True that - in the sense of how to structure One Note so it can function as a DB.

BTW any info on Morris's writing study habits etc? I am always interested in how 19th century & early 20th century writers wrote before onslaught of subsequent technology. :)


WSP wrote:

Daly, you and I seem to be having a separate conversation from the rest
of the folks on this thread! I'll be happy to give a screenshot at some
point in the future, but right now I'm in the midst of making this
rather traumatic transition from Evernote to OneNote, and my notes will
look messy until I get this all sorted out.

Bill

yosemite wrote:

Maybe a separate topic about Clibu is in order...

That would be good idea.

I loaded the sample and was quickly mystifed when simple scrolling up
and down resulted in slowdowns and pauses. After scrolling all the way
down, then scrolling back up slowed down again. Yuck. Equally
unacceptable was when I clicked something that narrowed the results,
then when I unclicked it back to "all", it apparently had to reload
everything.

These kinds of user experiences are why I don't use web apps much. Most
of the things I do in desktop apps happen instantly and that's the way I
like it.

I can't see the scrolling issue you mention and I can't see how it is possible, unless you are starting to scroll before all the articles in the query have been displayed, in which case it will definitely be a bit jerky.

There is no way Web apps (with remote data) can match the performance of Desktop apps, simply because instead of loading data from your local hard disk, it is all being transferred across the Internet.

I am located in Australia and the Server running Clibu is in the US. When I click 'All Articles' in the Sample Knowledge Base it takes approx 5 seconds for all articles to be displayed. I'm located out of town and have a not so speedy ADSL2 connection. Considering that most of these articles have images, which hog bandwidth, I personally feel this is more than satisfactory. Of course you may not think so, and that's fine.

When I run the same Sample Knowledge Base and query with Clibu running on my local PC it takes < 2 seconds for all articles to be displayed.

I'm more than happy to wait these extra few seconds to gain the benefit of being able to access my content from any PC anywhere, not having to install any software etc. If that's not a need you have then sticking with Desktop apps (or Clibu running locally) is definitely the way to go.

MadaboutDana wrote:

You've not mentioned the fact that Clibu is also language-friendly
(which Surfulator definitely wasn't!).

Yes, good point. Another plus for Web apps.

But the pervasive Cloud model has, I'm afraid, caused me to back away.
Like others here, I like to have total access to/control of my data
offline. Ideally through trusted, familiar clients. Hence my preference
for desktop apps, rather than the many (excellent, beautifully designed,
really very clever – but totally web-oriented) apps that are
proliferating out there.

You are definitely not alone. I think there is likely to be a generation divide here, but younger generations are happy to and want (most) of the data in the cloud, and us older folks aren't very comfortable for various reasons. I was definitely in the latter category, but am no longer. The level of freedom I now have using Web Apps easily outweighs any concerns I used to have over control of data.

You may have missed my reply to Dr.Andus. To cater for folks who want tight control I'm planning several Clibu variations.

a) The ability to have a complete local install of Clibu on your PC. This will include the database, server etc. With an option to still access it from any PC anywhere, if you want. This may still run in a Browser or be a Packaged App. So in essence you are back to having a Desktop app + the various benefits Clibu offers, such as real time updates, KB sharing & collaboration etc.

b) Similar to (a) except Clibu would be installed on a Server you control and own. In other words your own private Cloud.

c) Clibu as it is now, but with Offline capabilities. This would give you a local database that would be used when there was no Internet connection which would then synchronize with the real Clibu server, next time you were online. Unfortunately the world of Browser based databases is far from ideal, which constrains what we are able to do in this scenario. But it will no doubt continue to improve.

I hope these options satisfy your needs.

- Neville

Dr Andus wrote:

Neville Franks wrote:
>>> 1) Being able to work off-line;
>That is planned using the Browser App.
>>> 2) having a complete local back-up of the data, in case failure in
>the cloud;
>a) Offline use will do this.

When you say, browser app, do you mean a Chrome app, or any browser being able to access the local data?

I'm not sure yet, but can say I'm definitely interesting at looking closely at Chrome Apps.

If it's going to be browser-based only access to the local data, isn't there a danger that if browsers get a radical update one day but Clibu
doesn't get updated (for whatever personal, legal, financial etc. reason that a web-based service could get abandoned), then accessing the data
could become a problem?

I don't see this as an issue. As long as Clibu uses Web standards and capabilities (which it does) then such standards have to continue to be supported. In fact I'd argue that a Web app has far greater longevity than a Desktop app because you are not dealing with a range of differing operating systems and hardware.

Also please see my reply to MadaboutDana about the various Clibu packages I'd like to implement.

