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Indigrid
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Posted by Mark Nevarrik
Dec 30, 2017 at 12:01 AM
Hey guys,
My apologies for the confusion. I just released Indigrid on the 26th, and it was between getting something out to get some feedback or increasing the risk of getting deep in the weeds. I should have set the expectations.
As for the crashes, there is a link on the crash message where you can send me an email of the message. You don’t even have to fill anything out, just with the error message I can probably track it down—I’d appreciate it but no hard feelings either if you’d rather check in again in a year for something more established.
As for the columns, you are creating a new view of a subset of the current or focused column that you are opening up an alternative view on. You can duplicate an existing view but then filter it. Or if you want to have 4 columns that you drag between, in the Root column make 4 nodes with children and create columns for those. Note that you can undo closing or opening columns—the undo extends to changes of the “view.” Probably my mistake that if you have a node without any children, creating a column on it will make a column on that node’s parent—which when playing around just duplicates the Root node.
As for the philosophy—these were my notes to get feedback on where I am trying to take the project. It isn’t there, but by writing it I was able to make design decisions that would have been hard to revisit later. For example, all “view” operations go on the undo stack—even things like resizing a column or filtering a column. And the database design keeps track of all changes, even if right now the only benefit is that undo persists after closing Indigrid. But later I can “unlock” those dormant changes to create views of different revisions of the tree or sub-tree.
Chris Murtland brought up a nasty bug—if you close the initial root you can’t get back to it right now—let me see if I can’t get a new version up tonight addressing that and some of the other great concerns Chris brought up. Thank you Chris.
And Washere left me hanging on the “half a dozen vital functions and interface features” that could make the software better. I’d love to hear what’s on that list Washere.
Posted by Mark Nevarrik
Dec 30, 2017 at 04:28 AM
Ruudhein has some detective skills, and I like your description of “view sections of your list, side by side.”
I threw together some notes on how to use it—https://innovationdilation.com/quick-start.html
Ruudhein, I’m unable to reproduce the crash you are getting with the dash and plus symbols and my detective skills aren’t as good as yours. If you get the crash again could you please hit the “contact author” link on the message box please?
I can see how it seems like clicking that link will push all the reporting to you, but what it does is it fills out an email with the error message—it is programmed with many “asserts” or conditions that it will purposely crash on, and I can look that up just with the error message—it restarts because it is pessimistic. If it is an actual crash—it will also open up the crash files folder in a new explorer window so you can add the dmp files as an attachment.
I would super appreciate it—it is a new version and maybe others are hitting the same issue and no one is letting me know because I made that message box seem like too much work.
Perhaps I should open up a window with the text to the email message already shown, and then still have the link but see that most of the heavy lifting is already done for you.
It even signs the email politely, anonymously.
But either way, thanks for your comments. I used a variation of your description in the help file to describe it as sections, and not new disjointed columns.
ruudhein wrote:
Auto-saves to a Sqlite database in its own application directory.
>
>Each indent can become or be shown in its own column (right-click
>→ new column).
>
>Example: https://imgur.com/a/4LePN
>
>Very error prone, I think to specific characters.
>
>Basically an outliner where you can view sections of your list side by
>side in columns.
>
>
Posted by Slartibartfarst
Dec 30, 2017 at 05:44 AM
I was going to give Indigrid a miss after the initial posts in this thread, but then I read Mark Nevarrik’s post (Dec 30, 2017 at 12:01 AM) and became interested (so, thankyou, Mark).
I read pretty much all over the Indigrid website, including the “10,000-word essay” and which i found very interesting. I am always interested to consider people’s thoughts and ideas about thinking and idea creation.
I then downloaded the Indigrid installer file and ran it.
My experiences:
1. The installer was impressively quick to do what it did.
2. Installed location: I looked at where it had installed the proggie and I work folders - - it seemed to be all under my UserID. I would have preferred to have been given an option to install it elsewhere, but I recognise this is a nicety when one is testing a Beta app.
