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Mourning the passing of Pocketthinker
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Posted by Derek Cornish
Dec 13, 2007 at 12:14 AM
As Bob Mackreth mentioned, http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/2989 , Pocketthinker is shutting up shop - presumably owing to lack of customers. I also notice that its forum has disappeared, probably for good.
As one of a handful of Windows outliners, it always seemed to me to be very much underrated, and am sorry to see it go (and glad to have registered it). While Outlook linking may have had teething troubles, the outliner itself provided many of the necessary basic features (although not cloning or hoisting). As a single-pane outliner I found it about as easy to work in as NoteMap or Inspiration and ridiculously underpriced. Its importing and exporting functions - especially exporting to Word - were also pretty good. I thought it had a lot of potential; but maybe battling with Outlook integration, Activ-sync problems, and developing a ppc program as well a desktop one - all at the same time - was just too much to handle.
One more reason to think seriously about moving to a Mac, perhaps. The huge Windows user-base doesn’t appear easily converted into a viable single-pane outliner market.
Derek
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Dec 13, 2007 at 02:54 AM
I actually chatted with the author. Business was so and so, but more important, he had no more interest in selling it (he has a demanding full-time job and no PDA anymore).
I offered to continue selling it and/or licencing the code but no news from him since that offer.
The main reason of my interest is that SQLNotes, which I develop, is a windows 1-pane outliner (based on the Ecco Pro concept) with rich text and columns and having a PocketPC version would be great. It uses OPML format which SQLNotes could easily generate.
I’m hoping he’ll re-consider my offer.
Pierre Paul Landry
http://www.sqlnotes.net
Posted by Derek Cornish
Dec 13, 2007 at 04:36 AM
That’s very interesting, Pierre, and explains a lot. I hope he doesn’t give up on further development entirely, though.
It looks as though the ppc version would be great for your purposes. For myself, I was hoping PT might eventually develop into a single-pane desktop outliner to rival Grandview in terms of features. I wasn’t so interested in the ppc, Outlook integration, or pim-like features when I bought it - although I know that such a combination (i.e. your SQLNotes) is a very attractive proposition to a lot of users, especially Ecco ones.
Derek
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Dec 13, 2007 at 05:20 AM
It was pretty clear from his e-mails, that he had no interest in working on/selling it anymore.
As to a Grandview replacement, what features are missing in the current version of SQLNotes?
Derek Cornish wrote:
>That’s very interesting, Pierre, and explains a lot. I hope he doesn’t give up on
>further development entirely, though.
>
>It looks as though the ppc version would be great for your purposes. For myself, I was hoping PT might eventually develop into a single-pane desktop outliner to rival Grandview in terms of features. I wasn’t so interested in the ppc, Outlook integration, or pim-like features when I bought it - although I know that such a combination (i.e. your SQLNotes) is a very attractive proposition to a lot of users, especially Ecco ones.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 13, 2007 at 02:56 PM
PPL wrote:
>As to a Grandview replacement, what features are missing in the current
>version of SQLNotes?
I can’t speak exactly to this question as I’m not all that familiar with SQLNotes (I have installed it and played around a little, but have not fully explored its features). However, I will try to answer your question based on my impressions.
As a single-pane outliner, Grandview was unique in my experience. Each heading (note or item, whatever you wish to call it) could have a full wordprocessing document associated with it. Here is how it worked: Create your heading, press the F5 key (I think that was the key) and you switch to a wordprocessing window in which you could write as much text as you wanted. This was a fully functional wordprocessor (lacking some of today’s whistles and bells, such as tables). Once you were done, hit the F5 key again and return to the outline. Okay that’s not so different than the way some of the two-pane outliners work. But here’s the big difference: Now you can toggle the view so that you can see your outline with just the headers or the entire associated documents in the same pane. I found this very powerful, because good writing involves context. In Grandview you can see the whole project as if it were one long wordprocessing document, or you could view only its outline, or you could focus specifically on one section of the text. This ability to take in the many aspects of your project is the perfect writing environment, in my opinion. I have yet to find that functionality in any other outliner.
Steve Z.