askSam vs. Zoot? and vs. others
Started by 22111
on 10/2/2013
22111
10/2/2013 9:01 pm
Steven Zeoli just buried highly interesting information about Zoot within the AS listserv:
"The application I have always thought is the best replacement for askSam is Zoot, which you can find here: http://zootsoftware.com/
You'll find the smart folders which askSam started incorporating a few years ago (Zoot was among the first to make use of smart folders). And, in fact, Zoot's folders are even smarter because you can tell them to do something with the records they find -- i.e. make all Urgent records red for instance.
More importantly, you can create fields in a similar manner as askSam, by inserting a string into the editor like so:
Date:
Status:
Or whatever, which you can set up to also appear in the grid pane.
Zoot is so flexible that in many ways that is one of the things that scares people off; trying to figure out how best to use it. Another current issue is that the new version is still under development, and the producer of Zoot has not yet finished the documentation, so it will be a little difficult to figure out how to use
I have not tested this, but Zoot will import a CSV file, which I believe can be exported from askSam, so I would expect that data should be relatively easy to exchange.
Anyway, just another option to consider if you are looking to jump ship from askSam.
Steve"
I only discovered this by accident, looking out there for a possible version 8, once a month.
Now this should be more widely know, I think, but I also have some questions.
1
AS fields. One record/item can contain several fields with the same name, e.g. Manager: Smith, John, and another field Manager: Edwards, Peter. Now if you search for "Manager: Edwards" in your records, the record will be shown. This is a very good thing for categories that most of the time just have one entry, but sometimes have two or three. Of course, regular databases cannot contain multiple fields with identical names.
Zoot: ?
2
Fields again. Big disadvantage in AS, such fields cannot be added/standardized in any automatted way, since they are just "text". This means if you want to add an additional field to existing records, you have to go into lengths for inserting them with the "replace all" function, as I have explained here some weeks ago. This is a very bad thing, and could even become almost impossible if you try to change position of fields: You would have to insert a new field between fields 6 and 7 (7 becoming 8), then copy everything between field 2 and 4, but without the field name, into field 7, then delete ancient field 3. Of course, there is lots of chances something goes wrong in such proceedings.
Zoot: Same problem, since fields are "just text", or can you re-arrrange and add fields to existing records in a better way?
3
Fields again. Rather good, AS allows several entries within the same field, e.g. Tel: firstnumber, secondnumber, and they will be found.
Zoot: Here, possible, too?
4
Those same fields with multiple entries again, together with the smart tree. Let me briefly explain, a smart tree is built up in AS from such field contents, meaning 1 field "town", 1 field "size of corporation", 1 field "name of corporation", in any order, and you can build up your tree as "towns, then names, then size", or "different sizes, then towns, then names", or whatever pleases (up to 3 fields) - very handy!
So Zoot can do this, too? Up to how many fields?
5
Combination of those, meaning, AS is NOT able to fetch a second or third entry of such a multiple-entry field described in 3, in order to build up the smart tree, but here, only the very first entry of such fields (or the very first field and its content of multiple, equally-named fields within a record) is taken into consideration for building up the tree, and no way for a record to appear in different parts of the smart tree, once for first entry, and a second time for the second term of that same field, or once for the first "abc" field, and a second time for the any second occurence of that same "abc" field in some records.
This inability is extremely harmful to AS, since in the end, either you cannot use a) multiple similarly-named fields and/or multiple entries in single fields, or b) you cannot use the smart tree; in fact, this is really extremely harmful, since both would be needed, but without "hit" records being left out of the tree in consequence.
Zoot here? Same problem? Or, of course, Zoot not even allowing multiple fields and/or multiple entries in one field (which would avoid the problem from the wrong side, of course).
6
Finally, a very big advantage of AS is its "hit table", meaning you will see every hit term, within its textual context, as in desktop search engines. This is extremely helpful. Ultra Recall, for example, is unable to do this (if I did not overlook this, but I searched in vain for it), and as for MyInfo, I don't know. I think it cannot do it either but I'm not sure (version 5 was able to show the 3 first lines of the record, which is not possible anymore with version 6, but that was quite another thing anyway).
Zoot here? Does it show hits together with their context? Btw, many such programs show hit tables with lots of attributes and such, upon request, but that does not mean they show textual context, too.
Would be thankful to know a little bit more about it, also with regards to other outliners in this respect. In everyday life, this context for hits is one of the most important features an outliner should have.
"The application I have always thought is the best replacement for askSam is Zoot, which you can find here: http://zootsoftware.com/
You'll find the smart folders which askSam started incorporating a few years ago (Zoot was among the first to make use of smart folders). And, in fact, Zoot's folders are even smarter because you can tell them to do something with the records they find -- i.e. make all Urgent records red for instance.
More importantly, you can create fields in a similar manner as askSam, by inserting a string into the editor like so:
Date:
Status:
Or whatever, which you can set up to also appear in the grid pane.
Zoot is so flexible that in many ways that is one of the things that scares people off; trying to figure out how best to use it. Another current issue is that the new version is still under development, and the producer of Zoot has not yet finished the documentation, so it will be a little difficult to figure out how to use
I have not tested this, but Zoot will import a CSV file, which I believe can be exported from askSam, so I would expect that data should be relatively easy to exchange.
Anyway, just another option to consider if you are looking to jump ship from askSam.
Steve"
I only discovered this by accident, looking out there for a possible version 8, once a month.
Now this should be more widely know, I think, but I also have some questions.
1
AS fields. One record/item can contain several fields with the same name, e.g. Manager: Smith, John, and another field Manager: Edwards, Peter. Now if you search for "Manager: Edwards" in your records, the record will be shown. This is a very good thing for categories that most of the time just have one entry, but sometimes have two or three. Of course, regular databases cannot contain multiple fields with identical names.
Zoot: ?
2
Fields again. Big disadvantage in AS, such fields cannot be added/standardized in any automatted way, since they are just "text". This means if you want to add an additional field to existing records, you have to go into lengths for inserting them with the "replace all" function, as I have explained here some weeks ago. This is a very bad thing, and could even become almost impossible if you try to change position of fields: You would have to insert a new field between fields 6 and 7 (7 becoming 8), then copy everything between field 2 and 4, but without the field name, into field 7, then delete ancient field 3. Of course, there is lots of chances something goes wrong in such proceedings.
