I really like the idea of using a program like Ndxcards to store knowledge. I like the idea of shuffling these cards and quickly rearranging them to find new relationships. New knowledge structures can be quickly created and then quickley torn down and rebuid. What does ConnectedText add to this process?

Thank You

John O'Connor

I just had an Eureka moment with ConnectedText. With ConnectedText the cards shuffle themselves without the need for human intervention. How very interesting.

... please elaborate, if you would.

john oconnor wrote:

I just had an Eureka moment with ConnectedText. With ConnectedText the cards shuffle
themselves without the need for human intervention. How very interesting.

do you mean by shuffling randomizing? That is not the most effective way to gain a long-term knowledge, ... this is a good reading if you are aiming to study a lot of info effectively http://www.supermemo.com

john oconnor wrote:

I just had an Eureka moment with ConnectedText. With ConnectedText the cards shuffle
themselves without the need for human intervention. How very interesting.

For me, Connected Text is like Zoot. These are programs I am sure are very good, if based only on the users recommending these products. Connected Text has the most impressive set of testimonials (including Manfred's) I have seen. The problem for me is that it seems impossible to see the usefulness first hand without spending considerable time working with these programs, and no one seems able or willing--one or the other--to explain systematically how the program delivers its benefits. Plus, what I do know about these programs would ordinarily lead me to reject them summarily, were it not for the compelling recommendations.

Connected Text requires memorizing a set of conventions, a process that might lead me to use supermemo (mentioned in this thread) to learn CT's conventions, if I wanted to use Connected Text. I'm skeptical of undirected connections as in Wikis, and I don't understand how CT can produce an outline (which involves directed connections) from the undirected connections that CT allows. Maybe someone can explain.

CT seems to have substantial overlap with ndxcards as to functionality. Which is the better choice, I haven't a clue. But ndxcards is immediately understandable to me, I use it, and I would use it more, were the pace of development a bit faster.

One caveat about programs that do require memorizing many conventions. I find these are forgotten very quickly. Even using very intuitive programs suffer when I don't use them for a couple of weeks. It seems to me that to use something like CT very effectively, you would need to use it a lot.

john oconnor wrote:

I really like the idea of using a program like Ndxcards to store knowledge. I like the
idea of shuffling these cards and quickly rearranging them to find new
relationships. New knowledge structures can be quickly created and then quickley
torn down and rebuid. What does ConnectedText add to this process?

Thank You

John
O'Connor

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Connected Text
requires memorizing a set of conventions, a process that might lead me to use
supermemo (mentioned in this thread) to learn CT's conventions, if I wanted to use
Connected Text. I'm skeptical of undirected connections as in Wikis, and I don't
understand how CT can produce an outline (which involves directed connections) from
the undirected connections that CT allows. Maybe someone can explain.

From my quick examination of the CT outlining function, I believe it works similarly to ndxCards in that the outline is an entity somewhat independent of the database into which you can drag your notes in a certain, hierarchical order. I'm sure Manfred will be able to clarify this if I am incorrect.

One caveat about
programs that do require memorizing many conventions. I find these are forgotten
very quickly. Even using very intuitive programs suffer when I don't use them for a
couple of weeks. It seems to me that to use something like CT very effectively, you
would need to use it a lot.

I own a license for CT, but I do not use the program at this time for the reason you suggest. To me, it seems to require too much work. I have no doubt that users who spend a lot of time with the program develop a facility for the conventions and after time they begin to become transparent. But it felt to me like trying to swim through gelatin. However, I have downloaded the beta for version 3 and will once again endeavor to get my arms around CT... because I like the concept of wikis very much, and CT really is packed with a lot of power.

Steve Z.

I will not be using CT for the time being, but I liked the developer being impressively responsive, and that it is programmable (through Ruby, Python, and a few more).

I am not sure whether you saw this. Nor am I sure how helpful it will be:

http://www.connectedtext.com/manfred.html

I agree that there is a learning curve, and that the conventions of a wiki take getting used to ...

I am convinced that the usefulness of a Note-taking applications, no matter which one you choose, increases exponentially in relation to the time and effort you put into it. I know this must appear (and is) paradoxical, for you must commit before you really know. And after you have committed, you will never really know whether another one might have been better. Reminds me of marriage that way ;)

On Index Cards: I tried it, but it appears to me that it does not translate the index card method into an electronic equivalent and is too much of a copy of the paper-based model, but that is my very subjective view. (I also did not find it "intuitive" - again, a very subjective reaction that has to do with my prior experience.

