Yes, it's true that the jump of tech writing on IBM Selectric to WordStar was quantum level. It's also true that finding a similar jump in productivity is tougher - hence all of our diddling about with 18 notes programs, 42 outliners, and 6 mindmappers. We REMEMBER that jump, and hope for another one. But I think that's also what's behind the trend of new, more minimalist applications. We're kind of inching our way back to the Unix philosophy of a few small, fast tools that link up to a workflow. It takes a lot more thought to define your own path, with so many new tools to choose from. But the payoff, I hope, is an increasingly frictionless environment. Until the next upgrade, damn them.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Anyway, my point is that when I got my first IBM PC with Wordstar as my
word processor, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Steve,

As usual, you've hit the nail on the head... But it isn't just for word processors. Back in the 80s, as a volunteer for Amnesty International, I used to write the addresses for our network (of a few hundred) by hand or, at best, photocopying labels. A few years later in Greenpeace, with the help of Paradox database (for DOS), we streamlined the management of tens of thousands of supporters. There are many other examples of such information management 'leveraging'.

In my view, all
the refinements to computers and software in total since then amount to
a smaller upgrade in ability than that one giant leap from typewriter to
computer, in terms of writing.

I believe there has been another quantum leap and this has had to do with collaboration; from Track Changes in Word* to joint list management in Google Apps, we can (almost seamelessly) produce totals greater than the sum of their parts. There is a price of course, and that is that our joint tools can usually be only a bit higher than the common denominator...

And ,of course, there is the 'liberation' from the cubicle, by being able to work from multiple locations--which itself comes at a price.

I see another leap currently underway: visualising (joint) workflow. I introduced kanbantool.com to my team of editors and they took on it within less than an hour. It has been essential in streamlining our work. In theory we could do the same with an issue tracker, but I find their non-visual approach repellent and non-conducive to action.

As one who's tried a multitude of tools, I have the curse of dissatisfaction; none is perfect of course, and it's easy to notice missing features because I've seen them elsewhere... But gradually, the tools that really help get work done will be bubblesorted to the surface. I made a reasonable budget for a new project in minimal time using MindView; if I had worked with Excel it would have been particularly error prone--but of course I had to export to Excel at the end.

The tools I choose will usually represent a good compromise between functionality and pleasure. As a business (half)owner and largely responsible for ICT, I have the luxury of not having my tools imposed in me--and the responsibility to introduce tools that others will be able to integrate in their workflow without too much fuss.


*By the way, 2013 is probably the first Word version I feel comfortable with; I find the interface much cleaner and more discrete, the changing Ribbon no longer disturbs my textual focus (I keep it minimised nevertheless) and Track Changes

(to finish the last sentence)

...and Track Changes' Simple Markup great for long texts.

Thank you for the Mindscope mention- it's awesome!!

It's like Scapple and Workflowy had a baby, and it's right up my alley. I've tried a lot of mindmapping/visual note-taking software, until now my preference was still a notepad and sharp #2 pencil. But this app is simple and elegant, and the benefit of nesting is really big for me.

As simple as the app is, I only want 2 additions- 1. ability to tag items for an easily accessible 'hot list', and 2. import OPML.


jaslar wrote:

NEW software that I have found fun to use:

- Mindscope. So cool to drag around text in a way that is NOT
constrained to mind map rules, with "nesting" to give it added oomph.
- Moo.do. Many of the joys of Workflowy, but with a boost of calendar
and contact hooks.

Both of these gave me that frisson of being immediately useful, of
solving a problem I hadn't realized I had.

The other area that desperately needs more inventive/imaginative solutions is comparative document work. Gingko is one of the most impressive concepts I've yet seen in this respect, but it's time for apps of this kind to appear at desktop/tablet level. As a translator, the ability to work with multiple documents alongside each other is, of course, critical, but even when I'm just writing stuff, it's useful to have multiple docs open and easily scrollable/searchable alongside each other.

Funnily enough, it's what InfoRecall used to do best. But more modern, imaginative solutions are required now, based on what you might call a relational concept - documents that can be paired, tagged, placed in different windows, pinned in place, searched in place, etc.

Yes, you could argue that's what the actual desktop is for! And that's a fair point. But it doesn't go far enough when you also want to draw comparisons between documents, or align similar/identical bits of them. There are some hugely powerful file comparison apps that will do this - but you can't actually work in them.

Having said all that, DEVONthink on the Mac comes pretty close to the above. But feels more and more old-fashioned. Maybe I'll pay the developers a visit (mwahaha!).