Hi Daly,
Thanks for the reply. Sorry to hear you also feel Clibu is too slow. I guess this will be a common issue raised by folks who make heavy use of Desktop apps.

I'm pretty sure you'll find Clibu's hierarchical tags dispense with the EN issue and can meet your needs for folders and tags. In my use I have not felt any need to differentiate between the two.

Neville

Hey Neville, thanks for the reply.

Re speed issue - I may be more sensitive to it because the software is in beta.

I'd clip something, and then want to be sure it was added so I waited for it to be added.

If the software was further along and I *knew* it was adding items from experience I probably would just keep on clipping or doing whatever, and would not have been so sensitive to the speed issue. In other words, our awareness of speed at this point may be an artifact of working with beta at this stage, assuming hat the data is moving along the system at the speed it should be.

I will wait on the tags, folder issue.

My problem now is I don't have time to wait if I am going to change from EN, in part of my financial pressures. And if I stay with EN my anxiety about the competence of its future development, based - ironically - on its current browser product will only increase.

When I get a chance at some point I will try working with multiple instances of Clibu open.

And yes, please shrink the distances between items in the article list because it does take up too much screen space and will slow down scrolling through the article list.

Thanks.

Cheers,

Daly



Neville Franks wrote:

Hi Daly,
Thanks for the reply. Sorry to hear you also feel Clibu is too slow. I
guess this will be a common issue raised by folks who make heavy use of
Desktop apps.

I'm pretty sure you'll find Clibu's hierarchical tags dispense with the
EN issue and can meet your needs for folders and tags. In my use I have
not felt any need to differentiate between the two.

Neville

Well, dang! Those multiple options for Clibu sound highly desirable! I'd love to be able to run an in-house server, for example; very convenient.

Go for it, Neville!

Daly de Gagne wrote:

BTW any info on Morris's writing study habits etc? I am always
interested in how 19th century & early 20th century writers wrote before
onslaught of subsequent technology. :)

Daly, I have always been interested mainly in Morris's activities as a printer rather than in his purely literary work, but I have spent quite a bit of time going through his papers at the British Library and elsewhere. Morris was a bundle of energy and accomplished a great deal in his life, but I sense that he was also extremely messy and disorganized. Fortunately, in his later years he had Sydney Cockerell working for him as a secretary, and Cockerell was meticulous beyond belief. Cockerell's usual technique was to bind miscellaneous documents together in notebooks and then write a careful table of contents on a flyleaf in his small, precise handwriting.

By the way, a small update: it appears that OneNote can't really handle a database of 2,000 items. It has been collapsing repeatedly the past few days. So for the catalogue of Morris's library I am now thinking of turning once again to MyInfo, which doesn't have the flashy features of Evernote and OneNote but is wonderfully stable.

Bill

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Hey Neville, thanks for the reply.

Re speed issue - I may be more sensitive to it because the software is in beta.

I'd clip something, and then want to be sure it was added so I waited for it to be added.

The Web Clipper uses the same real time capabilities as Clibu to communicate with the server and is capable of communicating with any instances of Clibu you may have open in the Browser. If there is any problem with a Clip you will be notified promptly, not that there should be.

You will also see a notification of new Clips & new Articles from other Users on the top menu bar in the Browser, when you have Clibu open.

Even though Clibu is in Beta it's core functionality has been in use for quite a while now and is robust.

WSP wrote:

By the way, a small update: it appears that OneNote can't really handle
a database of 2,000 items. It has been collapsing repeatedly the past
few days.

Good to know, I've been wondering about how scalable OneNote really was. It would be really useful if there was a standard way of stress-testing all the various notes database programmes, to see how they compare re their max. load capacity and performance...

Hm, that is interesting. I have a lot of stuff in my OneNote databases; not sure if that's up to 2000 items or not, but I'd have thought so. I must go and do some testing.

I'm using: OneNote for Mac, iOS

I KNOW I have more than 2000 items in my main DEVONthink 'General Research' database. No signs of instability there.

MadaboutDana wrote:

I KNOW I have more than 2000 items in my main DEVONthink 'General
Research' database. No signs of instability there.

A you're probably aware, M.A.D. - but other readers may not be - DevonThink "makes a big thing" of its capacity to devour multitudes of documents and not choke, with some users reporting a "library" of tens of millions of words. That is probably its single most attractive selling-point.

For me, however, the idea of a special "container" for documents, separate from although within the normal folder-hierarchy - as DevonThink has - is becoming increasingly outdated. Cloud repositories, the widespread desire to view documents on tablets and 'phones as well as on the desktop, and tagging within the main folder system are some of the trends that are making it so, at least on the Mac. Because DevonThink can index documents as an alternative to importing them into its container, the software itself is not in danger of becoming obsolete. But some of its competitors may be.