Zoot: Same problem, since fields are "just text", or can you re-arrrange and add fields to existing records in a better way?
3
Fields again. Rather good, AS allows several entries within the same field, e.g. Tel: firstnumber, secondnumber, and they will be found.
Zoot: Here, possible, too?
4
Those same fields with multiple entries again, together with the smart tree. Let me briefly explain, a smart tree is built up in AS from such field contents, meaning 1 field "town", 1 field "size of corporation", 1 field "name of corporation", in any order, and you can build up your tree as "towns, then names, then size", or "different sizes, then towns, then names", or whatever pleases (up to 3 fields) - very handy!
So Zoot can do this, too? Up to how many fields?
5
Combination of those, meaning, AS is NOT able to fetch a second or third entry of such a multiple-entry field described in 3, in order to build up the smart tree, but here, only the very first entry of such fields (or the very first field and its content of multiple, equally-named fields within a record) is taken into consideration for building up the tree, and no way for a record to appear in different parts of the smart tree, once for first entry, and a second time for the second term of that same field, or once for the first "abc" field, and a second time for the any second occurence of that same "abc" field in some records.
This inability is extremely harmful to AS, since in the end, either you cannot use a) multiple similarly-named fields and/or multiple entries in single fields, or b) you cannot use the smart tree; in fact, this is really extremely harmful, since both would be needed, but without "hit" records being left out of the tree in consequence.
Zoot here? Same problem? Or, of course, Zoot not even allowing multiple fields and/or multiple entries in one field (which would avoid the problem from the wrong side, of course).
6
Finally, a very big advantage of AS is its "hit table", meaning you will see every hit term, within its textual context, as in desktop search engines. This is extremely helpful. Ultra Recall, for example, is unable to do this (if I did not overlook this, but I searched in vain for it), and as for MyInfo, I don't know. I think it cannot do it either but I'm not sure (version 5 was able to show the 3 first lines of the record, which is not possible anymore with version 6, but that was quite another thing anyway).
Zoot here? Does it show hits together with their context? Btw, many such programs show hit tables with lots of attributes and such, upon request, but that does not mean they show textual context, too.
Would be thankful to know a little bit more about it, also with regards to other outliners in this respect. In everyday life, this context for hits is one of the most important features an outliner should have.
jimspoon
10/4/2013 4:23 pm
22111, i can't help with the zoot questions because I don't know much about zoot (though I have been interested for a long time). You might have better results in the Zoot forum. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/zoot-xt
I didn't know that you could create fields and assign values to fields in Zoot simply by typing them in, as you can do in AskSam. I am interested in the ability to attach fields and values to an item with as little disruption to the data entry as possible.
The AskSam smart tree sounds very interesting. It sounds like a multi-level sort of records, but displaying the records not in a table format, but in the format of a navigable tree.
You describe different ways of handling "many to one" relationships. In a relational database system, this would be handled with multiple tables. You might have a "Projects" table, a "Managers" table, and a "Managers Assignments" table - So you might have a record in the Projects table with ID number 42. In the Managers Assignments table you could have two records with "42" in the Projects field - one of these records would have "Smith" in the Manager field, and the other would list "Edwards."
I didn't know that you could create fields and assign values to fields in Zoot simply by typing them in, as you can do in AskSam. I am interested in the ability to attach fields and values to an item with as little disruption to the data entry as possible.
The AskSam smart tree sounds very interesting. It sounds like a multi-level sort of records, but displaying the records not in a table format, but in the format of a navigable tree.
You describe different ways of handling "many to one" relationships. In a relational database system, this would be handled with multiple tables. You might have a "Projects" table, a "Managers" table, and a "Managers Assignments" table - So you might have a record in the Projects table with ID number 42. In the Managers Assignments table you could have two records with "42" in the Projects field - one of these records would have "Smith" in the Manager field, and the other would list "Edwards."
22111
10/5/2013 6:38 pm
Of course, in a relational database, all this would be much more comfortable, but as I said in another thread, AS is a useful quick-n-dirty solution for tasks like crm, as is used by many people to this effect. So if Zoot replicates those special features, and does it even better, this could become more widely used.
Those smart trees in AS are rather slow to build up if you have thousands of records in the database, and even worse, in order to switch from one such tree to another, depending on other fields and their contents (or in a different order), you must do a lot of manual work - this can be done by a macro, but such a macro involves plenty of clicks in multiple dialogs, and worse, if there are toggles, the previous and the final state are a little unpredictable, so this is far from "professional".
Those multiple, identically-named fields are without too many problems, since you would tend to enter "additional" info into the "additional" ones, but several different entries in one such "list" field is a real-life problem, since those fields would/should be perfect for tagging/categorizing, and with tags/categories, the second or third within such a field is often even more "important"/needed than the very first one, but as said, they will be "overlooked" when AS builds up the tree, so it would be real good info to know if Zoot handles this aspect better, and this would imply to put such records, if checked for this field, as "clones", several times, into that same smart tree, one time for every such entry in that same field. Btw, uses for this would me multiple, not only for tags, etc., but also, if some corporation has got several outlets, you would put the respective town names as a list into this field, and then every outlet of that corporation/customer would appear under the respective town in your tree - of course, this could be realized differently, by having separate items all referencing to the main corporation.
And of course, there is always the search function, where such "second" or "third" entries in list fields don't get lost.
But anyway, traditional outliners don't have such functionality, so it's good news, all the more so for people who might be interested in AS (meaning they don't have all their stuff into AS yet), but would prefer to buy something more stable and in better shape; AS development / AS' future both having become pathetic subjects.
Also, with Zoot, there is e-mail integration, which is absent from AS, and especially for crm tasks, this could be something extremely important. Of course, a current help file would be welcome, especially since their "forum" doesn't accept new "members" who ain't willing to give Google their telephone number...
Be that as is might be, if Zoot now has introduced such functionality, I agree that no new customer needing these features should go to AS anymore (and accept all its quirks).
