Forum Posts Feed
Escaping from The Brain
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 27, 2013 at 06:41 PM
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
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 27, 2013 at 07:04 PM
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.
Posted by Graham Rhind
Mar 27, 2013 at 07:17 PM
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.
Posted by Graham Rhind
Mar 27, 2013 at 07:29 PM
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
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 27, 2013 at 08:30 PM
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.