Just learned about it and the website is down.
I see the owner is still active on Facebook but no update to the software.
There's no way to get on the forum because the supervisor never send any approval emails.

SO, any good alternative on Windows?

That's too bad. On Windows you're best to look at Tiddlywiki 5 or a locally hosted Dokuwiki. You have to install a variety of extensions/plugins on each to get close to ConnectedText's bundle of features, but both are very flexible. Tiddlywiki is actually pretty darn good but it suffers from the problem that its community of users is very technical so scholarly users may feel a bit lost for a while.

The website is up. The forum is available. There's nothing posted on the site about going out of business. The software works.


Raccon wrote:

Just learned about it and the website is down.
I see the owner is still active on Facebook but no update to the
software.
There's no way to get on the forum because the supervisor never send any
approval emails.

SO, any good alternative on Windows?

The software works right now, but (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) as I understand, it relies on a lot of outdated/deprecated components, so that could very well change in the future without an update. One of the top threads on the forum right now is still about how it doesn't work properly on high resolution displays.

It's not unreasonable to ask these questions before paying money for a piece of software.

Paul Korm wrote:

The website is up. The forum is available. There's nothing posted on
the site about going out of business. The software works.


Raccon wrote:
Just learned about it and the website is down.
>I see the owner is still active on Facebook but no update to the
>software.
>There's no way to get on the forum because the supervisor never send
any
>approval emails.
>
>SO, any good alternative on Windows?

Unless you have confirmation that Connected Text is "dead", your post is irresponsible and you should consider removing it. Websites do go down every so often. The Connected Text site is *not* down.

If you are interested in personal wikis you might also want to take a look at:
https://scribbleton.com/

--

Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com

This kind of post (whether done in good faith or intended as a shortcut to a quicker answer) may have unintended consequences for single developers who first and foremost rely on word of mouth.
A few messages such as the one above discourage future buyers and create exactly the outcome predicted (see, I told ye!) but is entirely self fulfilling.
A sustainable shareware culture does not work like this and yes, occasionally programs we care about go the way of the dodo but there is no need to increase that rate artificially for some short-lived benefit.

Prion

Hm, well, while it looks good, it suffers from the total lack of a search function... if you want simple but highly functional, I'd go with TiddlyWiki, myself. But much will depend on the quantities of data you're handling. So DEVONthink and, indeed, Scrivener, offer interesting alternatives for handling very large amounts of data efficiently.

Andy Brice wrote:

If you are interested in personal wikis you might also want to take a
look at:
https://scribbleton.com/

In this case I have to respectfully disagree. Obviously if a website goes down for one day and we all start spreading rumours about a software's demise, that's not fair. But in the case of CT there have been concerns about its future, expressed privately first, and publicly later, for over a year. Eduardo has had every chance to clarify the situation but has not done so, so I would say that if he is losing customers because of these rumours that would be down to him. Though in an ideal world we would only buy software for what it does now and not what it might do in the future, we also need to be sure that it continues to work when, for example, operating systems get updates, and clearly knowledge software often contains information we need to be sure that we can continue to access. I have a lot invested in CT so hope that it continues to work on future versions of Windows, but I think it's fair that situations like this are exposed, as honestly as possible, so that people who choose to buy do so in the full knowledge of the current situation.

Prion wrote:

This kind of post (whether done in good faith or intended as a shortcut
to a quicker answer) may have unintended consequences for single
developers who first and foremost rely on word of mouth.
A few messages such as the one above discourage future buyers and create
exactly the outcome predicted (see, I told ye!) but is entirely self
fulfilling.
A sustainable shareware culture does not work like this and yes,
occasionally programs we care about go the way of the dodo but there is
no need to increase that rate artificially for some short-lived benefit.


Prion

It's possible to access the website, download, try and purchase the software, and it's fully functional and runs without any bugs at least on my side, so I don't see how it can be called "dead."

If you're unhappy with the lack of development, the responsiveness of the developer, or the level of support, that's another issue. But the software itself is not dead.

I use a lot of undead software that are no longer being developed and are not even possible to purchase, but they are alive and well on my laptop.

Any developer always prefers to be addressed directly -- in their own forum or support pages. And it is polite. For a single individual the whole effort to create and support software is more than I would hazard to guess most of us would care to undertake. So if he wants to stop, then fine -- it's been a good ride. If Eduardo doesn't wish to reply, that's his choice.

Paul Korm wrote:

If Eduardo doesn't wish to reply, that's his choice.

Of course it is, nobody is claiming or even implying otherwise.

At the same time, it's not unreasonable for someone to want to know this before investing both time and money into a piece of software.

As far as bringing it up on the official forum, you need to be manually approved before you can even read it, never mind post to it. So there aren't really any other venues for someone to ask.

Sure, use the Contact page, form, or send Eduardo an email, all available here:

http://connectedtext.com/contact.php

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

As far as bringing it up on the official forum, you need to be manually
approved before you can even read it, never mind post to it. So there
aren't really any other venues for someone to ask.

The ConnectedText forum URL has been producing a blank page for the past day or two. The main site is still up, though. Before this, traffic on the forum has been very sparse, consisting most notably of a couple of posts asking Eduardo to say something about whether there will be a version 7. He had yet to reply. Hopefully this is a temporary glitch.

I haven't been able to get to the ConnectedText or MyInfo forums over the last few days. Websites are fine, just no the forums. Very coincidental. That makes me wonder if they both use the same message board service which is having issues right now.

CT-Forum is finally online again!
Besides the forum access problem I got once a server error when CT checked, if there is a new version available.
At the moment both is working again. So I guess there has been server issues.

Eduardo just responded to a query I submitted on the ConnectedText.com web site. I asked if the question software is still under development.

“Hi Robert, Right now CT is in maintenance mode. There are many things I want to add to CT, but it has grown to become a very complex piece of software. So it is not easy to add new features.

Best regards,
Eduardo Mauro
ConnectedText”

s/if the question software/if the software/

I give. What does this mean?

Robert Luke wrote:

s/if the question software/if the software/

Paul Korm wrote:

I give. What does this mean?

Robert was correcting his previous post:
"I asked if the question software is still under development."

-------
Robert Luke wrote:

s/if the question software/if the software/

For the software it means that it would require a lot of refactoring before he can continue to develop it.

It's obvious that he uses Microsoft MFC as a development toolkit which is unfortunately not the easiest to refactor and microsoft makes it very clear that it's an end of line technology. Even open sourcing wouldn't help here to win developers who want to work on it.

One more problem with refactoring is not only the financial/time investment but in case of a one person project maybe even more important: motivation. You just get a burnout when working too long on some projects.

Paul Korm wrote:

I give. What does this mean?

Robert Luke wrote:
s/if the question software/if the software/

It's the command to change text with certain Unix text editors (ed, sed, vi). In this context, it's a shortcut way of saying "remove the word 'question' from what I said earlier."

If you have MacOS or Linux, you have ed built-in, and it can be the core of a distraction-free writing system. I wrote a blog post about it a while back:

http://www.larrykollar.com/technology/2017/06/27/distraction-free.html

Doze used to have EDLIN, which is similar in many ways, but it's not included in the latest versions (I use W7 at work, and it's not there). If you have an older version kicking around, you might be able to copy it over.