Given that ultrarecall (UR) is no longer being developed, it seems timely to ask the perennial question of which program best allows us to manage the surfeit of information associated with our projects, reference materials, and research (what I call knowledge). At a minimum, that program must be able to assimilate: web page, emails, files, snippets of text. Some meta-data is useful, but for most folks, a highly structured database seems not to be necessary, and that is the case with me as long as I have full text-search.

I have tried to implement a single repository notion in the past with Zoot, Content Saver (now Web Resesarch), Ultra Recall, OneNote. I have substantial experience with each of these programs. Over the summer I had decided to leave Ultra Recall and go into One Note, but just recently decided to test out Web Research again, and am thinking that might be a workable solution. I want to share some of my thoughts, so that others can point out where they differ and point me to better software or processes.

*** Web ****
Zoot: does not yet capture rich text. There is an archive to mht function, but the last time I checked it was buggy. In any event, no editing (highlighting) of the web page permitted, which is a substantial negative.

UR: I know development has stopped on this, but the program still functions. Also the comparison may be illuminating. UR was always terribly slow in capturing long web pages. Editing was added, but the UI was always a bit cumbersome. Also search hits were not highlighted.

OneNote: Saving clips of a web page was fine, but sending entire pages produced bad copies. One way around this was to grab screens using SnagIt, but that often created bloated image files (which were OCR'd by OneNote).

Web Research: For me, the fastest web capture, and easiest filing (besides potentially Zoot's auto-filing folder rules). Sometimes forms, etc., don't get captured correctly -- but for those sometimes only a screengrab will do.

I think WR wins this one.

*** Emails ***
Given full text indexing of emails, I do not file and instead pile. I used to use NEO b/c of its convenient correspondent folders, but I'm trying to cut down the # of apps I'm using. So I'm experimenting with just using outlook and Vista's Windows Desktop Search (WDS).

Zoot: Great at sucking in emails. At one time, I used to use smart folders to automatically file emails, etc. But again, with good enough searching, I've decided that I generally don't have to file emails. The most important ones, I can "file" or save in some project folder separtely.

UR: Fine at storing emails (although I never liked the fact that attachments were never shown separately from the *.msg file).

OneNote: printing out emails took too many pages, and did not allow for quick and easy navigation. Emedding the email was another possibility, but OneNote has problems with embedded items. First, WDS doesn't search embedded files. Second, the icon is large and doesn't show the entire name.

Web Research: With the add-in, saves emails fine. It would be nice if somehow attachments appeared as subdocuments of the email--the way that UR allowed anything to be a parent/child of anything else. But it seems to work fine enough.

*** Files ***
Zoot: allows file links, not storage of files. This allows annotation with keywords, but if you want full text indexing, you have to run a WDS (or comparable) search as well. This seems like 2 repositories--not a great thing. That said, there's a file folder sync that allows any new files stored in an OS folder to create a new zoot item, which can be tagged.

UR: storage of long files was slow. Make a minor change, and it would reindex. Some problems with data loss if the file you were working on didn't close down right or if UR closed down first.

OneNote: Easy to work with embedded files. Changes are saved within the onenote page. But as explained, no WDS search of the embedded files. Also the UI of moving around embedded file icons was clumsy. This is an example where the metaphor of a network page ends up breaking down.

Webresearch: Can "store" files into its DB. But large files (say 100mb) seems to choke it. Also, in order to edit the file, you have to export it to a OS folder, save the file, then reimport. The exporting is clumsy (can't click and drag). That said, the files are indexed by WDS.

If files could be edited like OneNote but appeared in UI like WR, I'd be happy.

*** clips of text (e.g., passwords, #s) ***

Zoot: phenomenally good at this

UR: fine

OneNote: fine

WR: can create a new "note" to type this stuff in


-------------------------------------

With all this, here's how and why I ended up with Web Research tentatively.

UR is out because it's no longer developed (also Web storage was slow, and frankly the UI was always more difficult than necessary).

