Are any of you Mac users using either of these? I'm still pondering on what to use for taking notes. I really don't need one that talks to iOS, though I think both of these program do.

Or have any of you stuck with Tinderbox long enough to tackle its learning curve? I keep updating my license to Tinderbox with the idea that the interface will morph into something more intuitive, but I'm thinking now that it is only getting more complicated, with the user manual usually being about a year behind the software in updates.

If need be, I'll stick with NoteShare/NoteTaker by Aquaminds, thought it seems to be living on borrowed time.

OmniOutliner remains my primary note taker / personal information maintenance tool. It's stable, mature, well-supported and still undergoing incremental development, and has just had a major price decrease.

I've begun experimenting with Task Paper 3, and am really pleased so far. Of course, it's not the right tool if your major interest is in storing non-textual notes.

I use OmniOutliner for all of my outlining chores, and it does have a third pane for text, but I've never viewed it as a primary notetaking app. Part of my fondness for the dead Circus Ponies Notebook and the moribund NoteTaker program were the look and feel of a notebook. I want to like Curio, but text doesn't seem to be its strength.

I've never taken advantage of Omni's columns feature, and that might make it a better notetaking app. In the 1990s, I poured everything into Ecco Pro, and am surprised that nobody has cloned the idea since.

Jeffery wrote:

I've never taken advantage of Omni's columns feature, and that might
make it a better notetaking app. In the 1990s, I poured everything into
Ecco Pro, and am surprised that nobody has cloned the idea since.

Having columns is a big plus for outliners, so do try it in Omni. It adds another dimension.
FWIW, InfoQube IS an Ecco Pro "clone". Well... in fact, it is much more.
But of course, it's hard for me to be objective LOL

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer
http://www.infoqube.biz

Indeed, and if I was still a Windows guy these days, I'd no doubt love it. I can use Nota Bene under Wine. But it still looks so Windows-like.

NoteTaker is good, but always on the verge of death. It hasn't received an update for years. Never had a viable iOS companion, if that matters.

I've never felt interested in having a single note taking app. Too limiting. Play the field.

If you have a Tinderbox subscription or current license, try Tinderbox 7. Tinderbox was built for power, not charm. Though some very interesting things can be done with Tinderbox maps that are not possible anywhere else. I've used Tinderbox since v2, so I suppose it is my most frequently used note taker.

I really want to love Tinderbox. There are some videos now by users, and they help me more than the dense documentation. DevonThink Pro would be great if it were more portable. I bounce back and forth between 5 computers, and need something that follows me and my thumb drive.

Paul Korm wrote:

NoteTaker is good, but always on the verge of death. It hasn't received
an update for years. Never had a viable iOS companion, if that matters.


I've never felt interested in having a single note taking app. Too
limiting. Play the field.

If you have a Tinderbox subscription or current license, try Tinderbox
7. Tinderbox was built for power, not charm. Though some very
interesting things can be done with Tinderbox maps that are not possible
anywhere else. I've used Tinderbox since v2, so I suppose it is my most
frequently used note taker.

Paul, I respect your opinion, and will give Tinderbox 7 a try. I need to get started on an invertebrate zoology course, and I'm going to start entering note in sort of piecemeal fashion (in relevent containers) and let things evolve in my learning this program. I've never shyed away from reading manuals, and mastered XyWrite in the 1980s. I only left it when XyWrite imploded. Wish me luck!

Start small, with few ambitions, and grow from there -- that's the best way to learn Tinderbox I think. For reference, if you don't know Mark Anderson's wonderful atbref.com then delve into it when you need to find our how an action works, or about attributes, etc.

DEVONthink sync is pretty good these days if you use data on multiple computers.

Jeffery wrote:

Will give Tinderbox 7 a try. I need to
get started on an invertebrate zoology course, and I'm going to start
entering note in sort of piecemeal fashion (in relevent containers) and
let things evolve in my learning this program. I've never shyed away
from reading manuals, and mastered XyWrite in the 1980s. I only left it
when XyWrite imploded. Wish me luck!