As for relational databases, there has been some thread somewhere in which somebody said he replaced his former Connected Text workflow by programming something in Access for himself, and he's much happier now. Well, he doesn't give away the code for free, nor does he try to sell it, which would not so bad an idea if it's really a smooth piece of software (and for Access, there is available a free runtime, so that's not the problem).
That's why for such tasks, I've been going with AS, but Zoot is tempting.
All the more so since it could perhaps consolidate my Ultra Recall setup together with my AS setup.
Btw, the parent nodes in such an AS tree aren't those of an outliner: Since they are created by the program, they are necessarily empty, and so many times, I "try" to put some info into them, since I am accustomed to this by all those outliners. This being a disadvantage Zoot should share with AS, for smart folders, I'm afraid.
And last, the citation above states fields in the text, and smart folders, in Zoot; I'm not entirely sure those smart trees can be built up from fields in the text, since there are also "attributes" fields - if that's possible, though, the next question would be if for smart trees, such "standardized" fields, and text fields even can be mixed.
I suppose that today, CT, Zoot and InfoQube are the top three, and then, all the others lack far behind (with the exception of TB, but which is very special; some people mention WhizFolders, too, but Ultra Recall has stopped real development long ago and becomes and more unacceptable); some man (here, I think) says the developer of Zoot doesn't answer his mails anymore, since he mentioned too many bugs to the developer... (Just to explay why I don't jump from AS to Zoot in a hurry.)
Those smart trees in AS are rather slow to build up if you have thousands of records in the database, and even worse, in order to switch from one such tree to another, depending on other fields and their contents (or in a different order), you must do a lot of manual work - this can be done by a macro, but such a macro involves plenty of clicks in multiple dialogs, and worse, if there are toggles, the previous and the final state are a little unpredictable, so this is far from "professional".
Those multiple, identically-named fields are without too many problems, since you would tend to enter "additional" info into the "additional" ones, but several different entries in one such "list" field is a real-life problem, since those fields would/should be perfect for tagging/categorizing, and with tags/categories, the second or third within such a field is often even more "important"/needed than the very first one, but as said, they will be "overlooked" when AS builds up the tree, so it would be real good info to know if Zoot handles this aspect better, and this would imply to put such records, if checked for this field, as "clones", several times, into that same smart tree, one time for every such entry in that same field. Btw, uses for this would me multiple, not only for tags, etc., but also, if some corporation has got several outlets, you would put the respective town names as a list into this field, and then every outlet of that corporation/customer would appear under the respective town in your tree - of course, this could be realized differently, by having separate items all referencing to the main corporation.
And of course, there is always the search function, where such "second" or "third" entries in list fields don't get lost.
But anyway, traditional outliners don't have such functionality, so it's good news, all the more so for people who might be interested in AS (meaning they don't have all their stuff into AS yet), but would prefer to buy something more stable and in better shape; AS development / AS' future both having become pathetic subjects.
Also, with Zoot, there is e-mail integration, which is absent from AS, and especially for crm tasks, this could be something extremely important. Of course, a current help file would be welcome, especially since their "forum" doesn't accept new "members" who ain't willing to give Google their telephone number...
Be that as is might be, if Zoot now has introduced such functionality, I agree that no new customer needing these features should go to AS anymore (and accept all its quirks).
As for relational databases, there has been some thread somewhere in which somebody said he replaced his former Connected Text workflow by programming something in Access for himself, and he's much happier now. Well, he doesn't give away the code for free, nor does he try to sell it, which would not so bad an idea if it's really a smooth piece of software (and for Access, there is available a free runtime, so that's not the problem).
That's why for such tasks, I've been going with AS, but Zoot is tempting.
All the more so since it could perhaps consolidate my Ultra Recall setup together with my AS setup.
Btw, the parent nodes in such an AS tree aren't those of an outliner: Since they are created by the program, they are necessarily empty, and so many times, I "try" to put some info into them, since I am accustomed to this by all those outliners. This being a disadvantage Zoot should share with AS, for smart folders, I'm afraid.
And last, the citation above states fields in the text, and smart folders, in Zoot; I'm not entirely sure those smart trees can be built up from fields in the text, since there are also "attributes" fields - if that's possible, though, the next question would be if for smart trees, such "standardized" fields, and text fields even can be mixed.
I suppose that today, CT, Zoot and InfoQube are the top three, and then, all the others lack far behind (with the exception of TB, but which is very special; some people mention WhizFolders, too, but Ultra Recall has stopped real development long ago and becomes and more unacceptable); some man (here, I think) says the developer of Zoot doesn't answer his mails anymore, since he mentioned too many bugs to the developer... (Just to explay why I don't jump from AS to Zoot in a hurry.)
Armin
10/6/2013 2:03 pm
22111 wrote:
I cannot confirm this. The developer of Zoot (Tom Davis) is answering my e-mails (and there are bug reports among them) within a very short time (1 minute to 24 hours - and I am in a complete different time zone).
I am working with the current Zoot version since the first public beta. Zoot is the main software program I use on my computer for one reason: it combines a great variety of information types. Zoot enables me, to have topic based databases, which collect e-mails, RSS-feeds, tweets, web pages, documents, tasks in a single database within Zoot. There is no need to switch to your feed reader or your e-mail software when searching for stuff about a specific project.
Additionally Zoot has got new comprehensive GTD functionality but it still lacks of a good documentation. And there is the "Zooter Cloud", too, which enables you to send items to Evernote, Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, Twitter and Facebook. So Zoot is also a Twitter client, RSS-reader and an e-mail software.
I am not able to compare it with AS, which I never used. I know Connected Text a bit, but CT has a different approach to information management than Zoot. CT might be a nice complementary to Zoot and vice versa.
Most features of Zoot I figured out learning by doing and playing around what happens. I guess I'm using still less than 40% of its functions and I'm still learning and discovering new tools within Zoot.
Best regards
Armin
;
some man (here, I think) says the developer of Zoot doesn't answer his
mails anymore, since he mentioned too many bugs to the developer...
I cannot confirm this. The developer of Zoot (Tom Davis) is answering my e-mails (and there are bug reports among them) within a very short time (1 minute to 24 hours - and I am in a complete different time zone).
