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News for Zoot fans
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 6, 2008 at 09:56 PM
Zoot 5.0 is now available as an official release. Those Zooters who bought their licenses prior to January 1, 2003, can upgrade for $49 US… Those who purchases a copy after that date get a free upgrade.
Go to http://www.zootsoftware.com
BTW - The web site is updated as well.
Happy Zooting!
Steve Z.
Posted by Derek Cornish
Mar 7, 2008 at 02:32 AM
Thanks, Steve,
Coincidentally, I was alerted to the new website by the disappearance of the beta one. Although I just squeeze under the bar for a free update, I recall having finally registered Zoot after a very generous (i.e., essentially unlimited) evaluation period. Most of that, however, was spent installing, uninstalling and re-installing Zoot as I dealt with the frustrations of coming to grips with its mysteries. Luckily the Help File has improved enormously since then, and the Zoot forum members are a powerful community of experts.
This, then, is version 5 (final) I assume, and the move to a 32-bit version is now complete. It really is good news, and confounds the doubters who thought it would never happen.
The RTF editor and the loosening of constraints on number of folders, length of items, and so on, will come in the next few months, I imagine. I’m not sure whether these will be beta tested in the same way. I haven’t upgraded beyond v5 RC1 yet myself, having been rather put off by the new icons. But when there are some material changes to the program’s features I’m sure I’ll come to terms with the interface modifications:-).
Derek
Posted by Cassius
Mar 7, 2008 at 06:33 AM
Derek Cornish wrote:
> ...The RTF editor and the loosening of constraints on number of folders, length of items, and so
>on, will come in the next few months, I imagine. ...
————————————-
“...months”? It took AT LEAST 7.5 YEARS between the introduction of version 4 and ver. 5. The wait from ver. 3 to ver. 4 also took forever. During this time I went from middle age (or younger) to a retired “senior.” I could have REALLY used a Zoot with RTF and fewer other limitations while I was working on multiple technical projects. Now, I’m writing a book using Word 2000 (NoteMap proved to be crap) and no longer need Zoot’s capabilities. Perhaps Zoot 5.x with RTF will appear before my future headstone crumbles.
For comparison GrandView appeared in about 1988 and had most (all?) of Zoot’s features, an extremely capable outliner, excellent formatting capabilities, etc. It’s limitations were essentially those imposed by DOS.
-c
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 7, 2008 at 12:08 PM
Cassius wrote:
>For comparison GrandView
>appeared in about 1988 and had most (all?) of Zoot’s features, an extremely capable
>outliner, excellent formatting capabilities, etc. It’s limitations were
>essentially those imposed by DOS.
Yes, but we’ve been waiting for 17 years for a Windows version of GrandView!
Tom Davis has implied that the conversion to RTF won’t take too long… You can interpret that any way you like. I choose to be optimistic. But then, I have found Zoot useful from the start.
Steve Z.
Posted by Derek Cornish
Mar 7, 2008 at 07:20 PM
Well, that’s all true…but -
Zoot is a complex program and it’s developer has constantly tweaked the original design - so much so that the main version numbers provide a very poor indication of his level of activity.
Like SteveZ I am rather optimistic that, faced with more interesting challenges than the grind of moving from 16-bit to full 32-bit, Tom will pick up speed when it comes to providing rtf.
Word (I use 2003 for drafting) has a terribly clunky outliner IMHO, not much use for anything except document navigation and formatting. For my last book I used Grandview and Zoot for planning and organising, and can’t imagine how I could have coped without the latter - though of course I agree that if one wants to draft in Zoot, or highlight text in it, the lack of rtf is a drawback. I’d put a “within-editing-pane” outliner higher up the priority list for Zoot32 improvements than rtf, though. But I know that’s not going to happen any time soon; in fact the adoption of rtf will probably rule it out for the foreseeable future.
Although I’m a great fan, and current user, of GV - which works fine for me on XP - I don’t see it as comparable with Zoot in terms of capacity to organize information. Complementary - yes.
It’s hardly surprising that people seem to be switching over to the Mac in droves. The lack of decent writing tools in Windows after all these years is pretty disappointing. I had as good a set when I used DOS: Lotus Agenda, Lotus Magellan, Lotus Manuscript, PC-Write, Grandview, Harvard Graphics, dtSearch and DesQview/X.
Meanwhile, Mac users have - well, we know what they have :-(. I won’t be upgrading to Vista when my Thinkpad bites the dirt. In fact, it will be a good time to switch platforms.
Derek
Cassius wrote:
>
>Derek Cornish wrote:
>> ...The RTF editor and the loosening of constraints on number
>of folders, length of items, and so
>>on, will come in the next few months, I imagine.
>...
>————————————-
>
>”...months”? It took AT LEAST 7.5 YEARS between
>the introduction of version 4 and ver. 5. The wait from ver. 3 to ver. 4 also took
>forever. During this time I went from middle age (or younger) to a retired “senior.” I
>could have REALLY used a Zoot with RTF and fewer other limitations while I was working
>on multiple technical projects. Now, I’m writing a book using Word 2000 (NoteMap
>proved to be crap) and no longer need Zoot’s capabilities. Perhaps Zoot 5.x with RTF
>will appear before my future headstone crumbles.
>
>For comparison GrandView
>appeared in about 1988 and had most (all?) of Zoot’s features, an extremely capable
>outliner, excellent formatting capabilities, etc. It’s limitations were
>essentially those imposed by DOS.
>
>-c