1. UR 5.1 is available.

2. Need import help:
Last year, after buying/installing UR 5.0 Pro portable, I fount a fairly easy way of converting my Jot+ files into UR files, with retaining the hierarchical, tree on left--content pane on right, format. (I can convert Jot+ files into rtf, html, and xml files.)
Now, no matter what I try, I can't duplicate that work. Also Kinook says it has no idea as to how to create imported hierarchical files.

IF anyone has any ideas on how to do this, please tell us!

Thanks!

If Jot+ can export its contents into a hierarchical folder/file structure, UltraRecall should be able to import that structure and recreate the original hierarchy.

Other (less likely) possibilities might be to use an intermediate file format, such as Action Outline or Treepad, which UR can import.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

If Jot+ can export its contents into a hierarchical folder/file
structure, UltraRecall should be able to import that structure and
recreate the original hierarchy.

Other (less likely) possibilities might be to use an intermediate file
format, such as Action Outline or Treepad, which UR can import.

================================
Alex,
Really wierd! I tried things like you suggest, but so far no luck. What is really strange is that the entire Jot+ file got converted except the last two tree nodes (branches) were missing AND a lot of other miscellaneous stuff got added to the end of the tree.

Whatever I did must have been easy as I would not have purchased UR had it not been easy.

Maybe lightening will strike and I suddenly wii recall what I did. At age 72, I sometimes cannot remember something at the moment, but then it will "pop up" later. The memories aren't lost, they just like to play "hide and seek."

Cassius wrote:

At age 72, I sometimes cannot remember something at the moment,
but then it will "pop up" later. The memories aren't lost, they just like to play
"hide and seek."

This has been happening to me for as long as I can remember, and I'm 'only' 45. So consider yourself lucky.

I have noticed a location-sensitivity of memories. When I forget something, I go back to where I had thought about it and, more often than not, reminiscence will be accelerated.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

This has been happening to me for as long as I can remember, and I'm
'only' 45. So consider yourself lucky.

I have noticed a location-sensitivity of memories. When I forget
something, I go back to where I had thought about it and, more often
than not, reminiscence will be accelerated.

I have noticed a smell-sensitivity*. Sadly, I've found it will not work with application functionality.

*I believe it has been hypothesised that this is caused by a feature of cerebral physiology.

Speaking of memory:

Short-term memory (=working memory): If it is giving you problems AND you are either a teen with ADHD or have high blood pressure, have I got a pill for you: GUANFACINE.
This has been around for a long time and was tested on rats, in a LEGITIMATE study. The researchers tested the short term memory of young rats and compared the results with old rats not given this drug and old rats given it. The old rats without Guanfacine did much poorer than the young rats. The old rats with Guanfacine did about the same as the young rats.

I showed the study to my cardiologist and after researching it himself, he gave me a prescription for the minimum dosage. It works! It has been around for a long time, doesn't seem to have displayed any serious side effects, and is available as a generic.

Researchers are also working on a supplement for long term memory. It works on rats, but human studies are still underway. It is available in "health" supplement stores, but since no one knows how it works on people or if it has nasty side effects, I won't take it or recommend it.

- Did you try to contact the Jot developer? Did he respond? His "out of service for family reasons" sticker is years old, but perhaps he answers to mails?

- Originally there was an "ABC Amber Converter" for Jot, which was free, but which is not available anymore. Do you have a copy of this? Could you even share it? Anybody else? I would not ask were it not that it had been free and that it is not available anywhere, anymore. Btw, this ABC Amber Converter should appear as the only reason to put anything into Jot. I mean it is necessary to have a possible "way out" for every data you ever store anywhere.

- There had also been, or is, "Jot Convert", from Jot themselves. Unfortunately, they don't make this available for their trial version, but only to paying users (so in theory, there is a risk one buys the software and then never gets the tool), which would be ok IF they answered mails anymore, hence my question if they do. If they do, you might ask for this tool from them. Why? Because Jot only exports to XML / HTML but their tool also exports to Word; you might even have stored their import-export tool on your harddisk, even if they do not answer their customers' mails anymore - or do they?

