Forum Posts Feed
two-pane outliner that can show more than one note at a time in the viewer/editor pane?
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Pages: < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 > Last ›
Posted by Jon Polish
Oct 14, 2013 at 06:30 PM
In combination with Jarte (a lightweight text editor), UR can display and edit in multiple windows. Perhaps not what was asked for originally, but it works well for me. For me, UR is great for information management. WhizFolders excels (for me) at writing assignments.
Jon
Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 15, 2013 at 03:29 PM
Sorry! Yes, quite right, mea culpa, UltraRecall isn’t an MDI program (although it does support multiple instances). All the others are (I checked!). I always confuse UltraRecall with the much older - and in terms of interface, clunkier - InfoRecall. The latter is quite powerful, however, so shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
Posted by 22111
Oct 16, 2013 at 03:07 PM
@MadaboutDana
Well, it is, from wikipedia’s terminology, since it has got tabbing, and this is one of the subgroups of MDI - but as said, the developers could have done this much better, with the technology they have in hands, and in fact it’s all about avoiding to switch between several tabs: Being able to look at source and target at the same time, is quite different, by the “user experience”! InfoRecall, UltraRecall, InfoSelect… and don’t search for “Tree” - Zoot, and some others are the only ones clearly distinguishable for the non-daily-user.
Of course, I’m thinking about Zoot and when it will perhaps become this functionality?
@Jon Polish
“In combination with Jarte (a lightweight text editor), UR can display and edit in multiple windows.”
Could you explain this? If you happened to replace the bad, gratis MS editor UR uses, by Jarte, this will interest UR forum users (but does have Jarte rtf?). How do you do it? Or do you mean referencing external files (of Jarte or other text processors) from with the UR tree? That would indeed not be the same thing.
Posted by Jon Polish
Oct 16, 2013 at 05:11 PM
22111 wrote:
>@Jon Polish
>“In combination with Jarte (a lightweight text editor), UR can display
>and edit in multiple windows.”
>
>Could you explain this? If you happened to replace the bad, gratis MS
>editor UR uses, by Jarte, this will interest UR forum users (but does
>have Jarte rtf?). How do you do it? Or do you mean referencing external
>files (of Jarte or other text processors) from with the UR tree? That
>would indeed not be the same thing.
>
Jarte is being used as an external editor for both stored and linked documents. Unfortunately, Jarte cannot be opened under IE, so UR will not use Jarte as an embedded program. So yes, it is not the same thing, although it approximates it for my purposes.
Jon
Posted by 22111
Oct 16, 2013 at 05:54 PM
Thank you, Jon. So (and if I understand correctly), any second program could be loaded, with a file referenced in the UR tree; the advantage here would be that the external file would be readily accessible, instead of searching for it in the file system.
@developers: It’s not really difficult. Just have a rightclick-command and key command (the same, alternatively) for “open in second pane”, so that the first item/pane will not be affected/replaced (neither the selection of that first item in the tree), and then, a default setting could divide the text/content pane vertically (technically, it would be TWO content panes, each one linked to a different recordfield) (and by option, horizontally; bigger/smaller with mouse), and the second pane could be moved independently from the main frame (as with all the tree/list/additional panes in UR); if you move it, the original pane will get its original size again. So on the technical side, you only need another buffer, holding the content of the second content pane (independent or sharing the original content pane’s frame).
Then, any “GENERAL” command will only work upon the current item and its content, the one selected within the tree. It would just be the right-click menu within the “additional” pane that would have some other commands: Save, CloseAndSave, CloseAndAbandon, RevertToOriginal(without closing); those commands should also be available by menu/keyboard (why not add an additional menu entry to the general menu, “Second” for “second pane”, disappearing when the second pane is closed?). And of course, when focus is in the additional pane, EDITING commands will work upon that secondary content. And a special command (perhaps control-tab or such) would switch focus between first content pane and second content pane. And if the developer want to make it perfect, he could not only show the second item’s title within the caption of the secondary frame, but also provide a command “in tree, go to the item of the second pane”; whenever the second pane is displayed, and you do the “open in second pane” command, a dialog would open for your choosing first what to do with the current content of that second pane: “Save and replace” or “Abandon and replace”. And there is no problem with the “save second” command for it updating the respective recordfield within the record of that “second” item of which the ID is stored, for the session, in some variable - technically, for such a system, there is no difficulty whatsoever to distinguish between the “current item” and its content and some “secondary item’s content (which as said would logically be the target in most cases, and when you will switch between various sources, within the “first item” universe, at the same time.
The whole coding for all this, all details included, would take 1 day, and I know what I’m speaking of. So much for MyInfo having had a “read-only” second pane for two years or so now, and so much for Ultra Recall which in about 15 years did not bother to get such a second pane.
1 day of coding, and we are asking for too much, though.
No further comment, as Kühn regularly says in his instructive blog.