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Plain text solutions for data organisation
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Posted by criss
Feb 11, 2008 at 04:18 PM
I use since over a year now EmEditor Professional with Outliner Plugin.
I never regretted my move to text, no CRIMPing since a year.
You can define markers for the outlining levels easily yourself,
f.e. I use for 3 levels “__” “___” “____” at the beginning of a paragraph.
Posted by quant
Feb 11, 2008 at 05:37 PM
JohnK wrote:
>Lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m “over-engineered” when it comes to
>organising my data. I use OneNote and Ultra Recall. Both good applications.
>
>But in
>reality…most of the data I want to keep track of is plain text. Probably 95 per cent of
>it. And good as those two applications are, they are slow in use compared to working
>with a good text editor.
Can you be more specific what do you find slow in UR? You must be really fast typing/thinking ... I really cannot imagine how could UR slow me down.
Plus, you can easily create empty txt file (or create many templated txt files) and put to Template directory. Then, you can have your whole UR file with plain txt items which would export as single txt file/per item exactly like you want
And you could still use it for those 5% rich text items, everything under one roof ...
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Feb 11, 2008 at 05:43 PM
Stephen, I don’t recall Powerr Outlines and Insight being discussed here before, and am familiar with neither of them.
How do they compare with the two-pane outliners we normally talk about. Insight seems pricey, but with a lot of features.
Daly
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I second the suggestion of checking out Treepad Lite.
>
>Also, take a look at
>PowerOutlines: http://www.dataomega.com/PowerOutlines/index.htm
>
>I think it
>matches most of your criteria, although I’m not sure about how it stores its files. If
>you need something more powerful, PowerOutlines big brother, Insight, might be
>worth a look.
>
>Steve Z.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Feb 11, 2008 at 06:09 PM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Stephen, I don’t recall Powerr Outlines and Insight being discussed here before, and
>am familiar with neither of them.
>
>How do they compare with the two-pane outliners we
>normally talk about. Insight seems pricey, but with a lot of
>features.
I think they were discussed briefly awhile back. Stephen Diamond, I believe, has talked about InSight some. In a moment of CRIMPtation, I broke down and bought a copy of PowerOutlines… partly because I like plain text for many purposes, and PO is more powerful than Treepad Lite. Unfortunately, the license allows you to install on just one computer, and I chose my home computer… so I have yet to actually put it through its paces, but here are a few observations based on limited use:
There are some interesting functions with both programs for working with plain text. One of these is the ability to build a decent table. Another is selecting text in columns.
The user interface appears rather old-fashioned and clunky. I have not worked with the program enough to determine if this is the case in practice or just appearance. Having said that, I have a soft spot for old-fashioned looking GUIs.
I think if you would like a true plain text outliner, PO would be a reasonable choice.
I agree that the price of InSight is particularly high, especially considering the amount of power you can get for half the price in PowerOutlines Pro. See the comparison chart, here: http://www.dataomega.com/PowerOutlines/images/PO_IS3_Features_Table.htm
This evening I will fire up PO again and see if anything else seems worthy of note.
Steve Z.
Posted by JohnK
Feb 11, 2008 at 06:39 PM
Crikey. I leave my computer for a few hours, and I’m flooded with replies. I’m impressed and grateful.
Thomas—I like Treepad (I have a licence for the Enterprise edition - more over-engineering by me). I would be happy to use Treepad Lite but it uses a single and proprietary database, just like its grown-up relatives. As I said in my first post, I haven’t ruled that out, but I prefer the idea of a separate file per note.
Steve Z—I have never heard of PowerOutlines before. It’s always exciting when you come across something new! But it does seems very expensive for what it does (you would need at least the Pro edition to avail of decent search). And although it’s been going for almost a year, the user group has just 22 members (and that group also covers Insight). I’m getting an uneasy feeling…And single machine licences are a big no-no as far as I am concerned. I have three machines to feed.
Manfred—yes I have a licence for NoteTab too… but while it’s a good text editor, it’s not really designed for the level of organisation I’m looking for.
quant—It’s not that UR is slow for what it does. But I just want something with the reaction time of a good text editor, so that when I use shortcut keys to create a new note (Restore [program]—> New Note—> Paste—> Minimise [program]), it’s all happening at warp speed. Which is does with a good text editor. I’m also keen to simplify my system of preserving data (hence separate plain text files).
So far, I have been playing quite a bit with AM-Notebook (http://aignes.com/notebook.htm) and the more I play, the more I like it. Early days, but it’s not bad at all. One or two keyboard shortcuts missing, but I’ve built those with AutoHotkey. Other than that, no big holes so far.