I was just about to test EverNote's usefulness, when I discovered another useful property of 2-pane PIMs. (For outlining, I still prefer 1-pane.)

I was "thumbing through" (browsing) the left pane of a PIM file when I came across an article I had forgotten about...one that was highly relevant to a current interest. Since I had forgotten about the article and was not searching for the topic at the time, I doubt that I would have found it in Evernote.

-c

I agree with your conclusion. It is the same reason that I was not attracted to Zoot until I had to many journal articles to organise on a tree.

May I ask which specific 2-pane PIM you were working on? In my experience, not all are equally good at this kind of browsing approach.

alx

What are the qualities that help facilitate browsing? Certainly easy navigation through the list of items, and ability to quickly view the content of any particular item would be among these qualities. The latter is why the two-pane approach works.

But, as you said, Alex, some are better at this than others... so what's the secret? And are two-pane outliners the best at this? That is, does the outline structure add functionality to browsing or hinder it? I could see it being more of a hinderance... if headings are collapsed, you have to take an extra click to expand the sub-headings.

I am recalling HyperInfo (or whatever the name of that now defunct software was), which had an outline view, but also had an Index view... so that you could see your outline flattened with headings arranged alphabetically. I think that would facilitate serendipitous browsing.

In fact, here's a feature I would like to see: A view listing all items in all open databases, flattened and arranged alphabetically -- or by whatever method of sorting you like. That would be a powerful feature, I think.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

But, as you said, Alex, some are better at this than others... so what's the secret?
And are two-pane outliners the best at this? That is, does the outline structure add
functionality to browsing or hinder it?

What personally attracted me to 2-pane outliners (something I realised after using the software for quite some time) is the ability to combine a view of the structure (outline tree) with a view of the detail (info or note or detail pane, whatever one calls it). In theory, mind maps and concept maps are better at presenting the overall structure, however I find that the relevant software is vastly inefficient in its use of space (I have not as yet tried a dual monitor setup, with the map on the left and the detail on the right, but having the average male's limited peripheral vision I believe that it would be hopeless).

I am recalling HyperInfo (or whatever the name of that now defunct
software was), which had an outline view, but also had an Index view... so that you
could see your outline flattened with headings arranged alphabetically. I think
that would facilitate serendipitous browsing.

You are refering to Hyperclip, which I shortsightedly chose over UltraRecall back in 2004, only to find the developer disappearing sometime later. The 'flat' view was one of my favourites but only for its sorting capability, i.e. I could view all priority items straight away, no matter where they were in the outline.

In fact, here's a feature I would
like to see: A view listing all items in all open databases, flattened and arranged
alphabetically -- or by whatever method of sorting you like. That would be a powerful
feature, I think.

I think that more or less any outliner having a database as its underlying mechanism could do this. IDEA! has this as its default view, i.e. all records are shown in a spreadsheet-like table and can be sorted by any field; they can also be filtered at will by the outline folders, as well as appearing in their respective positions on the actual tree. In Zoot one could keep all entries in one folder and group them in 'smart'/virtual folders rather than regular ones. In UltraRecall one can create a generic search and all items will be listed in the search results table.

alx

SQLNotes has this capability to show/hide the item hierarchy, plus sort, filter, etc to quickly find the items that you want even if deep in the hierarchy.

BTW: a new version (0.9.22) is fresh off the press and free as usual. Relating to this thread, new features are:

1- CTRL-Q will perform a quick live-search in the tree, a column or the 2nd rich text pane.
2- CTRL-Alt-N is a system wide shortcut to quickly add content. Most of you already know this, but it can work as a 1-pane OR as a 2-pane outliner.
www.sqlnotes.net
Pierre Paul Landry, main developer.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

May I ask which specific 2-pane PIM you were working on? In my experience, not all are equally good at this kind of browsing approach.

alx

=======================
Alex,
I think that what I did was simpler than you imagine. I just fully expanded some left-pane items and viewed them one-by-one. Thus, all 2-pane PIMs that have multiple levels should work the same way. My first 2-pane PIM was the original TreePad. However, development of it ceased for a long time while Henk was setting up a formal TreePad business. During the interim, I finally gave up waiting and switched to Jot Plus (www.kingstairs.com) and have been using it ever since. I've also tried other 2-pane PIMs, but once PIMs started using compressed data, I could no longer use a general search program across different PIMs and dropped the others. (Maple developed other problems.) Development of Jot+ seems to have slowed since last May.