OneNote versus Evernote: an assessment - http://lifehacker.com/lifehacker-faceoff-onenote-vs-evernote-1550697885

Incidentally, I just installed new Evernote version on my Android tablet.

This new version will make it slower to use, and because spacing between tags has increased srolling through tags will be even more of an ordeal.

Fortunately the new Android version isn't as much a piece of dumbed down fluff as the new browser verion - but inasmuch as it may reflect a future direction for Evernote design it doesn't increase my confidence in EN.

Daly



Hugh wrote:

OneNote versus Evernote: an assessment -
http://lifehacker.com/lifehacker-faceoff-onenote-vs-evernote-1550697885

I think my mistake may have been placing all 2000 items in one section. When I added the last batch of new material, my two computers were no longer able to sync with each other. Obviously I need to do some more experiments -- perhaps by dividing up the notes among several sections.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Incidentally, I just installed new Evernote version on my Android
tablet.

This new version will make it slower to use, and because spacing between
tags has increased srolling through tags will be even more of an ordeal.

Fortunately the new Android version isn't as much a piece of dumbed down
fluff as the new browser verion - but inasmuch as it may reflect a
future direction for Evernote design it doesn't increase my confidence
in EN.

Daly

Daly, I see that the new version of Evernote for Mac, introduced just a few days ago, copies the stripped-down visual elements of the Web version. I suspect (and fear) that's coming to the Windows version soon as well.

Bill

Ah, yes, I don't think OneNote will like 2000 entries in a single section! But you can use sections as the equivalent of tags (especially if you use multi-sections, or whatever they call 'em).

It does appear that synchronisation is OneNote's Achilles heel. Having said which, it's getting better all the time (I've noticed a significant improvement in the latest version for MacOS; big increase in speed, much less fuss and bother, no mysterious freezes).

I don't understand EN's approach, and I find it most interesting EN is ignoring this discussion and tweets I have made.

A lot of EN's work on analog/digital inter-connectivity, while not of great current interest to me, is valuable. For me a strong focus on the analog is important because it is another way of thinking and working and one which is to my mind finding support from some of the pschoneuro imaging studies.

But interconnectivity is important. I applaud EN for it, but am concerned by the superficiality of its merchandising efforts, especially with partners like Moleskine who have not been the epitome of honesty (the notebook Hemmingway used), quality (cf Leuchtturm), or economy.

The great EN contradiction has always been its information management feature set. It is very good for some things - that's why I have 10,000 items in it. But EN's plethora of engineers and fan boys on the forums don't seem to realize the limitations in managing info.

And now the graphic design folks - and I'd argue that thanks to Windows 8, tablets (which I love) smart phones, etc design is at an all-time worst for the net in recent times - seem to be intent on trivializing EN and making EN harder to use.

Seems that info management to EN and life hacking sites and people who make a killing writing books on how to work around EN flaws is all about keeping track of day-to-day business info.

So I will try to learn how to get by with EN's recent Android app, and hope that EN designers don't wreck the Windows version.

Occurred to me EN is the "getting by software" though not always in a good way.

Here endeth the rant.

Daly

WSP wrote:

Daly de Gagne wrote:
Incidentally, I just installed new Evernote version on my Android
>tablet.
>
>This new version will make it slower to use, and because spacing
between
>tags has increased srolling through tags will be even more of an
ordeal.
>
>Fortunately the new Android version isn't as much a piece of dumbed
down
>fluff as the new browser verion - but inasmuch as it may reflect a
>future direction for Evernote design it doesn't increase my confidence
>in EN.
>
>Daly
>

Daly, I see that the new version of Evernote for Mac, introduced just a
few days ago, copies the stripped-down visual elements of the Web
version. I suspect (and fear) that's coming to the Windows version soon
as well.

Bill

I kind of see what you're saying, Hugh, but in fact, I think folder-based info management is going to become more rather than less popular.

For example: I use Documents on iPad to view my Dropbox documents. Documents indexes all documents, so acts as a fairly powerful info repository. Similarly, increasingly I use EagleFiler on the Mac to manage files, because it's more precise than Spotlight. At the same time, I can use EagleFiler to create libraries in Dropbox which I then synchronise with Documents on the iPad. Both sets are indexed in different ways. A bit weird, perhaps, but very convenient. Neither of these different approaches affects the actual files themselves; they remain accessible from any device. So this approach is very flexible, in a way that a single app, no matter how cross-platform, usually isn't.

