Moving information

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Posted by Randall Shinn
Nov 27, 2007 at 01:51 PM

Recent discussions about possibly shifting operating systems (for any reason whatsoever) raises a perennial issue. After spending years putting information into one format or one software program, how much effort will it take to move it elsewhere?

Remember floppy disks, and zip drives? Remember DOS? Remember programs like GrandView and Ecco that were so stellar in certain respects that some people still use them, despite the fact that their development ceased years ago? Change is inevitable when technology, operating systems, and software development are involved. And as users, some change is forced upon us when old technology or software is no longer supported by newer products.

Thinking about this has me really thinking hard about the export capabilities of some of the software programs that I use. Is the format cross platform? Can it be exported to something that is? Can database information be exported with most of its structure intact? How easily can the information in this program be exchanged with another program? In the long run, such questions are crucial. If transitions from one technology or software program to another prove too tedious, information may get left behind.

Randall

Posted by Ike Washington
Nov 27, 2007 at 05:14 PM

GTD Wannabe wrote a good post on this last year:
Can You Commit to One Information Application? Should You?
http://gtdwannabe.com/2006/10/can-you-commit-to-one-information-application-should-you/

Her conclusion: think carefully before you commit; accept that you probably will jump one day. Good advice in a variety of situations.

My 2 cents (tuppence, really): make sure before hoovering your life into a new PIM that you can export out again to a text or html file (pdf, maybe, maybe not for me) - and without too much trouble (however you define “trouble”).

I was okay with Evernote for seven, eight months. Used it everyday for research and ad hoc notes. Then something in the database snapped. It wasn’t a great problem: I exported the data in a couple of clicks to an html file. Downloaded the Zoot 32 beta http://www.zootsoftware.com/Downloads/Program/Download Beta.htm , spent the evening setting it up so that it pretty much filled Evernote’s place. And I haven’t looked back. I’m very happy with Zoot. Actually, far happier than with Evernote. And I can access my old Evernote data via DT Search.

Ike

Posted by Graham Smith
Nov 27, 2007 at 06:02 PM

Randall,

I have been going through a similar issue and still working through it, so what I say now may change but for many things I am now using plain text or ISO standard formats (PDF and ODF), plus cross platform apps (linux,OSx and Windows).

Emacs has become my standard writing tool/data snippet management/PIM , and I just sync the files between computers (all of which run Emacs). But Thinking Rock looks like an interesting multiplatform GTD task manager.

Main document production is with Lyx which again runs on all three platforms. Presentations are now done as PDFs rather than PowerPoints. OpenOffice fills many gaps, but not used that often. I already used R and Stata for statistics which both run on all three platforms. I’m using Firefox with scrapbook for web snippets and zotero and jabref for references which are all cross platform (but there is an issue sharing Zotero files at the moment). Email is thunderbird and the mail files are on the server, so I can read them with Thunderbird regardless of which OS I am running.

I still use MSWord a lot because I collaborate with people who use Word, and I can’t find an affordable cross platform GIS solution (so that is still all Windows, but if I had the money TNTMips is a superb GIS ),plus my sound analysis software is all Windows only

And a couple of stats programs I use (Genstat and Brodgar are Windows only). Main photo editing tools (LightRoom and Photomechanic) are windows/mac only but the Bibble raw converter that I sometimes use is Mac/Linux/Windows, and the Gimp seems to be becoming a realistic multiplatform alternative to Photoshop.

I have discovered a couple of things in my multiplatform approach 1. there are some incredibly good programs out there that I would never have discovered if I had’t started this quest, and, 2.Some aspects are annoying so you find some programs that are multiplatform, some that are Linux and Windows only, some that are Linux and Mac and some that are Windows and Mac, rather than all three, plus sometimes the spec varies between platform, or the version for one platform is several versions behind the one available for the main platform.

Sorry the detail in this, but the cross platform quest is an interesting one, should you accept the challenge :-)

Graham

Posted by Chris Thompson
Nov 27, 2007 at 08:05 PM

Printing to PDF tends to be my method of making data app-independent. You’d think XML would be a great interchange format for outliners, but once you start using columns, there are so many differences between how the column data is represented on export and how applications expect it on import that it’s not the panacea it was promised to be.

I even store my internet bookmarks in PDF format, i.e. print the webpage to PDF then attach the URL as PDF metadata. That gives me full text searchability of bookmarks and a format that almost every application that works with files understands.

Posted by David Dunham
Nov 27, 2007 at 11:46 PM

Chris Thompson wrote:

>You’d think XML
>would be a great interchange format for outliners, but once you start using columns,
>there are so many differences between how the column data is represented on export and
>how applications expect it on import that it’s not the panacea it was promised to be.

It’s worse than that. OPML is XML-based, but the original spec doesn’t even allow for saving styled text. (I believe this is addressed in version 2 of the spec.)

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