There are now more powerful 2-pane PIMs, such as UltraRecall (which I have), but I WILL NOT waste more time moving all my info to something else.

Now that I'm retired, I use Jot+, MyBase, Ecco (for its contact list, formerly also for its calendar), Inspiration, Word 2000, and GrandView. As I posted a while ago, I discovered serious problems with NoteMap (related to long notes) and have dumped it.

What has made me think of using EverNote (which I also own) are its multiple features and my penchant for just dumping info into a PIM without much consideration of which heading I should place it under.

-c

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

May I ask which specific 2-pane PIM you were working on? In my experience, not all are equally good at this kind of browsing approach.

alx

=======================
Alex,
I think that what I did was simpler than you imagine. I just fully expanded some left-pane items and viewed them one-by-one. Thus, all 2-pane PIMs that have multiple levels should work the same way. My first 2-pane PIM was the original TreePad. However, development of it ceased for a long time while Henk was setting up a formal TreePad business. During the interim, I finally gave up waiting and switched to Jot Plus (www.kingstairs.com) and have been using it ever since. I've also tried other 2-pane PIMs, but once PIMs started using compressed data, I could no longer use a general search program across different PIMs and dropped the others. (Maple developed other problems.) Development of Jot+ seems to have slowed since last May.

There are now more powerful 2-pane PIMs, such as UltraRecall (which I have), but I WILL NOT waste more time moving all my info to something else.

Now that I'm retired, I use Jot+, MyBase, Ecco (for its contact list, formerly also for its calendar), Inspiration, Word 2000, and GrandView. As I posted a while ago, I discovered serious problems with NoteMap (related to long notes) and have dumped it.

What has made me think of using EverNote (which I also own) are its multiple features and my penchant for just dumping info into a PIM without much consideration of which heading I should place it under.

-c

There are many ways to interact with your information. Browsing and searching are perhaps the two most fundamental ways at dealing with any extensive body of information. There are clearly some advantages to browsing. And it might be said that two-pane outliners make most of these advantages.

But I am NOT sure whether an applications with a sophisticated search capability wouldn't have found it as well. You say that a search of the topics would not have shown it.

I understand that the paid version of Evernote allows you to search also the body of the notes, so if the topic was "highly relevant," a search for two or three relevant words connected with the operator "and" would have shown it as well. In fact, it might have found more topics that you even now do not know you have :) I don't use the paid version of Evernote (but ConnectedText, which has a very sophisticated search feature as well. But any other database application would allow you to do this.

An application with hypertextual or other links between items might also facilitate other variations on browsing, like exploring, i.e, following a path from one item to another (with forethought) or simply meandering or re-visiting old notes without any plan. I do not mean that a two-pane outliner does NOT allow you to do these two kinds of browsing; only that the ability to link has advantages over the "one-dimensional" browsing two-pane outliners facilitate.

Manfred

Manfred wrote:

But I am NOT sure whether an applications with a sophisticated search capability wouldn't have found it as well. You say that a search of the topics would not have shown it.

===================================================================
Manfred,
The situation was that I was not searching for the topic, thinking that I had already seen everything on it that I had downloaded from the Web. My finding the long-forgotten article was a serendipitous result of my "thumbing through" the left pane of a PIM file. (I say "thumbing through," because I treat the left pane as the table of contents of a book, and the search function as the book's index.

-c

-c

I'd argue the opposite of the consensus in this thread: two pane outliners tend to conceal information, making it harder to find. Approaches that I think are useful in rediscovering information:
1) automatic embedded clustering or classifier algorithms - i.e. when you're viewing an item, there's an area of the screen that suggests possibly related items
2) wiki-like manually created links between items
3) single pane outliners with an adjunct view showing major headings/topics - note that this is subtly different from two pane outliners, which require you to click through to get to specific topics; there's at least a chance with single pane outliners that you'll find info by scrolling through it
4) graphical views - at the minimum, thumbnails, though I've found that there's a certain minimum size before thumbnails become useful in recognizing information; small icons are useless

The only thing that's worse at helping to discover things than two pane outliners are pure tag-based systems. Tag clouds help, but they have a tendency to hide the small things.