I am working with the current Zoot version since the first public beta. Zoot is the main software program I use on my computer for one reason: it combines a great variety of information types. Zoot enables me, to have topic based databases, which collect e-mails, RSS-feeds, tweets, web pages, documents, tasks in a single database within Zoot. There is no need to switch to your feed reader or your e-mail software when searching for stuff about a specific project.
Additionally Zoot has got new comprehensive GTD functionality but it still lacks of a good documentation. And there is the "Zooter Cloud", too, which enables you to send items to Evernote, Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, Twitter and Facebook. So Zoot is also a Twitter client, RSS-reader and an e-mail software.
I am not able to compare it with AS, which I never used. I know Connected Text a bit, but CT has a different approach to information management than Zoot. CT might be a nice complementary to Zoot and vice versa.
Most features of Zoot I figured out learning by doing and playing around what happens. I guess I'm using still less than 40% of its functions and I'm still learning and discovering new tools within Zoot.
Best regards
Armin
Daly de Gagne
10/6/2013 4:05 pm
Armin, I follow the Zoot group, and can confirm that developer Tom Davis is indeed very responsive. Responsive in this case means more than simpy answering postings in the group - often when a bug is presented to hime he provides an up date within a few days.
I think Tom faces a strategic business decision as to how much time he should continue to development, and how much time he diverts to produce documentation.
Again, I am running a Zoot trail - the program feels solid, but my sense of relationship to it can be described best by the metaphor of taking a pilot whose command time is all logged in a small Cessna, and asking him to take command of an A380.
Not only am I someone who needs a very simple, hand holding kind of documentation. I also need real world examples of how writers, researchers, business people take advantage of all of the program's features.
I don't need to just have questions answered, but I need to know what the questions are, so I can envision ways to relate Zoot to my needs.
A Zoot for Dummies is definitely called for.
Daly
I think Tom faces a strategic business decision as to how much time he should continue to development, and how much time he diverts to produce documentation.
Again, I am running a Zoot trail - the program feels solid, but my sense of relationship to it can be described best by the metaphor of taking a pilot whose command time is all logged in a small Cessna, and asking him to take command of an A380.
Not only am I someone who needs a very simple, hand holding kind of documentation. I also need real world examples of how writers, researchers, business people take advantage of all of the program's features.
I don't need to just have questions answered, but I need to know what the questions are, so I can envision ways to relate Zoot to my needs.
A Zoot for Dummies is definitely called for.
Daly
22111
10/6/2013 4:43 pm
Armin, thank you for this overview.
Some software chokes with large databases, AS for example: Its users who use it for specific, well-rounded tasks don't encounter too many problems, in general. On the other hand, new AS users would be lost since they don't have its (excellent) search language codification available anymore that makes the strength of AS but is not contained within the help file, and that old forum in which you could find all the "tricks and tips" is long gone. With Zoot, it's the other way round, effective help is not available YET - so this is a might brighter perspective.
But as some other such programs, Zoot seems to offer it "all contained in one big database", and it's evident its strenght will play then, for example mail integration and then dividing up your stuff into several databases is not really a good idea.
But I've become wary of data monsters, so my question is: How many items? How many problems?
I'll give an example: TheBrain - they give examples of "brains" with 6-digit figures of items, and lots of interconnections, and it doesn't seem to present any problem. But then, real users say that even with just 3- and 4-digit numbers of items, IF they systematically have text within the content fields of those items, TB chokes, and some people even lost almost all their content, not speaking of response times multiplying.
On the other hand, UR seems to be very stable, even with big data, which is a reason even people who don't like it anymore, stay with it.
Also, UR has very good management of external data just linked to it, for example pictures, which are separate items in the tree, but which in fact are just linked to, and if you browse your tree, response times are so good you will not become aware that here, UR shows internally-stored rtf text, and there, it switches to a picture browser, within the same frame, in order to display the external picture, and if you have many such pictures (for example for a home-made real estate application or such), every such picture is about zero data in the UR database, but easily 2 or 3 million bytes within Maple or Jot+ (because of their importing pictures, and "translating" them into a very bad pic format, so even 30k jpg's become blown up to more than 1 million bytes).
In the end, it's details like these that make you decide upon this outliner or that one: quite specific info but which in your everyday life with the application, will make your workflow smooth, or make you look out for the next outliner out there.
My looking around being caused by UR's non-availability of formatting for tree entries - this might appear ridiculous, but I too much crave for this formatting in order to become ever happy with UR.
That's why more insight, user experience detailing strengths and less good points are so helpful.
Some software chokes with large databases, AS for example: Its users who use it for specific, well-rounded tasks don't encounter too many problems, in general. On the other hand, new AS users would be lost since they don't have its (excellent) search language codification available anymore that makes the strength of AS but is not contained within the help file, and that old forum in which you could find all the "tricks and tips" is long gone. With Zoot, it's the other way round, effective help is not available YET - so this is a might brighter perspective.
But as some other such programs, Zoot seems to offer it "all contained in one big database", and it's evident its strenght will play then, for example mail integration and then dividing up your stuff into several databases is not really a good idea.
But I've become wary of data monsters, so my question is: How many items? How many problems?
I'll give an example: TheBrain - they give examples of "brains" with 6-digit figures of items, and lots of interconnections, and it doesn't seem to present any problem. But then, real users say that even with just 3- and 4-digit numbers of items, IF they systematically have text within the content fields of those items, TB chokes, and some people even lost almost all their content, not speaking of response times multiplying.
On the other hand, UR seems to be very stable, even with big data, which is a reason even people who don't like it anymore, stay with it.
Also, UR has very good management of external data just linked to it, for example pictures, which are separate items in the tree, but which in fact are just linked to, and if you browse your tree, response times are so good you will not become aware that here, UR shows internally-stored rtf text, and there, it switches to a picture browser, within the same frame, in order to display the external picture, and if you have many such pictures (for example for a home-made real estate application or such), every such picture is about zero data in the UR database, but easily 2 or 3 million bytes within Maple or Jot+ (because of their importing pictures, and "translating" them into a very bad pic format, so even 30k jpg's become blown up to more than 1 million bytes).
In the end, it's details like these that make you decide upon this outliner or that one: quite specific info but which in your everyday life with the application, will make your workflow smooth, or make you look out for the next outliner out there.