Yeah, go on, call me Mr. Picky...

I like Mr. Picky's, er, Bill's ideas. Not sure how that gets translated into an actual tool -- or maybe it's a workflow involving multiple tools. I am constantly juggling 3 or four sources at a time for writing new drafts or revising old drafts. I work mainly on a 13" laptop -- which I think is an important factor in Bill's vision since real estate matters a lot to how workable a "comparative document" environment can be. I think Bill is suggesting something more than comparing documents in Word, or more than tools such as Beyond Compare or Document Compare. I use DEVONthink all day long, but I would have never thought of it as a "comparative document" tool in any respect.

Would love to hear more of the vision!

On a similar note, there really is no program that easily allows multiple parties to mark up lengthy documents with comments and suggested changes, and that allows all of the parties to track all of these comments and changes through multiple iterations. Google Wave seemed to further some of this technology, and I see bits and pieces in many web-based collaborative programs like Quip, but for serious work involving large documents and multiple parties (representing multiple interests), there is a lack of options. And this is a great case of where email often fails, especially when the number of parties involved increases from a few to upwards of 10. I could go on further, but it would just frustrate me more as I am involved in a number of these negotiations at the moment, and my inbox is suffering, but not as much as my brain.

--Ken

My software preferences have changed a lot after two events: [i] my retirement from legal practice; and [ii] the more recent Edward Snowden disclosures about the peeping Toms at NSA.

When I was practicing law, WordPerfect was the center of my computing universe because the only other choice was Word (the profession-specific apps were virtually all built on those two word processor's APIs) and productivity is so much higher with WordPerfect.

Since retiring, Windows moved onto VMs and pretty much just gets used to run WordPerfect and Isys Desktop Search plus Ultra-defrag (I rank Isys as the greatest productivity enhancer since WordStar. The Isys owner, Ian, recently retired and sold to Lexmark, with the software renamed and now available from Perceptive Software, a Lexmark subsidiary).

Cross-platform or multi-platform software is pretty much a basic requirement for me now, other than those two. And the Snowden disclosures eliminated cloud apps that don't feature end-to-end encryption. So I'm down to Copy for file sync (20 GB free) and Mega for off-site backups (50 GB free).

I now spend most of my days switching between the Chrome browser and the NoteCase Pro outliner, mostly running them on Linux Mint, although I'm transitioning from Chrome to the Tor Browser to generate more encrypted Net traffic for the NSA and DEA voyeurs to worry about.

I really like NoteCase Pro because: [i] it's extremely powerful; [ii] it's multi-platform; [iii] what it can't do can generally be coded with Lua extensions using some 400 scriptable program commands (I've written somewhere between 450 and 600 extensions so far); [iv] it comes with a wide variety of node properties including custom properties that can be displayed and sorted in columns and be manipulated with Lua scripts; [v] it doesn't tie you to your hierarchical structures, providing a flat in-memory list view of arbitrary groups of nodes; and [vi] it's loaded with other features for overcoming the problem of data that needs to be in multiple categories.

On the latter, that includes hyperlinking, node clones (nodes with transcluded content of other nodes editable in either the clone or the original), node tags (double-click on a tag to list only the notes sharing that tag), etc. It's also very nice that the developer, Miro Rajcic, is super helpful and that he releases updates about every two months.

What originally brough me to NoteCase Pro is that it can export all or parts of a document to a minimalist HTML with or without an automatically-generated and hyperlinked table of contents. That flavor of the HTML export is compatible with virtually all web editors that accept raw HTML input or pasting of formatted HTML and with Libre/OpenOffice and MS Word.

I also make fairly heavy use of:

* Geany text editor (multi-platform and extensible with Lua via a plugin)

* VLC (VideoLAN) multimedia player (multiplatform and extensible with Lua)

* Pandoc file format converter (multiplatform and exensible with Lua).

* Calibre ebook manager/viewer (multiplatform)

* Zotero web research assistant (multiplatform).

* Virtual Box virtual machine host (multiplatform).

As you might have guessed, I'm partial to software that is extensible with Lua. I maintain a web page listing and providing short descriptions of such software. https://sites.google.com/site/marbux/home/where-lua-is-used

Ah, I have some cunning ideas for how this could become a tool, but it's a huge undertaking. The whole UX has been revolutionised by iOS in particular, which is how I think one could create such an app, but it involves quite a lot of lateral thinking. Sliding windows, cross-linking windows (a la Gingko) – that would all be part of it, I think. I've produced a number of concepts, but none of them has quite 'hit the spot'. Ironically it's some of the most boring software on the planet that probably shows the way forward (computer-assisted translation [CAT] tools). Alas, most of the major CAT tools are very engineer-driven and haven't worked out just how important the UX is, yet.