-- Chris

ditto

Chris Thompson wrote:

I'd argue the opposite of the consensus in this thread: two pane outliners tend to
conceal information, making it harder to find. Approaches that I think are useful in
rediscovering information:
1) automatic embedded clustering or classifier
algorithms - i.e. when you're viewing an item, there's an area of the screen that
suggests possibly related items
2) wiki-like manually created links between
items
3) single pane outliners with an adjunct view showing major headings/topics -
note that this is subtly different from two pane outliners, which require you to click
through to get to specific topics; there's at least a chance with single pane
outliners that you'll find info by scrolling through it
4) graphical views - at the
minimum, thumbnails, though I've found that there's a certain minimum size before
thumbnails become useful in recognizing information; small icons are useless

The
only thing that's worse at helping to discover things than two pane outliners are pure
tag-based systems. Tag clouds help, but they have a tendency to hide the small
things.

-- Chris

Okay. Sounds great. Does such an application exist? Does it exist in the PC world? If not, what application comes closest?

Steve Z.

Chris Thompson wrote:

I'd argue the opposite of the consensus in this thread: two pane outliners tend to
conceal information, making it harder to find. Approaches that I think are useful in
rediscovering information:
1) automatic embedded clustering or classifier
algorithms - i.e. when you're viewing an item, there's an area of the screen that
suggests possibly related items
2) wiki-like manually created links between
items
3) single pane outliners with an adjunct view showing major headings/topics -
note that this is subtly different from two pane outliners, which require you to click
through to get to specific topics; there's at least a chance with single pane
outliners that you'll find info by scrolling through it
4) graphical views - at the
minimum, thumbnails, though I've found that there's a certain minimum size before
thumbnails become useful in recognizing information; small icons are useless

The
only thing that's worse at helping to discover things than two pane outliners are pure
tag-based systems. Tag clouds help, but they have a tendency to hide the small
things.

-- Chris

That's just a grab bag of features I've found useful. I can't think of an app that does all of them, though there are several that do at least two.

For a cross-platform example of classifier-based suggestions, take a look at Google Reader's "home" screen. When you've got dozens of feeds, the home screen does a good job of presenting you with snippets from feeds that you haven't read in a while but which you might want to check out, based on attention data. Your most read feeds never seem to appear on the home screen. Then on the right there's a box with clustering-based suggestions, suggesting blogs you might like based on groupings of similar interests with other users.

The only desktop outliner that does this well that I know of is DevonThink. It's a pretty standard two-pane outliner (with a variety of views, but at heart a two-pane outliner) except for a decent set of data-based classifier algorithms.

These things are useful though. It would be a lot harder to browse Amazon.com for example if it didn't use collaborative filtering techniques to suggest other items you might be interested in looking at.

-- Chris

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Okay. Sounds great. Does such an application exist? Does it exist in the PC world? If
not, what application comes closest?

Chris Thompson wrote:

The only desktop outliner that does this well that I know of is DevonThink.
It's a pretty standard two-pane outliner (with a variety of views, but at heart a
two-pane outliner) except for a decent set of data-based classifier
algorithms.

I remember salivating a little when we discussed this aspect of DevonThink a few months ago.

These things are useful though. It would be a lot harder to browse
Amazon.com for example if it didn't use collaborative filtering techniques to
suggest other items you might be interested in looking at.

This is true to some extent, but I also find that their suggestions can be rather odd... Like the way some strange Google ads pop up on this site (there's one right now for Powerful Church Software). And I always wonder what they've got that isn't being revealed by automated filtering.

So I definitely agree that this functionality would be very welcome... But I also think that "thumbing through" the data can also be quite useful. The best software would allow for both, I think.

Steve Z.

Chris,

I agree with your thoughts on single-pane outliners, but am not certain about your comment about tags.
I'd kill to find a word-processor/outliner with tagging capability so I can cross reference my documents.

Evernote isn't really a word processor, and General KnowledgeBase just doesn't "feel" right when I use it.

Graphical stuff and icon previews seem like fluf to me, not really useful for the way I use software.

Are you looking to tag individual lines inside documents, or just the documents themselves?