My looking around being caused by UR's non-availability of formatting for tree entries - this might appear ridiculous, but I too much crave for this formatting in order to become ever happy with UR.
That's why more insight, user experience detailing strengths and less good points are so helpful.
Armin
10/6/2013 6:16 pm
22111 wrote:
This has been recently discussed in the Zoot-Group:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zoot-xt/NWsOl_HqTCg/discussion
There Tom Davis said:
I had once problems with a huge feed database in Zoot, which contained 40.000 and more items (RSS,Twitter) and which was slowing down the system while fetching new items, but that's long ago (2 years or so). I guess Tom Davis (developer of Zoot) did something in the meantime to avoid this. I cannot say anything about including huge photosets into Zoot and how that works, because I only use small amounts of images in my Zoot databases.
Although I do not know what exactly you mean by tree entries, according to formatting:
In Zoot you have three panes.
1. A folder tree with folder names (simple folders, smart folders and GTD-folders), you manually can modify the color of the folder (name) but you cannot set them to italic or bold (they are automatically bold, if they contain unread items). Folders with feed accounts get if provided the favicon as their folder icon.
2. The item grid shows the subject and the selected fields of each item located in a folder. You can select the fields you want to see in the item grid and you can build different user-defined views for this item grid. The text of the item's subject only can be formatted via color in the item grid. The subject is bold, if its item is unread. Within smart folders using RULES and ACTIONs you automatically can modify the color of the item's subject.
3. The content of the item, in former versions of Zoot when items were plain text only this was called "body" of the item, now it's the editor pane. The item body can be plain text, RTF or HTML. You can select and change this. So you are able to format the text of the item as you want. There is also a useful comment field (which could be inline or excluded) for each item, if you want to take some notes or remarks to a full text document (I use color for analysing articles and put e.g. footnotes or references into the comment field).
sorry for any mistakes in English, it's not my native language and I'm in a hurry. ;-)
Regards
Armin
But I've become wary of data monsters, so my question is: How many
items? How many problems?
This has been recently discussed in the Zoot-Group:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zoot-xt/NWsOl_HqTCg/discussion
There Tom Davis said:
The main factors which affect Zoot performance are:
* Amount of RAM
* Speed of Hard Drive(s)
I had once problems with a huge feed database in Zoot, which contained 40.000 and more items (RSS,Twitter) and which was slowing down the system while fetching new items, but that's long ago (2 years or so). I guess Tom Davis (developer of Zoot) did something in the meantime to avoid this. I cannot say anything about including huge photosets into Zoot and how that works, because I only use small amounts of images in my Zoot databases.
My looking around being caused by UR’s non-availability of formatting for tree entries - this might appear ridiculous, but I too much crave for this formatting
in order to become ever happy with UR.
Although I do not know what exactly you mean by tree entries, according to formatting:
In Zoot you have three panes.
1. A folder tree with folder names (simple folders, smart folders and GTD-folders), you manually can modify the color of the folder (name) but you cannot set them to italic or bold (they are automatically bold, if they contain unread items). Folders with feed accounts get if provided the favicon as their folder icon.
2. The item grid shows the subject and the selected fields of each item located in a folder. You can select the fields you want to see in the item grid and you can build different user-defined views for this item grid. The text of the item's subject only can be formatted via color in the item grid. The subject is bold, if its item is unread. Within smart folders using RULES and ACTIONs you automatically can modify the color of the item's subject.
3. The content of the item, in former versions of Zoot when items were plain text only this was called "body" of the item, now it's the editor pane. The item body can be plain text, RTF or HTML. You can select and change this. So you are able to format the text of the item as you want. There is also a useful comment field (which could be inline or excluded) for each item, if you want to take some notes or remarks to a full text document (I use color for analysing articles and put e.g. footnotes or references into the comment field).
sorry for any mistakes in English, it's not my native language and I'm in a hurry. ;-)
Regards
Armin
22111
10/7/2013 10:25 am
Armin, thank you so much for your very helpful details!
Informative link I had not seen; I suppose that with just linking photos instead of really importing them, Zoot should do rather well.
Thank you, too, very much for your description of Zoot's 3-pane layout; I must admit that for a moment, I had totally forgotten this very important aspect.
Of course, I mean every possible item within the UR tree, by "tree entries" - the current one is bolded by UR as long as it is the current one, instead of for example having some grey background, and then it reverts to regular font, when you switch to another entry (entry meaning item, be it a detail, a sub-heading, a heading... since 2-pane outliners mix up folders and their content in their tree), so your only chance to differentiate tree entries visually is by applying different icons.
3-pane: I think that in theory, it's extremely useful to do NOT mix up "folders"/"sub-folders" and "items", so I "trialled" (played around with) Zoot when it was in early XT, and I observed this:
Tree is to the left, as usual; good. Then the item list is on top, very large, and beneath it, the content, same width. For content, you need this large width, but certainly not, except in special cases, for the items list, so there is much screen space lost here.
On the other hand, again in most cases, you will need as much height for the items list as possible, which means it should be, as the folders list, as height as your screen, in order to show some dozen of items within the current (sub-) folder. So I tried to change the layout from
1 2/3 (3 under 2)
to 1 2 3 (1, 2, 3 in a row from left to right)
as is possible in Outlook, and in some pic viewers, but I didn't succeed, and as I remember now, that was the reason for which I quickly lost interest in Zoot before really trialling.
So my double question here would be, did the developer change this fixed layout to make it more malleable, or why not, if he didn't?
I could imagine some philosophy behind, being "create a maximum of folders/sub-folders, and then put only 7 items in each", but unfortunately, when having created too fine a web of sub-folders, I often then encounter the problem that I don't know afterwards into which (obviously TOO) fine-grained sub-category I put some item, so I prefer longer lists, most of the time, and broader sub-categories, which in such a 1 2/3 layout would necessitate lots of mouse clicks to the up and down arrows of this field.
So, did I overlook possibilities for a better layout, or has this really been made on purpose?
Informative link I had not seen; I suppose that with just linking photos instead of really importing them, Zoot should do rather well.
Thank you, too, very much for your description of Zoot's 3-pane layout; I must admit that for a moment, I had totally forgotten this very important aspect.
