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Posted by Paul Korm
Mar 4, 2015 at 02:43 PM
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!
Posted by Ken
Mar 4, 2015 at 04:08 PM
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
Posted by Marbux
Mar 4, 2015 at 05:44 PM
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
Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 5, 2015 at 10:05 AM
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!
Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 5, 2015 at 10:17 AM
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