My take on Tinderbox is that it's not really a note-taker at all. It's a tool for discovering "emergent structure". If you need such a tool, you will find, after all the investment of time and effort in understanding and learning it*, that the effort has been very worthwhile and that in the pursuit of emergent structure it has no rival whatsoever.

But if your interest is simply in notes - taking them, filing them, curating them - you will find that there are many ways less demanding than Tinderbox to scratch your itch. They include Apple Notes, Notebooks, Evernote and Microsoft's OneNote. Even Devonthink with its sorter is an option.

*Steve Z of this parish has covered Tinderbox very usefully many times on his blog, including a recent and continuing series of tutorial videos: https://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/tinderbox/

My first choice for random notes pre-computer was medium-sized note cards. Learned how to use those in 6th grade, and that paradigm has stuck in my head. By 1984, Tornado Notes (later, the first version of Info Select for MS DOS). I didn't like later versions of InfoSelect, and switched to the MS DOS version of askSam. I liked that until it went to Windows.

If there is a recurring theme here, it is that I like initial versions of things and grow to dislike later "improvements" of them. Loved Nota Bene and XyWrite for MS DOS, but like the Windows of Nota Bene (still evolving).

I think that Tinderbox seems more notecard-like, while Evernote is great for grabbing articles from the web. My initial impressions of Tinderbox is that it is best to keep notes short. Then make agents to gather them. The invertebrate zoology issue is that it is an enormous field of study that has a fossil history that is yet another giant field. Evolution is also a large part of it. I do seem emergent patterns coming out of it, but maybe not with all of the joined topic maps with strings holding them together. Ability to switch from Tinderbox to another note base seems to be NOT an issue...I can export the notes to something else.

The one program that I thought might work for me that hasn't is VooDoo Pad. And, after Flying Meat sold it to Plausible Labs, it appears to be no longer in active development.

Thank you, Hugh, for the plug about my video tutorials about Tinderbox. They just skim the surface of what you can do with your notes in Tinderbox, but I hope they are useful.

I'm with Hugh on the fact that Tinderbox is not my choice for note management. Putting all your information in one database isn't practical and Tindberbox does not have a cross-database search function. But Tinderbox is an excellent way to capture notes quickly, particularly in a meeting or workshop, because you can write your notes in Map view as the title of the Tbx note (i.e. not in the actual notes section), and when you hit enter you're instantly in the mode of taking a new note. Note titles can be pretty long. If you've done some preliminary set up of the Map view -- such as creating adornments for agenda items and agents for attendees -- you can easily organize your notes as you go along. You can mark notes that need follow-up or whatever. You can then either manage follow up in Tinderbox or export all the meeting notes into Scrivener or some other format for generating a report.

Tinderbox is also great for planning or plotting a piece of writing. And, as Hugh wrote, it is a great aid for coaxing meaning from your information.

However, I notice that you, Jeffrey, seem to like apps with a notebook metaphor. If that is the case, I'd also suggest check out Curio, especially since you don't need an iOS counterpart. It's in continuous development and keeps getting better.

Anyway, that's all just my two cents worth.

Steve

Hi Stephen,

I'm also a fan of your videos on Vimeo. In fact, they are what prompted me to renew my commitment to tackling Tinderbox. The overviews posted by dominiquerenauld are also inspiring, but move too quickly to follow as tutorials. I am hoping that you will continue your lessons on Vimeo. They have proven to be more useful to me than poring over the documentation or getting started guide.

Jeffery

Ah, as many of us have lamented before, would that good old Blackwell Idealist were still available... now that really was the ultimate information manager...

We actually ran our business on it for several years. Idealist was so powerful and the scripting language was so flexible that with a bit of ingenuity, you could emulate a relational database. Data was, of course, duplicated, but it didn't matter because (a) Idealist was optimised for large quantities of textual data in any case and (b) it was very, very easy to zero in on exactly the records you needed. In fact, its enormously flexible format meant you could change master records (e.g. clients' company names, addresses, contacts etc.) in a way that can be problematic in a relational database.

But Idealist really excelled as an information tracking/structuring system. Ah well.

Those nostalgic for Idealist might want to check out Qercus, which is still under development:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/qercus/