Of course, I mean every possible item within the UR tree, by "tree entries" - the current one is bolded by UR as long as it is the current one, instead of for example having some grey background, and then it reverts to regular font, when you switch to another entry (entry meaning item, be it a detail, a sub-heading, a heading... since 2-pane outliners mix up folders and their content in their tree), so your only chance to differentiate tree entries visually is by applying different icons.
3-pane: I think that in theory, it's extremely useful to do NOT mix up "folders"/"sub-folders" and "items", so I "trialled" (played around with) Zoot when it was in early XT, and I observed this:
Tree is to the left, as usual; good. Then the item list is on top, very large, and beneath it, the content, same width. For content, you need this large width, but certainly not, except in special cases, for the items list, so there is much screen space lost here.
On the other hand, again in most cases, you will need as much height for the items list as possible, which means it should be, as the folders list, as height as your screen, in order to show some dozen of items within the current (sub-) folder. So I tried to change the layout from
1 2/3 (3 under 2)
to 1 2 3 (1, 2, 3 in a row from left to right)
as is possible in Outlook, and in some pic viewers, but I didn't succeed, and as I remember now, that was the reason for which I quickly lost interest in Zoot before really trialling.
So my double question here would be, did the developer change this fixed layout to make it more malleable, or why not, if he didn't?
I could imagine some philosophy behind, being "create a maximum of folders/sub-folders, and then put only 7 items in each", but unfortunately, when having created too fine a web of sub-folders, I often then encounter the problem that I don't know afterwards into which (obviously TOO) fine-grained sub-category I put some item, so I prefer longer lists, most of the time, and broader sub-categories, which in such a 1 2/3 layout would necessitate lots of mouse clicks to the up and down arrows of this field.
So, did I overlook possibilities for a better layout, or has this really been made on purpose?
Graham Rhind
10/7/2013 1:17 pm
22111 wrote:
That might have been me (but not because I mentioned too many bugs). In all the time I was working with Zoot, as a paid customer, I got, I think, just one response from Tom to any question (and I'm not a demanding user). I didn't get any response to a recent request for help upgrading. Tom is idolised by many, but for me any support there is is just too fragmented. Regardless of the excuses people find for this/him, I won't use Zoot again.
Graham
>some man (here, I think) says the developer of Zoot doesn't answer his
>mails anymore, since he mentioned too many bugs to the developer...
That might have been me (but not because I mentioned too many bugs). In all the time I was working with Zoot, as a paid customer, I got, I think, just one response from Tom to any question (and I'm not a demanding user). I didn't get any response to a recent request for help upgrading. Tom is idolised by many, but for me any support there is is just too fragmented. Regardless of the excuses people find for this/him, I won't use Zoot again.
Graham
22111
10/8/2013 10:19 pm
Yes, I remember. As said, Ultra Recall help is not interested in new ideas, and is judged cold by its users, but if you have a technical question, let alone a bug to report, they will answer you, and will answer as long as you get it, several times if necessary. So I always respected their "tone", since in the end, you knew help was (and is) there.
On the other hand, I am quite intrigued by Zoot, since there are not so many outliners that integrate e-mail, and Zoot seems to do it best (from what I hear). InfoSelect is close second, it seems, and even in UR there is some Outlook "integration", but nobody ever can be happy with it, as with its function to "import" file system folders - it's all about lack of synchronization: Some good ideas to start with, and then coding becomes difficult, and all those needed additional functions are left out. So if Zoot really integrates e-mail, in the way of it being its own frontend to send and receive e-mails (if I understand well what I've read about it), this cannot be bad. (All the other outliners leave you alone in your struggle with e-mail, or do I overlook some other program that tries to integrate it? I am not speaking of crm programs where your content space is just for some remarks, but full-grown outliners: Just Zoot, InfoSelect, and then UR, but just in the way of an appetizer of what could have been.)
But then, could somebody answer my question about Zoot's layout? Is it always as inflexible as when I trialled it, a much too broad, and much too flat item list pane, above the content only, and not possible between folder pane and content pane, full height? That's the real problem I see with Zoot, and it should be so easy to make it flexible in the described way, the same way as in XnView and so many other programs.
On the other hand, I am quite intrigued by Zoot, since there are not so many outliners that integrate e-mail, and Zoot seems to do it best (from what I hear). InfoSelect is close second, it seems, and even in UR there is some Outlook "integration", but nobody ever can be happy with it, as with its function to "import" file system folders - it's all about lack of synchronization: Some good ideas to start with, and then coding becomes difficult, and all those needed additional functions are left out. So if Zoot really integrates e-mail, in the way of it being its own frontend to send and receive e-mails (if I understand well what I've read about it), this cannot be bad. (All the other outliners leave you alone in your struggle with e-mail, or do I overlook some other program that tries to integrate it? I am not speaking of crm programs where your content space is just for some remarks, but full-grown outliners: Just Zoot, InfoSelect, and then UR, but just in the way of an appetizer of what could have been.)
But then, could somebody answer my question about Zoot's layout? Is it always as inflexible as when I trialled it, a much too broad, and much too flat item list pane, above the content only, and not possible between folder pane and content pane, full height? That's the real problem I see with Zoot, and it should be so easy to make it flexible in the described way, the same way as in XnView and so many other programs.
Armin
10/9/2013 11:32 am
But then, could somebody answer my question about Zoot's layout?
I try.
Zoot has a "pane configuration button", where you can choose from six different "pre-configured” layouts: “Tall Tree, Tall Edit, Wide Edit, Tall Grid, Wide Grid, Tall All”.
Additionally you can use the mouse to move the pane borders to change the size of each pane, which leads to enormous flexibility.
You can even “close” the folder tree and then you only have the item grid and the editor on the screen.
Last, you still can toggle to full screen mode; this is when you only want to focus on the editor.
I hope that helps.
E-Mail functionality:
Yes, Zoot has its own e-mail engine on board now. An e-mail database looks like any other database of course, so no special neat web-known interface here. If I only would need e-mail functionality, I wouldn’t choose Zoot for that, but the integration into Zoot’s concept of bringing together different types of information is great, anyway
By the way, there is still the old synchronisation feature between Outlook and Zoot.