Manfred wrote:

... I am convinced that the usefulness of a Note-taking applications, no matter which one you choose, increases exponentially in relation to the time and effort you put into it. I know this must appear (and is) paradoxical, for you must commit before you really know. And after you have committed, you will never really know whether another one might have been better. <

Agreed, but GV REALLY WAS WORTH THE EFFORT...I MISS it!

Manfred wrote:

... Reminds me of marriage that way ;) <

Re marriage--sorry about this: Like GV, it was worth it, including the visible interface: Everyone, upon seeing my wife's photo on my desk exclaimed, "Oh! Is that your daughter?" [She is six years younger than I, but looks 26 years younger.] As someone said, "She's a Keeper."

Now, if only I could find a new "keeper" PIM ...

-c

I read Manfred's article and can definitely recommend it.

A question that always crops up for me is this: Is it better to jumble all your notes into one big database, or is it better to set up a separate database for each project or subject matter? With a program like Zoot, it doesn't matter, because it will search through all databases, and it is easy to move material from database to database (or copy it). But with CT and ndxCards, for instance, I don't think it is clear which approach is best. Certainly, if your notes are divided by project or subject, you are much less likely to have those "serendipitous" discoveries that have been discussed in a prior thread. But -- especially with ndxCards -- it seems that you could be overwhelmed by the volume of notes if you put everything into one database.

Does anyone have some thoughts on what this correct balance is? Thanks.

Steve Z.

Yes, I also found Manfred's article very interesting and will require a couple more readings to digest.

Something that I found confusing:

Rather, he gave every slip of paper what might be called a numerus currens that had nothing to do with any systematic consideration of order or classification. In fact, he explicitly rejected any ordering based on the contents of the card index because he realized that such a system will inevitably run into problems having to do with changing needs, interests, and insights in coming years. Systematic considerations are far too inflexible and limiting. Giving the note cards abstract numbers, like 1, 1.1, 1.3.6 and even 1.1a.5 ... "sometimes up to twelve digits," allows for infinite possibilities for further ordering and sub-ordering. Any given slip can lead to different internal branching of the card index.
==============

This seems to speak to the database concept of a unique record id, or auto-generated sequence number for each new record, but also seems to speak to a numbering sequence imposed by the user.

Is this user defined numbering system something that is imposed when temporarily grouping cards (thoughts or records), then discarded when the grouping is not needed, then re-imposed when a new grouping is created?

Just trying to understand the system that is being described.

With CT you can search all open databases or topics and link to topics in another project, etc. So, I think it does not really matter. My main projects are called Personal, Notebook, and Writing, with Notebook being the central one. I also have some for particular projects. I am writing a commentary on a philosophical text, and I have that text and the comments in a special Project with many links to the Notebook.

Manfred

Manfred, I really enjoyed your article on the CT site about note-taking.

I guess I am just not able to get my head around the whole wiki notion -- part of me rebels, first of all at having to remember conventions, as Stephen spoke about. Why can there not be programming that gives you bold or italic or title at the press of a button. That's one objection based on doing less than to me seems reasonably possible.

But then I guess I lack the imagination to think of how I would start linking stuff up, and whether I would be consistent.

I know I am missing something here, and I have that feeling everytime I download CT or another wiki for a trial.

Daly

Manfred wrote:

I am not sure whether you saw this. Nor am I sure how helpful it will
be:

http://www.connectedtext.com/manfred.html

I agree that there is a
learning curve, and that the conventions of a wiki take getting used to ...

I am
convinced that the usefulness of a Note-taking applications, no matter which one you
choose, increases exponentially in relation to the time and effort you put into it. I
know this must appear (and is) paradoxical, for you must commit before you really
know. And after you have committed, you will never really know whether another one
might have been better. Reminds me of marriage that way ;)

On Index Cards: I tried it,
but it appears to me that it does not translate the index card method into an electronic
equivalent and is too much of a copy of the paper-based model, but that is my very
subjective view. (I also did not find it "intuitive" - again, a very subjective
reaction that has to do with my prior experience.

"This seems to speak to the database concept of a unique record id, or auto-generated sequence number for each new record, but also seems to speak to a numbering sequence imposed by the user."

Yes, remember I describer a paper-based system. It's just a card index. What's interesting is that Luhmann (long before there were computers) treated each card like a database record. But, of course, in those days the unique record id could not be auto-generated. He had to generate it himself.

What makes Luhmann's approach (somewhat) interesting is that some people are trying to rebuild this system - and especially his way of using keywords to refer to such unique record ids. My point -- apart from simply describing this system as a historical oddity -- is that the keyword approach is not necessary any more, and that what he was aiming at can be realized better with a hypertextual system and fullext search..