As for graphical previews... I think they're useful for recalling data you've stored previously. As a personal example, I used to use a program called WebnoteHappy for managing my web bookmarks. (Dumb name, good program btw.) It has a very nice tagging system, but it's just that, pure tagging. Some time ago I switched to Yep/Leap, which has the same kind of tagging engine, but in addition presents documents graphically (you control the size; they're not small icons). The tags I store are basically the same, but I've found that I interact much more with my bookmarks when I also have visual representations of what the pages look like that are large enough to jog my visual memory.

Incidentally, Yep/Leap also use the filesystem as an adjunct structure to tagging, which is also helpful.

-- Chris

DaXiong wrote:

Chris,

I agree with your thoughts on single-pane outliners, but am not certain
about your comment about tags.
I'd kill to find a word-processor/outliner with
tagging capability so I can cross reference my documents.

Evernote isn't really a
word processor, and General KnowledgeBase just doesn't "feel" right when I use
it.

Graphical stuff and icon previews seem like fluf to me, not really useful for the
way I use software.

Chris,

I'm looking to tag the document itself, not individual lines.


Since I've posted enough in here, should probably explain for all (it's a great forum, with lots of good people).

I'm a preacher, and I struggle with keeping sermons organized. For a variety of reasons, I like outlining. (I used ECCO back when it was alive, but just can't get back into it now).

What I'd love is an outliner/rich-text editor for writing, with an option to chose tags that are keywords for the sermons.

Honestly, the purpose built software for preaching is not that good. I use Inspiration as my outliner, and my filesystem to organize. I just hate have copies of my files all over the place (firmly believe data should be stored once).

I've used TreePad (Business ed) in the past, but its aging as well, and too many flavors now. Like I've said before, I just can't seem to like General Knowledge Base (although its got the features I like). And as much as I keep looking at SQLnotes (or whatever its called now) - it's too steep a learning curve for me (My life is thinking/writing - maybe its too much).

Anyways, my search continues for something that could best be described as WordPad, with Word's metadata - only easily accessible - built around an outliner.

DaXiong

DaXiong wrote:

Anyways,
my search continues for something that could best be described as WordPad, with
Word's metadata - only easily accessible - built around an outliner.

DaXiong,

I'm sure you've probably already checked these programs out, but just in case you have not, it sounds as if one of these two might meet your needs:

MyInfo - Which has tagging of individual notes, which can be arranged in an outline. (www.milenix.com)

WhizFolders - Allows you to add keywords to your notes, which also can be arranged in an outline. (www.whizfolders.com)

WhizFolders has the better editor -- a better writing environment. But I find it somewhat awkward to use because of the multiple windows that appear on my computer.

Another possibility to consider is The Journal (www.davidrm.com), which is designed for journaling, but works well for all writing projects. It has a fairly sophisticated keywording system (I think the developer calls them "topics") which allows you to apply a topic/keyword to specific sections of text.

Just some thoughts.

Steve Z.

Steve Z.

Thanks for the feedback. I tried MyInfo years ago, didn't really work the way I wanted to - just downloaded it to give it another look.
I agree with you about WhizFolders, too cluttered, and awkward.

I might have missed the writing features of TheJournal, it seemed more like a software diary keeper to me, not really what I was looking for. I'll have to check it out.

DaXiong

DaXiong wrote:

I might have missed the writing features
of TheJournal, it seemed more like a software diary keeper to me, not really what I was
looking for. I'll have to check it out.

DaXiong,

The Journal has two types of "database": The dated file, which automatically creates dated entries arranged by month and date; and a "looseleaf" file, which basically is a two-pane outliner.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Another possibility to consider is The Journal
(www.davidrm.com), which is designed for journaling, but works well for all writing
projects. It has a fairly sophisticated keywording system (I think the developer
calls them "topics") which allows you to apply a topic/keyword to specific sections
of text.

I had looked at The Journal in the past and didn't find it particularly attractive. However, following your suggestion I took a look at its website again. I was looking for a specific feature ...and I found it. The ability to post entries to blogs. I'm surprised I hadn't noticed it in the past, as I've been looking for this kind of offline editing tool for ages. Then again, I had been looking for software specifically focused on web publishing whereas for The Journal it seems like an added feature. I'll give it a try on this regard.

alx

DaXiong wrote:

I've used TreePad (Business ed) in the past, but its aging as well, and too many flavors now. Like I've said before, ...
DaXiong

In case you missed it, TreePad Business 7.4 is now available.