@Graham Rhind
I personally have used the direct channel to the developer mostly for bug reports and technical issues, less for support questions. You still have to have time to learn Zoot, to play around with its functionality as there is still no documentation, yet. On the other hand, everybody can use the Zoot list on Google Groups to ask questions. However, in such a list –if you do not collect them – the good and helpful answers get lost quickly (to save them I use Zoot). Therefore, I would rather prefer a wiki or collaborating CMS as a support tool than a forum or mailing list – as long as documentation does not exist.
But I agree to @Daly de Gagne, too, that you "need to know what the questions are". Good point.
Regards
Armin
Stephen Zeoli
10/9/2013 5:59 pm
One thing that I would like to emphasize about Zoot, something I think gets lost in all the talk about how inscrutable the application is: You can start using Zoot without knowing a whole lot about all its intricate features. Just create a database and start saving your free-form notes into it without worrying too much about organizing or anything else. Your notes will be fine and you can find them quickly with the search box. Then slowly introduce yourself to new features at your own pace. This is one of the strengths of Zoot -- that you can start simple and add complexity to your databases at your own pace and never skip a beat.
This approach may not work for everyone who reads this list, because most of you have more sophisticated needs right from the start. But I just want to get it on record that you do not need to know all the ins and outs of Zoot to use it.
Steve Z.
This approach may not work for everyone who reads this list, because most of you have more sophisticated needs right from the start. But I just want to get it on record that you do not need to know all the ins and outs of Zoot to use it.
Steve Z.
Daly de Gagne
10/10/2013 12:13 am
I'd point out that InfoSelect, in its present form, appears to be a dying program. The email component was one of the most eccentric and awkward email client I have ever seen. Parts of the program never functioned as advertised. Support came in fits and starts from the developer. It is nowhere close to any of the programs mentioned here.
Daly
Daly
Tomasz Raburski
10/10/2013 11:12 am
For me, the most important limitation of Zoot is its lack of unicode support.
That's the advantage of the non-american developers (MyInfo, ConnectedText). They do understand, that for many users it's a basic feature.
That's the advantage of the non-american developers (MyInfo, ConnectedText). They do understand, that for many users it's a basic feature.
Leib Moscovitz
10/10/2013 11:53 am
Not too long ago I tried the most recent Zoot version under Win 8, and it supported Unicode (although one must choose the appropriate fonts, since the fonts used in the default Zoot layout did not support Unicode correctly).
BTW, UR supports Unicode very well.
BTW, UR supports Unicode very well.
Tomasz Raburski
10/10/2013 1:25 pm
But can change the pre-defined keyboard shortcuts? As long as I remember, they collide with the diacritic key combinations"
Leib Moscovitz
10/10/2013 1:45 pm
That I don't know - you have to give it a try.
22111
10/10/2013 2:45 pm
Armin, thank you very much for your broad info! So they have made the layout flexible, and I'm very intrigued now, will trial and probably buy before the help file is really ready (I know you can do away with the white-on-black-background, so that should not be a problem for anybody).
In fact, 3-pane outliners are a kind of their own, and they are rare. So in UR, I "learned" to do without the third pane, but it will be more than interesting to "learn" how to best use the third pane; from the outside, by not having tried yet, I would say that it could be very useful to put clones of "other" sub-trees into the current sub-tree in pane 1, then have the items of the current item (in pane 1) in pane 2, and then you switch freely between your pane-1 headings, within the current sub-tree there, and independently of them being "at home" there or just being cloned to that position in the tree.
This way, quite fluent navigation between many such "item groups" (pane 2) all put together in pane 1 should be possible, and one click there (in pane 1) will bring you immediate access to all the respective "children". I think that workflow-wise, this 3-pane is the greatest concept of them all, and perhaps it's really time to switch the outliner. (Previous version had no formatting, and even a 32k limit for the content field: Since all this has gone, no further reason to avoid this program!) And I think the developer is right to never put it into "bits", since thus, no deprecation, and no unnecessary waiting for the right moment to buy (and 100 p.c. to the developer, not 25 p.c. only).
One general question about type encoding: If I understand the problem right (which I never really dived into): If you write in some West European language, no problem. Eastern European ditto? But problems for Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, and so on?! Then, some problems if you import websites, even with special West European language characters sometimes? What about the trick to install the right font? On most computers, the "new" Arial font is installed, the one with many hundreds of characters. I suppose with that, you will not encounter any/too many font problems? And then, even Surfulater, the "specialist" for storing web sites, does not follow those new guidelines (Unicode I mean)... but perhaps it will be of interest indeed how well it processes European web sites...
A word about shortkeys, and badly assigned, not re-assignable shortkeys: I never encountered any program which I could not spice a little bit up with a macro program, so everybody should install the macro program of his choice, anyway. From there on, it's easy to reassign original, unalterable shortkeys of any program to begin with, as your very first "macros" there. Just trial the macro program(s) before, since some of them are unable to re-assign such original shortkeys of a program, they do not intercept your key pressings early enough. But most will do without any problem. I know from bits comments and other sources that many a people do make rely their decision for or against a given software on that software's shortkeys being re-assignable or not, when in fact, that minor criterion should not interfere here. In ancient age, good software had its own macro "language"/set; except for MS, this has largely be abandoned. So choose your macro tool, and then spice up your multiple applications, AND reassign better shortkeys with it, too!
In fact, 3-pane outliners are a kind of their own, and they are rare. So in UR, I "learned" to do without the third pane, but it will be more than interesting to "learn" how to best use the third pane; from the outside, by not having tried yet, I would say that it could be very useful to put clones of "other" sub-trees into the current sub-tree in pane 1, then have the items of the current item (in pane 1) in pane 2, and then you switch freely between your pane-1 headings, within the current sub-tree there, and independently of them being "at home" there or just being cloned to that position in the tree.
This way, quite fluent navigation between many such "item groups" (pane 2) all put together in pane 1 should be possible, and one click there (in pane 1) will bring you immediate access to all the respective "children". I think that workflow-wise, this 3-pane is the greatest concept of them all, and perhaps it's really time to switch the outliner. (Previous version had no formatting, and even a 32k limit for the content field: Since all this has gone, no further reason to avoid this program!) And I think the developer is right to never put it into "bits", since thus, no deprecation, and no unnecessary waiting for the right moment to buy (and 100 p.c. to the developer, not 25 p.c. only).