Daly,
once tastes in note-taking, outlining, and writing are in many ways personal and subjective, so different people like different approaches.

There is a large contingent of Zoot supporters in this forum, and while I have long decided that I will not use Zoot, I still enjoy hearing about how and why people use it. Sometimes I even find something that I can translate into my scheme of things.

One of the reasons why I think it's worth to make the effort to get involved in Wiki technology is that it opens up a door to a KIND of note-taking application. Since it uses a structured language, it can easily be translated into another structured language. If, at some point, I would need to change to another application, I can just export the whole database to HTML, which is basically text. And I could then import it (probably fairly easily into another application).

Too many of the other contenders have (or used to have) proprietary databases that don't easily transform.

Manfred

Manfred -

Thanks very much for the url of your article commenting on CT. It really does make an excellent case for it.

I was about to launch into a discussion of how similar CT and Zoot are, for all their apparent differences, until I recalled your discussion of this very issue on our fall-back forum back in June '06: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/outliners-pims/message/286

One has to invest a lot of time in these programs - preferably in connection with real projects - to get a sense of their strengths and limitations. Once heavily invested in one, changing becomes a major issue, especially as their features overlap so much. Steve Zeoli suggested as much when he rejected CT as a useful complement to Zoot [http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/outliners-pims/message/290]

What he was looking for was an authoring program to compensate for Zoot's (and probably to some extent CT's) weakness in this area. This leads me to two more questions:

Does anyone use CT and Zoot together on a regular basis, and if so, for what purposes? And is WhizFolders living up to its promise of providing a useful intermediate authoring stage for CT and Zoot before one has to move into MS-Word?

Derek

John O'Connor wrote:

I just had an Eureka moment with ConnectedText. With ConnectedText the cards shuffle
themselves without the need for human intervention. How very interesting.

Let me explain. I should have used the word search rather than shuffle. In NDXcards you find connections between cards by searching for a shared keyword. If you forget to include the shared keyword in your search then you do not find the connection between the cards. In Connectedtext as soon as you have entered a "card" that contains a shared keyword with an existing "card" you can see that there is a connection.

This is how I think I will be using Connected text. I make an entry about a concept that contains several keywords including: Color, Blue, and Rainbow. Several months later I make an entry about a concept that contains the keywords (Or links) Color, and Yellow. I immediately see that there is a connection to my prior entry and based on this new connection I go back and revise my first entry. I then create a new entry called Rainbow which links back to my first entry. I then revise my second entry to add Rainbow as a keyword and perhaps update my new understanding of the second entry in light of the first entry and the new entry called Rainbow. Then I update the Rainbow entry.

Connectedtext is a thinking tool. I cannot say the same about NDXcards.

Connectedtext is a thinking tool. I cannot say the same about NDXcards

Just to clarify, I think ConnectedText can be used as a tool to learn and understand material as it is being placed into ConnectedText. This is is contrast to other programs where learning about the material is postponed to a later date.

John O'Connor

Derek Cornish wrote:

Does
anyone use CT and Zoot together on a regular basis, and if so, for what purposes? And is
WhizFolders living up to its promise of providing a useful intermediate authoring
stage for CT and Zoot before one has to move into MS-Word?

The core of the current version of my knowledge system consists of a locally hosted personal wiki which uses Mediawiki, the wiki application behind Wikipedia, working together with Zoot.

For me, Mediawiki is a better solution than CT: it's open source, comes out of a huge community of developers, powers Wikipedia so isn't likely to disappear anytime soon. I explain how I've set it up here: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/524/0/wiki-tool-for-windows-and-mac

But setting up Mediawiki is a bit of a pain. I can see myself using CT. Its feature set looks great, compares well with Mediawiki. They both provide the same kind of wiki capabilities.

I use Zoot for accumulating data on particular topics. What I particularly like is the Zooter - allows me to add notes, comments and keywords as I read from the screen. The keywords ensure that the note ends up in the relevant folders.

The wiki is for long-term notes which evolve, grow into substantial essays over time. As well as the advantages of using a wiki - good for brainstorming, easy to access since it's just another tab in Firefox, a way of collecting information to be used like LEGO bricks to create something larger, what I find useful here is that I can see how these changes have occurred, can go back in time, see how my thoughts have developed.

I combine, rewrite in NoteMap; the resulting piece of writing is archived - as a blog post, wiki entry or published article.

In any case, it's available through my local search engine, DT Search, as are the wiki, zoot and notemap entries.