- They also have a tool called "Jot Merge" but it does not seem it was developed beyond a very basic / unreliable (?) state.

- That "ABC Amber Converter" mentioned above should be the ideal solution if ever somebody could get hold of it.

I forgot to mention why I mentioned Jot Merge: Because it is the only try of my knowledge any outliner developer ever has undertaken to bring about a solution to the age-old problem of synchronizing two different versions of the same outline file, and that is certainly worth an honorable mention even if it has nothing to do with the problem at hand, all the more laudable since Jot is text file based, not database based, where such functionality should be much easier to realize.

In reply to 2111:

I telephoned the developer of Jot+ a couple of years ago. He told me that he now has more lucrative software development (programming) jobs. It's clear that he will not be doing any more development in Jot+.

I do have Jot Convert, but it hasn't helped. I never heard of "ABC Amber Converter," but will search for it.

When I have time, I'll try again to do an Ultra Recall conversion.

- His family problems might have been resolved (if there were any); I'm sure he will not do any more development, but sending out, or not, additional tools to paying users is another bag.

- Which gives me an idea. Since the Amber tool is not available anymore, Jot developer might have a copy, and might give out a copy to you, as a customer.

- This being said, and without the Jot tool being available to non-customers, what does the Word output from it do? Failure of exporting the hierarchy into a similar Word one? Since if I am not mistaken, Ultra Recall would properly import a Word document, splitting it up again by its title/subtitle hierarchy, into an according tree of items.

22111 wrote:

I forgot to mention why I mentioned Jot Merge: Because it is the only
try of my knowledge any outliner developer ever has undertaken to bring
about a solution to the age-old problem of synchronizing two different
versions of the same outline file, and that is certainly worth an
honorable mention even if it has nothing to do with the problem at hand,
all the more laudable since Jot is text file based, not database based,
where such functionality should be much easier to realize.

This is indeed important. For the record, Brainstorm also does this kind of merge/sync out of the box, even though it is not database based. I am quite certain I read about this feature recently in a program discussed in this forum, but I can't pin it down now.

(And I can't go anywhere else to remember what it was, as I read it in this same PC in this same location...)

22111 wrote:

I forgot to mention why I mentioned Jot Merge: Because it is the only
>try of my knowledge any outliner developer ever has undertaken to bring
>about a solution to the age-old problem of synchronizing two different
>versions of the same outline file

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

This is indeed important. For the record, Brainstorm also does this kind
of merge/sync out of the box, even though it is not database based.

WorkFlowy does something similar automatically when you make changes to the outline offline in one or more devices, and then you sync it with the online version.

ConnectedText's outliner also allows you to import another outline into any of the branches or items of an existing outline (but that's not so much a merge between two different files).

What CT does in this respect, every outliner of my knowledge does.

But the mention of WorkFlowy is of interest here, and it seems to be obvious that with the advent of cloud-based services and their integration with pc software, there will be more and more of such real synching being introduced, which is a very good thing. But in fact, all those "powerhouses", of those traditional, powerful, feature-rich outliners, none of them ever tried to program such functionality, or at least did not tell users they failed with its implementation, and it should be held for sure that with the transposition of traditional outliners to portable devices, such synching problems between two versions worked upon concurrently will multiply. Or seen from another angle of view, traditional outliners will recede in the market even more, for this particular reason, too, for the benefit of cloud-based software.

22111 wrote:

What CT does in this respect, every outliner of my knowledge does.

Really? In CT you can go deep within a hierarchy, select any item, right click, and import an outline in .XML, .OPML, .TXT, or .MM format exactly under that item in the hierarchy. None of my other outliners seem to be able to do that...

22111 wrote: ...

- This being said, and without the Jot tool being available to
non-customers, what does the Word output from it do? Failure of
exporting the hierarchy into a similar Word one? Since if I am not
mistaken, Ultra Recall would properly import a Word document, splitting
it up again by its title/subtitle hierarchy, into an according tree of
items.

==========================
Jot+ can output to rtf. I tried that but could not get the hierarchical (tree) output like I did in 2012. Maybe the memory of what I did will bubble up to the surface...maybe.