One general question about type encoding: If I understand the problem right (which I never really dived into): If you write in some West European language, no problem. Eastern European ditto? But problems for Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, and so on?! Then, some problems if you import websites, even with special West European language characters sometimes? What about the trick to install the right font? On most computers, the "new" Arial font is installed, the one with many hundreds of characters. I suppose with that, you will not encounter any/too many font problems? And then, even Surfulater, the "specialist" for storing web sites, does not follow those new guidelines (Unicode I mean)... but perhaps it will be of interest indeed how well it processes European web sites...
A word about shortkeys, and badly assigned, not re-assignable shortkeys: I never encountered any program which I could not spice a little bit up with a macro program, so everybody should install the macro program of his choice, anyway. From there on, it's easy to reassign original, unalterable shortkeys of any program to begin with, as your very first "macros" there. Just trial the macro program(s) before, since some of them are unable to re-assign such original shortkeys of a program, they do not intercept your key pressings early enough. But most will do without any problem. I know from bits comments and other sources that many a people do make rely their decision for or against a given software on that software's shortkeys being re-assignable or not, when in fact, that minor criterion should not interfere here. In ancient age, good software had its own macro "language"/set; except for MS, this has largely be abandoned. So choose your macro tool, and then spice up your multiple applications, AND reassign better shortkeys with it, too!
Armin
10/10/2013 4:26 pm
Tomasz Raburski wrote:
You cannot create user-defined keyboard shortcuts, but you can disable most of the pre-defined keyboard shortcuts (In Zoot called "System Hotkeys"). There were some Zoot hotkeys, which collide with other software like Citavi (reference manager), so I disabled them in Zoot, because I didn't find any option to change them in Citavi.
Using a German keyboard with Zoot, I had recently problems with the EUR-sign ("€") (CTRL+ALT+E), but they have gone now.
In the earlier days of Zoot 6 I had some problems with E-Mails containing German umlauts ("öüä"), which Zoot did not handle correctly (esp. because of the variety of modes : plain text, HTML, content with images, content without images. Maybe my complaints about wrong umlauts and the developer's effort to solve that problem were one reason, that he did not find time for the documentation. (ha- ha!)
22111 wrote:
This is also something, which I am interested in. Any hints?
Regards
Armin
But can change the pre-defined keyboard shortcuts? As long as I
remember, they collide with the diacritic key combinations"
You cannot create user-defined keyboard shortcuts, but you can disable most of the pre-defined keyboard shortcuts (In Zoot called "System Hotkeys"). There were some Zoot hotkeys, which collide with other software like Citavi (reference manager), so I disabled them in Zoot, because I didn't find any option to change them in Citavi.
Using a German keyboard with Zoot, I had recently problems with the EUR-sign ("€") (CTRL+ALT+E), but they have gone now.
In the earlier days of Zoot 6 I had some problems with E-Mails containing German umlauts ("öüä"), which Zoot did not handle correctly (esp. because of the variety of modes : plain text, HTML, content with images, content without images. Maybe my complaints about wrong umlauts and the developer's effort to solve that problem were one reason, that he did not find time for the documentation. (ha- ha!)
22111 wrote:
What about the trick to install the right font?
This is also something, which I am interested in. Any hints?
Regards
Armin
22111
10/11/2013 1:17 pm
"I had some problems with E-Mails containing German umlauts (”öüä”)" - That's what I mean, problem solving for "internal" content is not also problem solving for imported third-party content, and it goes without saying that for European people, receiving most of this external content with "problem" characters, there should not be persistent problems since reading messages would become too strenuous an experience.
As for macro tools to overcome bad key assignments, I should have added that today, many macro programs have "application scope", and you would need some of these: So in Word, the same key F9 would trigger this command, and in your outliner, it would trigger another command; they distinguis this "scope" by parts of the "caption", being "Microsoft Word", "UltraRecall", and so on. So this would be an important factor of choice for your macro tool, together with its ability to override "internal" key combinations. Perhaps a third criterion: Some, bad, macro programs do only let you assign key combinations, but not simple keys, so that would impose control-F9, instead of letting you assign F9, and of course, nobody would want such a tool. Let me add that such functionality is available without scripting/"programming" whatsoever; of course, if you are willing to get into scripting, your possibilities will multiply, and for free, both with AutoIt or AHK. But reassigning keys to unwanted and aleatoric key combinations is just a question of simple macro tools for 10, 20 or 30 dollars.
Btw, in another thread, "10,000 messages in a single Outlook folder": that's another real strong argument for doing your crm and such in Zoot! (If it's easy to shift any message from the inbox to what you're working on, but I hope it is: the mail inbox should be an extra pane, from which then you should be able to "shift selected item from there as a sibling into the current pane-2 group", by one key (which would be equivalent to "shift it as a child to the selected item in pane 1").)
As for macro tools to overcome bad key assignments, I should have added that today, many macro programs have "application scope", and you would need some of these: So in Word, the same key F9 would trigger this command, and in your outliner, it would trigger another command; they distinguis this "scope" by parts of the "caption", being "Microsoft Word", "UltraRecall", and so on. So this would be an important factor of choice for your macro tool, together with its ability to override "internal" key combinations. Perhaps a third criterion: Some, bad, macro programs do only let you assign key combinations, but not simple keys, so that would impose control-F9, instead of letting you assign F9, and of course, nobody would want such a tool. Let me add that such functionality is available without scripting/"programming" whatsoever; of course, if you are willing to get into scripting, your possibilities will multiply, and for free, both with AutoIt or AHK. But reassigning keys to unwanted and aleatoric key combinations is just a question of simple macro tools for 10, 20 or 30 dollars.
Btw, in another thread, "10,000 messages in a single Outlook folder": that's another real strong argument for doing your crm and such in Zoot! (If it's easy to shift any message from the inbox to what you're working on, but I hope it is: the mail inbox should be an extra pane, from which then you should be able to "shift selected item from there as a sibling into the current pane-2 group", by one key (which would be equivalent to "shift it as a child to the selected item in pane 1").)