Having said that, I think we're due to see a huge development in efficient, cross-platform file management in the near future, incorporating stuff like full-search indices, tagging, virtual links/cloning etc. Clearly this isn't a straightforward proposition (viz. the failure of the Windows File System a few years' back; that would have been based on SQL Server, but was pulled by Microsoft just before it was released). Apple and Unix have other options, from ZFS upwards, but so far nobody (to my knowledge) has pulled together something that will work across all platforms. But file management services like Google, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box Net and so on may start producing their own clients that offer info management services as a kind of value-added extra. I'm hoping that will be the case! At which point, yes, perhaps apps like EagleFiler/DEVONthink will suffer. On the other hand, it's a great incentive for them to offer even more value-added features of their own (e.g. DEVONthink's concordance feature, but on steroids)!

For me, however, the idea of a special "container" for documents,
separate from although within the normal folder-hierarchy - as
DevonThink has - is becoming increasingly outdated. Cloud repositories,
the widespread desire to view documents on tablets and 'phones as well
as on the desktop, and tagging within the main folder system are some of
the trends that are making it so, at least on the Mac. Because
DevonThink can index documents as an alternative to importing them into
its container, the software itself is not in danger of becoming
obsolete. But some of its competitors may be.

Bill, I definitely want to learn more about Morriss out of personal interest.


I didn't realize he was disorganized and messy. Sounds frighteningly like myself. Part of my interest is learning how such folk prevailed in days gone by, before the technology. Sometimes I think a problem some of us have today is obsessing over how to use the technology and figuring out which is the best way.

As you note, the answer for Morriss was in part getting a good assistant.

I'm sorry to hear about OneNote limitation you're up against.

MyInfo does offer columns, idea for defining your own metadata, and having comments.

It also offers hoisting, which is handy.

Daly
WSP wrote:

Daly de Gagne wrote:
>
>BTW any info on Morris's writing study habits etc? I am always
>interested in how 19th century & early 20th century writers wrote
before
>onslaught of subsequent technology. :)
>
>
Daly, I have always been interested mainly in Morris's activities as a
printer rather than in his purely literary work, but I have spent quite
a bit of time going through his papers at the British Library and
elsewhere. Morris was a bundle of energy and accomplished a great deal
in his life, but I sense that he was also extremely messy and
disorganized. Fortunately, in his later years he had Sydney Cockerell
working for him as a secretary, and Cockerell was meticulous beyond
belief. Cockerell's usual technique was to bind miscellaneous documents
together in notebooks and then write a careful table of contents on a
flyleaf in his small, precise handwriting.

By the way, a small update: it appears that OneNote can't really handle
a database of 2,000 items. It has been collapsing repeatedly the past
few days. So for the catalogue of Morris's library I am now thinking of
turning once again to MyInfo, which doesn't have the flashy features of
Evernote and OneNote but is wonderfully stable.

Bill

So this was a super long thread that started as a question about Nimbus Notes and then barely mentioned the app again. Love it.

However, I am wondering if anyone is using Nimbus Notes and what they think about it. Evernote stopped working on my MacBook. While I suspect I could get it running again just by re-installing it, I am taking this as an opportunity to evaluate alternatives. Nimbus Notes appears to be a very viable option. Its interface is a lot cleaner and more in line with tradition three-pane note managers. It has clients for Windows and iOS. The web app was just upgraded and improved. And the annual subscription is a little less than Evernote. So, is there any downside that anyone has uncovered?

Thoughts?

Thank you.

Steve Z.

I liked Nimbus notes for reasons you stated, Steve.

My problem came when trying to import my Evernotes all at once. That over powered Nimbus and I couldn't org the notes.

I think I discussed this at the beginning of this thread.

Occurs to me now I could uninstall Nimbus, reinstall, and modestly import fr EN a couple of a hundred notes at a time.

Potentially I much prefer Nimbus to EN as both a holder of info, and an info manager.

I am out of station but when I am back home later this week will look at Nimbus along lines I suggested above.
Only downside other than my importing issue I could foresee is whether Nimbus has staying power, will continue to be developed.

Daly

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

So this was a super long thread that started as a question about Nimbus
Notes and then barely mentioned the app again. Love it.

However, I am wondering if anyone is using Nimbus Notes and what they
think about it. Evernote stopped working on my MacBook. While I suspect
I could get it running again just by re-installing it, I am taking this
as an opportunity to evaluate alternatives. Nimbus Notes appears to be a
very viable option. Its interface is a lot cleaner and more in line with
tradition three-pane note managers. It has clients for Windows and iOS.
The web app was just upgraded and improved. And the annual subscription
is a little less than Evernote. So, is there any downside that anyone
has uncovered?

Thoughts?

Thank you.

Steve Z.