain out of The Brain and into ConnectedText. The Brain's export functionality is somewhat limited and, again, idiosyncractic - for example, exporting to folders creates folders with the thought's name but with each containing an html with a default name, so importing each html file is a chore. Exporting to simple html equally exports to a structure which is difficult to import elsewhere.

Have any of the bright sparks on this forum experience on how to export from The Brain and import to CT, even if using a middleware program to do so? The idea of manually altering 9000 pages of imported data is somewhat daunting!

Thanks in advance (and in hope!)

Graham

Hi, Graham,

Can you explain what you mean by "Because of The Brain’s policy of emasculating web output from The Brain in favour of using their cloud service"?

I don't have much experience exporting to a Site Brain, but I just tried it with my 2000-plus-thought brain and it seems to have worked fine. It's not as pretty as the actual brain, mind you.

Here's a link to a PDF with two screenshots showing the same active thought, one in TheBrain and one in the exported Site Brain:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/155244/TheBrain%20and%20SiteBrain.pdg.pdf

Certainly the Site Brain is more sparse. Is that what you're talking about? I'm not trying to refute you. I just want to know what is lacking in the Site Brain export.

Thanks!

Steve Z.

Graham, Thanks for pointing this out. In another concurrent thread, several people talked about the virtues of TheBrain and I have been evaluating trying it out. http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4813/0/information-conveniently-captured-in-evernote-now-what

Lack of 1) data portability, that is 2) simple and easy is a deal killer.

@Stephen Zeoli

You can certainly create a sitebrain from version 7 but it's not as good or feature rich as from version 6. When The Brain moved to v 7 they marketed improved sitebrain export, but without details, and requests for details in the forum from many people went unanswered. I downloaded and tested version 7 and found that, in fact, a number of features had been removed. (The Brain have a policy of pushing people to use their hosting service because they'll charge for it). When I posted to the forum my results and made it clear (politely) that I thought it was bad policy, my posting was removed, which is also not good policy. I honestly can't remember the details of which features were removed, but as 95% of my use of The Brain is for website creation (e.g. www.dqglossary.com) I had to stick with the version that gave me the best results.

@Vincek

You can get data out of The Brain, it's just not well thought through. ConnectedText, for example, also exports to html, but all topics are exported to the same directory with the html file named after the topic, which makes importing it into other programs easier. The Brain's policy of exporting one (same named) file to a folder with the thought name make the whole process much harder - either they haven't thought it through or its deliberate. I do sometimes find The Brain as a company a little sneaky and it makes me nervous, so although the product is fine as far as it goes, I'm always very wary about any updates or changes (often bugs removed in previous version reappear in later versions, and they often release upgrades to a new (paid) version without being willing to clear the bugs in earlier versions - version 6 still has plenty of bugs, which have been reported but will not be dealt with) so I don't trust essential data to it and I would no longer recommend it to other people. I'm moving away from it slowly. (Slowly, mainly because of data lock in ...)

Graham

Graham Rhind wrote:

@Stephen Zeoli

You can certainly create a sitebrain from version 7 but it's not as good
or feature rich as from version 6. When The Brain moved to v 7 they
marketed improved sitebrain export, but without details, and requests
for details in the forum from many people went unanswered. I downloaded
and tested version 7 and found that, in fact, a number of features had
been removed. (The Brain have a policy of pushing people to use their
hosting service because they'll charge for it). When I posted to the
forum my results and made it clear (politely) that I thought it was bad
policy, my posting was removed, which is also not good policy. I
honestly can't remember the details of which features were removed, but
as 95% of my use of The Brain is for website creation (e.g.
www.dqglossary.com) I had to stick with the version that gave me the
best results.

Now I seem to recall you mentioning this before... either here or I read your comment on TheBrain Forum. This is, indeed, bad policy on their part and quite disappointing.

Graham Rhind wrote:

@Stephen Zeoli

You can certainly create a sitebrain from version 7 but it's not as good
or feature rich as from version 6. When The Brain moved to v 7 they
marketed improved sitebrain export, but without details, and requests
for details in the forum from many people went unanswered. I downloaded
and tested version 7 and found that, in fact, a number of features had
been removed. (The Brain have a policy of pushing people to use their
hosting service because they'll charge for it). When I posted to the
forum my results and made it clear (politely) that I thought it was bad
policy, my posting was removed, which is also not good policy. I
honestly can't remember the details of which features were removed, but
as 95% of my use of The Brain is for website creation (e.g.
www.dqglossary.com) I had to stick with the version that gave me the
best results.

@Vincek

You can get data out of The Brain, it's just not well thought through.
ConnectedText, for example, also exports to html, but all topics are
exported to the same directory with the html file named after the topic,
which makes importing it into other programs easier. The Brain's policy
of exporting one (same named) file to a folder with the thought name
make the whole process much harder - either they haven't thought it
through or its deliberate. I do sometimes find The Brain as a company a
little sneaky and it makes me nervous, so although the product is fine
as far as it goes, I'm always very wary about any updates or changes
(often bugs removed in previous version reappear in later versions, and
they often release upgrades to a new (paid) version without being
willing to clear the bugs in earlier versions - version 6 still has
plenty of bugs, which have been reported but will not be dealt with) so
I don't trust essential data to it and I would no longer recommend it to
other people. I'm moving away from it slowly. (Slowly, mainly because of
data lock in ...)

Graham

Oops. Don't know what happened with that previous reply with no actual reply in it.

