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Posted by Wayne K
May 2, 2014 at 12:23 AM
Nice job, Pierre. I appreciate the quick fixes.
Posted by yosemite
May 24, 2015 at 10:58 PM
I’m giving InfoQube another try. Probably at least the fifth time I’ve tried in as many years. The potential, the flexibility, is awesome. I’m running in to the same problems I’ve had before but I haven’t given up yet. I’ll put my rant at the bottom…
This particular try I discovered I could do filter-as-you-type which works pretty good, and the web clipper is also pretty good. But here’s the specific issues I’m having:
1. Filter as you type. CTRL+G, after you put something in, gives you a nice bar at the bottom of a column where you can type in text and pretty much as quickly as you type it hides all the items that don’t contain the text. If you type two pieces of text then lines have to have both pieces, so it’s an AND search, which is nice. But, it doesn’t seem to have any sort of controls available, no OR, no NOT, no quoted phrases. And, like workflowy, if an item matches, it shows all the parents too. That’s cool but I’d like to toggle it on/off with a click/button or something. I tried to find some help on this feature but there’s either nothing or I can’t find it.
2. Flatten the list. Can I quickly flatten a list and unflatten it?
3. Hierarchy itself. Trying to figure out #2 I fell down a rabbit hole about hierarchy. Functions called “hierarchy”, “full hierarchy”, “context parents”. It’s completely baffling. These two sections of the online help seem to say that what InfoQube is doing is completely counter-intuitive and should be fixed four years ago but isn’t:
http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/261
http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/1965
4. Search. I’ve tried using the “Omnibox” and some of the other search methods and I can’t get the hang of ANY of them. Only the filter-as-you-type I mentioned above, and the column filter dropdowns make any sense to me.
5. Undo. Sometimes you can’t undo what you just did? I don’t understand. Help doesn’t seem to explain it.
6. Expand and collapse all. There doesn’t seem to be a shortcut, the best I can find is CTRL+SHIFT+9 which does 9 levels but not all. Also these only operate on an item and all its children, not an entire grid.
===
The Rant:
Generally speaking the main problem is that the documentation is terrible. What does exist is often outdated. Sometimes contradictory. The terminology is confusing. The homepage link labeled “IQ Documentation” goes to: http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=booktree ...
...and it’s very confusing. Many of the things I’ve looked up have dates from 5-6 years ago and I try to follow the instructions only to find menu items are moved or terminology has changed.
I see there’s a help file now, which I downloaded. Apparently it’s just all these online help files from years ago packaged up in a Windows CHM. Still, it’s better than the online.
There’s posts called “Getting Started” and “Demystifying InfoQube” that don’t help me get started and just make me more confused. Sigh.
Posted by jimspoon
May 26, 2015 at 02:46 AM
yosemite,
Ctrl+1 ... Ctrl+9 should on all items in the grid, not just the current item. Ctrl+1 should show only top-level items; Ctrl+2 should show all top level and second level items, etc.
If you haven’t already you might want to register for the Infoqube forum, and submit infoqube-specific questions there - might be more like to get answers there.
I do agree, Infoqube could be made easier to understand and easier to use ... I hope that will come over time as Pierre continues to work on the program.
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
May 27, 2015 at 03:39 AM
Hi yosemite,
I’m the designer of InfoQube. I’ll try to answer your questions here.
As Jim mentioned, you can also ask questions on the IQ community web site.
yosemite wrote:
>This particular try I discovered I could do filter-as-you-type which works pretty good, and the web clipper is also pretty good. But here’s the specific issues I’m having:
>
>1. Filter as you type. CTRL+G, after you put something in, gives you a
>nice bar at the bottom of a column where you can type in text and pretty
>much as quickly as you type it hides all the items that don’t contain
>the text. If you type two pieces of text then lines have to have both
>pieces, so it’s an AND search, which is nice. But, it doesn’t seem to
>have any sort of controls available, no OR, no NOT, no quoted phrases.
I’ve updated the documentation on this. Checkout:
http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/854
In a nutshell, you can do logical AND and OR:
Some examples:
format : shows all items that contains that string anywhere in the text.
format*: shows all items that start with “format”.
*format?ing: shows all items that have the string “format?ing” where ? can be any character.
format the item: shows all item that have those 3 words in the text.
*format* form*: shows all items that have the word “format” somewhere or that starts with “form”.
You can also do NOT using the column specific filters (click the “Exclude” checkbox at the top of the column filter).
yosemite wrote:
>2. Flatten the list. Can I quickly flatten a list and unflatten it?
There are a couple of ways. You can turn hierarchy off, turn context parents off and (recommended) do Hoist of selected items.
yosemite wrote:
>3. Hierarchy itself. Trying to figure out #2 I fell down a rabbit hole about hierarchy.
IQ has various display options. It all depends on how the information in structured and what you want to get out. Believe me, all display modes are useful.
This page shows practical examples:
http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/261
yosemite wrote:
>4. Search. I’ve tried using the “Omnibox” and some of the other search methods and I can’t get the hang of ANY of them. Only the filter-as-you-type I mentioned above, and the column filter dropdowns make any sense to me.
The Omnibox can search for favorite items, grids, commands and items. Just enter part of the item text and hit enter. You’ll get to a tab showing a live list of items matching your criteria. This search tab has full of options and supports AND OR, quoted string, etc. It is really powerful.
yosemite wrote:
>5. Undo. Sometimes you can’t undo what you just did? I don’t
>understand. Help doesn’t seem to explain it.
Correct. Undo works for the last edit, most of the time…
yosemite wrote:
>6. Expand and collapse all. There doesn’t seem to be a shortcut
As Jim pointed out, Crrl+1 .. Ctrl+9 expands all items to the corresponding level
HTH !
Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer
http://www.infoqube.biz
Forum: http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=tracker