I really wanted to use WhizFolders - but its functions, at least in the ways I wanted to use them, overlapped with Notemap and Zoot. I've juggling too many windows, tabs as it is. And I've become accustomed to Notemap.

Ike

The immediate recognition of common key words seems independent of the wicki approach of CT. Is that right? In principle, a program like ndxcards could have a feature like this. Or so it would seem.

john oconnor wrote:

>Connectedtext is a thinking tool. I cannot say the same about NDXcards

Just to
clarify, I think ConnectedText can be used as a tool to learn and understand material
as it is being placed into ConnectedText. This is is contrast to other programs where
learning about the material is postponed to a later date.

John O'Connor

Keywords can be hierarchical ro flat. (Typically, they seem to be called 'categories' when hierarchical. Evernote and Idea!, for example have hierarchical keywords. ndxCards has a flat list, although adding hierarchy is one of the features the developer has considered. Are keywords in CT flat or hierarchical?

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Manfred, I really enjoyed your article on the CT site about note-taking.

I hadn't seen the article. I'm going to read it this weekend. But regarding the below, Daley asks a good question. Indeed, why not. Actually, it occurs to me that software already exists that makes some of these conventions less onerous. There are programs that specialize in the function MS Word calls "auto-correct." You can pick your own keystrokes that trigger typing a different set. You might type 'cnct' and have it insert the connection symbol. Or in something like ActiveWords you could actually just type 'connect' after typing the trigger and have it insert the connection symbol instead of what you actually typed.

Is there any reason this wouldn't work? If not, then why would CT delay incorporating this sort of functionality. (Probably CT users have a much better memory than I, making this aid irrelevant.)

I guess I am
just not able to get my head around the whole wiki notion -- part of me rebels, first of
all at having to remember conventions, as Stephen spoke about. Why can there not be
programming that gives you bold or italic or title at the press of a button. That's one
objection based on doing less than to me seems reasonably possible.

But then I guess
I lack the imagination to think of how I would start linking stuff up, and whether I
would be consistent.

I know I am missing something here, and I have that feeling
everytime I download CT or another wiki for a trial.

Daly

Manfred wrote:
>I am not
sure whether you saw this. Nor am I sure how helpful it will

>be:
>
>http://www.connectedtext.com/manfred.html
>
>I agree that there is a

>learning curve, and that the conventions of a wiki take getting used to ...
>
>I am

>convinced that the usefulness of a Note-taking applications, no matter which one
you
>choose, increases exponentially in relation to the time and effort you put into
it. I
>know this must appear (and is) paradoxical, for you must commit before you
really
>know. And after you have committed, you will never really know whether
another one
>might have been better. Reminds me of marriage that way ;)
>
>On Index
Cards: I tried it,
>but it appears to me that it does not translate the index card
method into an electronic
>equivalent and is too much of a copy of the paper-based
model, but that is my very
>subjective view. (I also did not find it "intuitive" -
again, a very subjective
>reaction that has to do with my prior experience.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

The immediate recognition of common key words seems independent of the wicki
approach of CT. Is that right? In principle, a program like ndxcards could have a
feature like this. Or so it would seem

In NDXcards you would have to stop what you were doing and run a separate search. How likely is that going to happen in practice. With Connectedtext you can quickly click on a keyword link to see what is already connected. The speed of seeing the connection and the ability to rapidly move between the connected ideas and to update them is something I would find useful.

John O'Connor

Categories can be nested in ConnectedText; so Philosophy can have subcategories like Epistemology, Ethics, etc. But it can be as flat or hierarchical as you want it to be. It's easy to make a category a sub-category of some other category. You can even have circular assignments (though I wouldn't know why anyone would).

The markup of MediaWiki is very similar to that of ConnectedText.

I extensively use AutoHotkey with ConnectedText. They work well together.

Manfred

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

I'm skeptical of undirected connections as in Wikis, and I don't
understand how CT can produce an outline (which involves directed connections) from
the undirected connections that CT allows. Maybe someone can explain.

If you are looking for something that will create a hierarchy of structured static data that can be easly turned into an outline I do not think a Wiki, like Connectedtext, is what you need or should use. On the other hand if you are looking for software that seems, IMHO, to mimic what the brain does in making connections between data and creating knowledge then the Wiki concept may be worth exploring. When the brain seeks to solve a problem it does not open up a file and scroll down a list of data points arranged in a neat hierarchy.

As to the undirected connections that a Wiki allows, this is neccessary for the creative part of the brain to function. There is a place for describing and labeling connections, just not at the wiki stage. Once you assign a label to a connection or descibe the direction in which concepts should flow you run the risk of closing off alternate views.

Just my thoughts.

John O'Connor