3. Indigrid has a clean, simple GUI, but I was unable to explore it much, at first. When I tried to do most anything, the proggie seemed to crash at an annoyingly early stage, with fleeting and vague error messages that it had encountered an (undefined) error and needed to restart, or something.
4. However, after I restarted it, it seemed to settle down and behave itself. I wondered whether the app had the necessary write access permissions to the folder it was installed in, on first start.
5. So I was then able to play around with it to a greater extent.
6. I like the relatively intuitive navigation controls. Good ergonomics.
7. The bottom bar of the GUI seems to have a poor selection of contrasting (or non-contrasting) colours and fonts, making some of the text difficult to read. This is a problem in ergonomic visual perception. Unless they have been developing military software or graphics displays, most developers would probably not appreciate this comment (though they might have lots of opinions about it).
8. Version tested: The .exe version I was testing was v1.0.2.0, MD5 hash: (32D7CA350A52E9B3A85AA0546212575B)
9. I didn’t do any more testing as Mark wrote that he intended putting up an update soon.
I think Mark’s website definitely needs an RSS feed defined. I cannot abide registering for “push” news via “Newsletter” registration (I won’t do it), but I always use “pull” news by subscribing deserving websites (e.g., OutlinerSoftware.com).to my BazQux feed-reader.
Hope this helps or is of use.
_________________________________________
Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 30, 2017 at 09:16 AM
ruudhein wrote:
>Each indent can become or be shown in its own column (right-click
>→ new column).
I know. I expected the command to create an empty new column for new notes (as it is not called “Show in new column”).
Posted by washere
Dec 30, 2017 at 06:54 PM
> Mark Nevarrik wrote: ..............
>And Washere left me hanging on the “half a dozen vital functions and
>interface features” that could make the software better. I’d love to
>hear what’s on that list Washere.
________________________________________________________
1: File (menu): New, Open, Close, Save, Save as..
2: Export: (Standard tree outline) OPML
Or OTL, I am a Bonsai Natara kind of guy. HTML for tree is pretty useless.
3: Import: samo samo ^^^
4: Night Mode, as in many apps: Black/very dark background with light grey/white font
Like many, I simply do not use apps with white background. Not just to save battery on laptop, or the eyes, can not do it anymore like many accustomed.
Even my Win explorer panes are black, as my Android Substratum black themes, etc.
Better yet, customize colors options, too early for you prob.
5: Stabilize:
Crashes: C0000005 etc
Opening app or inserting columns makes the file go away and gives blank screen, another func brings it back!
etc etc I have not had time to red comments in this thread yet, prob have similar issues, i’d list’em to replicate
6: Bottom bar: Try smaller laptops, does not fit
either compact it so it fits, abbreviate or one word on top of other etc
or better yet, convert to top toolbar with text lable on mouse-hover-focus
7: Basic Outline Tree Functions that do work in all scenarios
With shortcuts/menu (and in later vers top toolbar icons):
Insert Node: (i’d drop columns terminology), below where the current mouse or cursor focus is
Insert Child Node: or Sub-Node samo, multi level
Delete: Node / Child-node
Move Node (or Child node) ^ Up + Down v
Move Node (or Child node)
: This is for sub-levels
Exapnd All
Collapse All
Expand Branch: having current mouse or cursor focus
Collapse Branch: having current mouse or cursor focus
I know you might say some of these are there but they are:
Not functioning as they should per definition in some cases
Not fuunctioning
Not stable
Not all listed are there
This is a basic set of functions needed for any tree outline editor, there is more though!
A project manager or professional tester would basically savage the current build wrt above basic tree-outliner basic func.s, no way jose, it ain’t even close in features or performance or stability.
________________________________________________________
This should be good to start with aiming for a stable Beta or an RC1.
The last section, 7, plus OPML export as no tool is an island nowadays, is most important.
If no color customming or at least Dark/night/black mode, I won’t use it.
Like I said, the idea and the looks are good, if you end up enjoy using it, it will be good.
Good luck bro