See the note I'm about to write in MyBase/WebCollect

-c

The third approaches that Chris delineates (single pane outliners with an adjunct view showing major headings/topics) is exactly what I have been searching for, with no success, for quite some time. Word 2003 has this in a way with the "Document Map" pane, but I it lacking in many regards.

Does anyone now of a program that will allow you to do what Chris describes: essentially a flat-out line as the main pane and a second pain that automatically creates a table of contents/heading list on the other pane so that you can quickly jump from heading to heading within the outline?


Chris Thompson wrote:

I'd argue the opposite of the consensus in this thread: two pane outliners tend to
conceal information, making it harder to find. Approaches that I think are useful in
rediscovering information:
1) automatic embedded clustering or classifier
algorithms - i.e. when you're viewing an item, there's an area of the screen that
suggests possibly related items
2) wiki-like manually created links between
items
3) single pane outliners with an adjunct view showing major headings/topics -
note that this is subtly different from two pane outliners, which require you to click
through to get to specific topics; there's at least a chance with single pane
outliners that you'll find info by scrolling through it
4) graphical views - at the
minimum, thumbnails, though I've found that there's a certain minimum size before
thumbnails become useful in recognizing information; small icons are useless

The
only thing that's worse at helping to discover things than two pane outliners are pure
tag-based systems. Tag clouds help, but they have a tendency to hide the small
things.

-- Chris

Chris Thompson wrote:

That's just a grab bag of features I've found useful. I can't think of an app that does
all of them, though there are several that do at least two.

Chris,

I can't argue about the usefulness of the automisation features you suggest in a web situation such as the ones you described. However I haven't missed any such tool when dealing with information that I've created (or collected) myself. In the contrary I believe that any kind of program trying to suggest associations among my stuff would probably confuse me rather than help me. Unless DevonThink has some auto-learning capability.

As for wiki-like links, I'd say that their usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. I personally prefer a more structured approach, but it is obvious that wikis appeal to many people --and are very powerful indeed.

The one exception in my rather conservative approach is Brainstorm's automatic identification of 'namesakes', i.e. identical entries. During my MBA studies, I put all new terms I learn in square brackets. Every once in a while Brainstorm will pop a sign indicating that I have already defined a term (often, to my chagrin, it will be in a different context, but still useful to know). But even then, the identification depends on my consistently inputing terms as such. I don't think that I would appreciate it popping on every time I typed 'marketing' or 'media'.

So, to summarise, I'd argue that what tools are useful, i.e. automatic associations etc vs. outline trees or whatever, will very much depend on the kind of information one is dealing with, i.e. the internet's constant flow vs. personal initiative.

alx

The main program I had in mind there was OmniOutliner Pro and its "sections" pane. One especially nice feature of its implementation is that you control how deep the list of major headings to display, and the depth of displayed headings in that view can be set differently for different parts of your outline.

For example, I keep both my shopping list and my list of recipes in the same outline file, under two headings (shopping and recipes). The shopping heading has subheadings (grocery, household, etc.) but I just keep a flat list of recipes under the recipes heading. I have OmniOutliner set up to display both the headings and subheadings for the shopping list but only the headings for the recipe section. Basically I just want to be able to jump around to what I think are major sections. I keep recipes and the shopping list in the same file so that I can generate a single printout quickly to take to the store (filtering the whole document by unchecked item).

TAO (the Mac software, unrelated to "TAO Notes") also has this kind of feature. You can kind of simulate it in Ecco.

-- Chris

Jiggernaut wrote:

The third approaches that Chris delineates (single pane outliners with an adjunct
view showing major headings/topics) is exactly what I have been searching for, with
no success, for quite some time. Word 2003 has this in a way with the "Document Map"
pane, but I it lacking in many regards.

Does anyone now of a program that will allow
you to do what Chris describes: essentially a flat-out line as the main pane and a
second pain that automatically creates a table of contents/heading list on the other
pane so that you can quickly jump from heading to heading within the outline?