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Mourning the passing of Pocketthinker
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Posted by Derek Cornish
Dec 17, 2007 at 07:54 AM
Pierre Paul Landry wrote:
>All can be done in the current
>version except grid lines. I’ll add it tomorrow.
That will be great!
Derek
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Dec 17, 2007 at 10:09 AM
Pierre Paul,
A word of support here for the time you’ve put in porting the Ecco notebook concept (and more) to the powerful SQL infrastructure. Personally, I think the most significant lack of SQL Notes at the moment is that of its marketing which in its modern approach includes the interface friendliness, examples of use, documentation and, of course, a more ‘sexy’ name for your product. But I would like to emphasize the importance of the good infrastructure.
I have seen this with two other products that I strongly endorse, UltraRecall and Surfulater. They both started with few bells and whistles but with a solid infrastructure. Long term development has showed that their creators were able to cater for a multitude of users’ suggestions thanks to that infrastructure. See for example:
http://blog.surfulater.com/2007/11/27/view-surfulater-kbs-in-any-web-browser-wherever-you-are/
I would suggest that you take in user input (plentiful in this forum at least) but also urge that you remain true to your vision, as Franz has noted; i.e. learn to say ‘no’—or at least ‘not yet’. Until version 1.0 at least, and given the flexibility of the product, there is a need for clarity of the purpose(s) served by the program. Perhaps the different screen layouts possible can be used as examples of fulfilling certain needs through different approaches (but not too many).
Keep up the good work,
alx
Posted by Derek Cornish
Dec 17, 2007 at 05:52 PM
Agreed…with the qualification that “good infrastructure” should include as a basic goal the achievement of more than merely minimally useful outlining features. History has shown that unless developers get the basic structure right from the beginning, all they produce is a succession of disappointingly inadequate efforts.
Getting a better single-pane outliner has been the point of the discussion in this thread and is the raison d’etre of the forum itself, whatever additional tasks (better pims, or two-pane outliners) it has taken on over the years. This is about the first time we have captured the attention of a developer prepared at least to study Grandview and attempt to achieve a Windows outliner with its feature-set and ease of use, and with the skills, vision and energy to do so. So I for one don’t intend to let the opportunity slip by :-).
I recognize the anxieties of erstwhile Ecco-users and other pim afficionados that Pierre should not get distracted from what they view as core objectives. But I think he shown himself well able to cope with the ostensibly conflicting demands from this forum, donationcoder.com and all the other forums on which he is active. And as far as I can see he is advancing very capably on all fronts.
Derek
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Dec 18, 2007 at 05:46 AM
Alex wrote:
> more ‘sexy’ name for your product
Do you have suggestions?
How about OutBase, the outlining database/PIM ?
How about Daou, the data outliner/PIM ?
How about IciNotes ?
Posted by David Dunham
Dec 18, 2007 at 06:36 AM
Pierre Paul Landry wrote:
>Alex wrote:
>> more ‘sexy’ name for your product
>
>Do you have suggestions?
The current name is all about the underlying technology. It’s about as important to the user as if my car were an InternalCombustionMobile, or Opal were called CocoaNotes. Does the user see any benefit to you using SQL (SQLite I assume) as your data store? I doubt it. You might think it conveys power or stability, but to me it sounds more like arcane syntax or security risks like SQL injection attacks.