Best software for emergent order

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Posted by Franz Grieser
Oct 14, 2007 at 07:58 PM

Hi Stephen

>Probably my Mac skills had already atrophied when about a year ago I tried Tinderbox,
>which was loaded on a Mac at the local Mac store. Whether because of the program’s
>limitation or mine, it appeared to me that the outliner was incredibly primitive,
>appearing *always* as if in Brainstorm’s ‘outline’ view. (I think it used to be called
>“overview.”) Lines unchangeably unwrapped, that is.

Tinderbox has a number of views: an outline view, a map view, a treemap view, an explorer view, a chart view (and export views). And you can have windows displaying different views at your data opened at the same time.

Franz

Posted by Chris Murtland
Oct 14, 2007 at 09:16 PM

I think folder tree operations in Zoot can be seen as weak, seen from the point of view of simple interface interaction. However, the tree hierarchy itself is not really where emerging structure reveals itself in Zoot, at least not directly. The power is in filling folders (or collecting results) with items based on arbitrary combinations of criteria, in my opinion.

Chris

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>While it seems facile in manipulating items, it seems remarkably
>lame about manipulating categories (for which it uses a folder metaphor). In fact,
>its ability to reorganize categories seems weaker than even the most inexpensive
>two-pane quasi-outliner. To subordinate one ‘folder’ to another, you select the
>folder choose a command to indent it. No subordination by drag and drop, even.
>Certainly no multiple-selection of categories.
> >This doesn’t look to me like a
>medium for emergent structure. It doesn’t readily allow you to tear down and rebuild
>higher level structures. It seems best for tasks where the basic structure is
>pre-ordained. It seems well-designed to organize information within known
>categories to facilitate the flow of work.

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