Actually, Ecco had pretty good synchronization in the 90s (both network-based in real time and for a single user via file export/import), although its approach to it seems a little dated now and cumbersome in comparison to the seamless, quick, online synching a la Workflowy.

However, I think it's the proliferation of mobile devices and multiple operating systems that has really brought sync to the foreground - if I only needed to work on a bunch of different Windows machines, I could just copy my entire Ecco file (or any other "legacy"/desktop info manager/outline) of only a few megabytes around between each machine very easily - which is exactly what I did do for many years.

I think the current tradeoff is between power (desktop software) and ubiquitous access (cloud services). However, I assume (hope may be more accurate) that eventually these things will converge - either desktop software will become much more cloud friendly with multiple native clients (along the lines of Evernote) or cloud services will become more powerful.


22111 wrote:

But the mention of WorkFlowy is of interest here, and it seems to be
obvious that with the advent of cloud-based services and their
integration with pc software, there will be more and more of such real
synching being introduced, which is a very good thing. But in fact, all
those "powerhouses", of those traditional, powerful, feature-rich
outliners, none of them ever tried to program such functionality, or at
least did not tell users they failed with its implementation

Chris Murtland wrote:

However, I assume (hope may be more
accurate) that eventually these things will converge - either desktop
software will become much more cloud friendly with multiple native
clients (along the lines of Evernote) or cloud services will become more
powerful.

I'm rather worried about the future of desktop software. PC and laptop sales seem to have entered a long-term decline. The hundreds of millions of consumers around the world who didn't really need a PC but had to buy one because there were no cheap tablets or smartphones or smart TVs around yet have been subsidising the price of hardware, desktop OS and software for the heavy users like the forum members here. This era is quickly coming to an end.

I expect the prices of PCs and laptops to go up over time, as they'll become specialist instruments, while everyone else will be touching tablet screens or speaking to their portable devices or dumb terminals at work.

I suppose there could be a chance that a smaller but higher-priced market for specialists might benefit some software developers to write expensive high-end software for corporations and specialists. But many might just prefer to write apps for 99c and sell them to millions on mobile device platforms... Depressing...

"The hundreds of millions of consumers around the world who didn’t really need a PC but had to buy one because there were no cheap tablets or smartphones or smart TVs around yet have been subsidising the price of hardware, desktop OS and software for the heavy users like the forum members here. This era is quickly coming to an end."

This is exactly what has happened, and what will happen. My first notebooks - I always needed notebooks, so I had to pay the price - were 8088, then 286, and at prices of which the equivalent would by portable workstations today, so I profited very much from the sudden ubiquity of notebooks some years ago.

But there are two more phenomena, except for what you say further down:

- Many "light" users grew accustomed to what notebooks have on offer, even on top even "lighter" devices, so many of them will not entirely replace them but continue to buy, but it's predictable indeed they will buy just one new notebook for every 3 or 4 new "light" devices they will add to their hardware collection. Thus, prices will certainly rise again, but never to the state of affairs when only rich people, and those who absolutely needed notebooks, bought them.

- Danger for individual pc software development in outlining and such seems to also come from another field of the business. Some weeks ago, I read that there are endevours from corporations like SAP and such to more and more "cover" the market of tiny businesses and even "power-user" individuals. This is bad news for individual developers, all the more so since these very professional corporations that up to now didn't deign to "serve" individual customers, have the required manpower to deliver lots of features in no time.

But let's be honest, for us, this would be rather good news if such a thing realized: One-man-show developers did not exactly spoil us, these last years, so something new, better and more complete would certainly be well received, and speaking for myself, I would be willing to regularly spend 500, 800, 1200 dollars for software packages, like in the old times, but for real good software now, a thing I have given up to expect from those one-man shows. Don't get me wrong: I always would prefer to give my money to Mr. Smith, rather than to Ellison/Gates/Andsuch, but then, those Mr. Smith out there didn't deliver - that's why this forum exists at the end of the day: Were it not for incredible, persisting shortcomings in all this one-man-show software even in features that would have been so easy to implement ten years ago (and not speaking of the real complicated stuff, now with integration of web, collaboration, synching), the phenomenon of crimping would have remained even more marginal than it is.