But regarding export by TheBrain, it should be clarified that the application does not use a proprietary database or anything that locks your information away. The reason, I believe, that it exports a folder for each "thought" is because a thought can hold all kinds of other files as attachments: Word documents, PDFs, images, etc... So when it exports, it needs a landing place for all those attachments, and it would be utter chaos if they didn't go into those discrete folders. I can see, however, the dilemma you have, Graham, trying to transfer so much information.

If you do not have attachments, but only notes within each thought, you might try experimenting with using the selection function and copying "text outline with notes," and see if there is some way to make that work. You wouldn't do it with the whole brain, but in smaller chunks. Probably not really any better, but worth a little experimentation, maybe.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Now I seem to recall you mentioning this before... either here or I read
your comment on TheBrain Forum. This is, indeed, bad policy on their
part and quite disappointing.

Yes, I did mention it here - I was going to add the link but could not longer find the thread concerned.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Oops. Don't know what happened with that previous reply with no actual
reply in it.

But regarding export by TheBrain, it should be clarified that the
application does not use a proprietary database or anything that locks
your information away. The reason, I believe, that it exports a folder
for each "thought" is because a thought can hold all kinds of other
files as attachments: Word documents, PDFs, images, etc... So when it
exports, it needs a landing place for all those attachments, and it
would be utter chaos if they didn't go into those discrete folders.

Yes, that's a good point Stephen. Mind you, I still question why the thought html within the exported thought folder doesn't share the thought's title. That would make life easier.

I can see, however, the dilemma you have, Graham, trying to transfer so
much information.

If you do not have attachments, but only notes within each thought, you
might try experimenting with using the selection function and copying
"text outline with notes," and see if there is some way to make that
work. You wouldn't do it with the whole brain, but in smaller chunks.
Probably not really any better, but worth a little experimentation,
maybe.

Thanks. I don't have attachments, but I do have a lot of html formatting which gets lost in those "copy as ..." options. It gets data out, but it would mean more cut and paste than when exporting as html. I can export as Simple html from The Brain and import those files into CT, but then each topic name would need changing and every internal link re-creating, and I was rather hoping there was a quicker way. After all, I've only another 15 years to go before retirement ...

Graham

Graham Rhind wrote:

Have any of the bright sparks on this forum experience on how to export
from The Brain and import to CT, even if using a middleware program to
do so? The idea of manually altering 9000 pages of imported data is
somewhat daunting!

I suggest you post your question on the CT forum. There might be others there who have gone through this process and could help you.

One idea I had was using Directory Opus (or a similar tool) to batch-rename the files. See some instructions here:
http://www.gpsoft.com.au/help/opus10/default.htm#!Documents/Renaming_Files.htm

Another option might be to write an AutoHotkey or a Python script to take the folder name and rename the file it contains (I don't know if that's possible, just thinking out loud). Perhaps someone on the CT forum could help with that.

Graham, thanks for your amplifications. Everything you say confirms that I need not bother even trying out TheBrain.

I will continue to use Evernote as my dumping ground for information. I will continue to wait and see until a synthesis tool (like TheBrain, CT, Devon Think) truly INTEGRATES -- not just interfaces -- with Evernote.

Your situation (unfortunately) paints the picture of the difference between true integration and interfacing. Arguably, TheBrain "interfaces" with other programs, but in your case the process involves dealing with 9000 unnamed HTML files. What good is that?

Vince

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

If you do not have attachments, but only notes within each thought, you
might try experimenting with using the selection function and copying
"text outline with notes," and see if there is some way to make that
work. You wouldn't do it with the whole brain, but in smaller chunks.
Probably not really any better, but worth a little experimentation,
maybe.

I wonder if with that option CT's auto-link function could be used somehow to re-link the files automatically.

@Dr Andus

Thanks. I didn't know Directory Opus could batch rename a file to the name of it's directory, so though that's not a complete solution, it may be a help! I did intend asking the question on the CT forum, but I wanted to ask here first as we CRIMPers tend to have a better overview of how different tools work together.

CT's autolink function is a little too unrefined for this operation because the project is a glossary and contains a great many topics/thoughts with titles which are words used in many other contexts, such as post, mail, file and so on. In previous attempts to take things into CT I found it quicker to link manually than to unlink what CT had incorrectly linked.

Graham

I've spent the day on various forums and can provide some information more about how to get files from The Brain into ConnectedText.

1) In The Brain go to the reports tag (without filter), choose "refresh" and this will select all thoughts (though it only shows 5000 per page). Choose Edit->Add Report Results to Selection, then Export->To folders. This exports all the thoughts to a directory, with a sub-directory per thought, each containing an html file with a default name: PersonalBrain Notes.html

2) In DirectoryOpus (or equivalent), with a bit of experimentation, you can rename all the exported thought to match those of the sub-directory (which are named after the original thought title).

3) Also in DirectoryOpus (or equivalent) you can "flatten" the directory structure and then copy all the files within the sub-directory to a new directory, because CT can't import from nested directories, only all files within a single directory.

4) Import all html files in that directory into CT.

This created a CT project which has topics with all the same names as in The Brain's brain, and which retains all the html formatting and the external links. Work remains in making the project more CT compliant - adding categories, creating internal links, giving it a hierarchical structure and so on, but these steps do make the process less daunting and painful.

Graham

Graham Rhind wrote:

3) Also in DirectoryOpus (or equivalent) you can "flatten" the directory
structure and then copy all the files within the sub-directory to a new
directory, because CT can't import from nested directories, only all
files within a single directory.

Graham, thanks for sharing your process flow, this stuff is always good to know. The "flattening" trick in DOpus is a good one, I haven't thought about that...