As for DEVONthink – it's the ability of the latter to open multiple windows onto the same database I'm referring to, I suppose. It's a very useful (but by no means exclusive) feature, which many information managers don't share (I'm looking at you, OneNote). As I experiment with DEVONthink, I find myself using multiple windows more frequently. On the other hand, the editor is just so ghastly and old-fashioned!

Paul Korm wrote:

I like Mr. Picky's, er, Bill's ideas. Not sure how that gets translated
into an actual tool -- or maybe it's a workflow involving multiple
tools. I am constantly juggling 3 or four sources at a time for writing
new drafts or revising old drafts. I work mainly on a 13" laptop --
which I think is an important factor in Bill's vision since real estate
matters a lot to how workable a "comparative document" environment can
be. I think Bill is suggesting something more than comparing documents
in Word, or more than tools such as Beyond Compare or Document Compare.
I use DEVONthink all day long, but I would have never thought of it as a
"comparative document" tool in any respect.

Would love to hear more of the vision!

A very interesting response from Marbux, I must say. I've always been impressed by Notecase Pro, and can see the attraction for a developer, too. But again, it's trailing a little in terms of UX. Having said which, I shall certainly be taking a look at your words of LUA wisdom!

Cheers,
Bill

Thanks for the tip about The Hit List, Steve. I've been playing with it, and although it's not the most beautiful of the task management apps, it's impressively practical.

And the keyboard shortcuts are a real boon. I may have to CRIMP it!

As you say, an iPad version would be welcome (although they've confirmed they're working on one).

MadaboutDana wrote:

Thanks for the tip about The Hit List, Steve. I've been playing with it,
and although it's not the most beautiful of the task management apps,
it's impressively practical.

And the keyboard shortcuts are a real boon. I may have to CRIMP it!

As you say, an iPad version would be welcome (although they've confirmed
they're working on one).

I like The Hit List too. Somehow its UI is conducive to doodling thoughts, ideas and outlines, whether task-directed or not. (Perhaps its attractions for me are subconsciously reinforced by the fact that I like using real yellow legal pads for my pencil-and-paper efforts as well.)

There was a time when its developer appeared to abandon it for periods of time, and that was a distinct disadvantage, particularly when its rivals were busily updating their Mac offerings and rolling out iOS versions as well. But now that its development is the responsibility of a larger organisation, the threat of that weakness seems to have shrunk.

Hit List users: Is there a method for exporting a list with the notes? I've looked and can't find it, but I am notorious for not seeing what is right under my nose.

Thanks.

Steve Z.

Not built-in, AFAIK. The Hit List has a pretty good AppleScript dictionary and a script to export the items with notes doesn't look difficult. There are few similar scripts that Google knows about that could be modified for this purpose. Exporting doesn't seem to be a major concern on Karelia's forum.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Hit List users: Is there a method for exporting a list with the notes?

BTW, The Hit List supports links in the form "thehitlist:///6A965591076182E0", which can be pasted in to OmniFocus or elsewhere and hook your work in The Hit List to the other app.

You're welcome!

As Hugh said, it has a very nice UI. Basically you get the benefit of the structure of a database or task app, along with the 'free form' flexibility of an outliner or text editor- at least that's how I'd describe what it's like to use it. Editing and organizing tasks is effortless with the WASD key cluster, moving a task in or out of the Today list is as simple as the T key. Plus you basically get multilevel ability ('outlines of outlines' as discussed in the old ATPM series) with the folder/nested folders/list organization.

So now I use it for jotting notes/ideas and general outlining, I find having these types of info and tasks together is useful. I'm not a heavy task management guy though, there are other more fully-featured apps for that.

It was very good that Karelia bought Potion Factory, they've been pretty active so far. They also made the custom sync service free, which works fast and seems reliable (in retrospect I probably would have paid for it, had I know how good it was.)

MadaboutDana wrote:

Thanks for the tip about The Hit List, Steve. I've been playing with it,
and although it's not the most beautiful of the task management apps,
it's impressively practical.

And the keyboard shortcuts are a real boon. I may have to CRIMP it!

As you say, an iPad version would be welcome (although they've confirmed
they're working on one).