Zoot, which I admire greatly, still can't deal with rich text. Using various linking technologies adds complexities, changes that links can get broken with moving computers and files, and the like. (I'm using Zoot for a more narrow set of tasks only.)

OneNote. I thought this could work. Even if embedded files could not be searched, I presumed that the next version would add that functionality. And by embedding files as subitems in an outline, I could collapse the outline and manange complexity that way. But the paper notebook analogy fails once you are managing 20+ files for a project. Printout out entire pdfs, etc., into OneNote could be hundreds of MBs, so it must be the embedded file strategy (I use Pdf annotator to mark up files.)

Web research. Best at web. Competent with emails. Competent with text snippets. Weak with files (can't edit stored files without exporting/reimporting). That said, WDS will find everything on your hard drive and within a WR database. One can create hyperlinks to a single WR item (which I can use with Mindmanager, to track support material for projects.) And the UI is the best of the lot.

My return to WR has only been about a week, and I'm groaning at the transition costs of moving data over. But OneNote isn't working for me. What are your thoughts and reactions?

My own opinion is that you are destined to be disappointed with any single application, because they all lack something significant. I've settled into a fairly comfortable two-application system (for my PC work at the office). I use Zoot to collect all the snippets of textual information that I crop up on a random, ad hoc basis (things such as addresses, registrations, body text from letters, boilerplate) and I use OneNote for compiling project-related information.

Additionally, Zoot is my database for tracking purchases and maintaining my organization's product catalog. At least 80 percent of the information I need is just fine in plain text... in fact, plain text is an advantage for speed and database size, as well as for exporting into other applications.

I agree that OneNote's notebook metaphore can be overwhelming when dealing with tons of information, but it works well for projects. On the same page I can keep relevant PDFs, e-mails and notes. I can add a simple outline and tabular data, when necessary.

Is this the ideal solution? No. I have a MacBook for my personal use, and I can see that it would be possible in the OS environment to have a single-application approach to data... everything is more integrated in the Mac world... including the ability to print from almost any application to a PDF which is automatically stored in your database. Still, I haven't settled on a single application yet. Perhaps when DevonThink 2.0 is released....

Steve Z.

I've worked my way along much the same path, using much the same group of programs, so I'll be fascinated to hear the responses and suggestions, although I'm not sure I can add much to the mix. I agree with Steve Z. -- no program has it all.

UR and OneNote are programs I admire rather than like. By which I mean, I acknowledge their power and the clever approach they both adopt to information management (indeed I think OneNote is just about the best thing Microsoft has produced), but neither has the simplicity, elegance and speed of use to make it a single repository for my information. OneNote came close though.

Likewise Zoot and InfoQube -- frequent recommendations here and elsewhere by posters whose opinions I trust lead me to try out these two programs on a regular basis, hoping I will "get it". But I never do. I find both awkward and frustrating to use. Maybe I'm just impatient.

Which lead me, eventually, to Web Research. Its UI is utterly intuitive. You never need to look at the help file. But...

The WR team made the big decision to outsource two key functions (web page gathering and database indexing) to external programs, namely the Firefox add-in Scrapbook and Microsoft's Windows Search.

This is both a strength and a weakness. Scrapbook is, in my view, the best web page grabber out there. Some other programs can match its ability to grab whole pages, but I've yet to find a competitor that can grab partial pages (snippets) with the same fidelity. And sometimes, that is important.

However, when I trialled WR, I found that just occasionally, WR would lose its link to Scrapbook. Very rarely, but just enough that it meant I had to check that every capture had worked.

And I had the same experience with Windows Search -- it would index most, but not all, clippings in the WR database. Different versions of Windows Search had differing levels of success. That's the risk with using external programs for critical functions (I did discuss my problem with WR tech support, but never solved it completely).

Having said all that, WR is still the closest I have come to a single program "data dump". But I still hesitate. My other reason for being slow to commit to WR is that, leaving aside highly specialised forums such as this one, you rarely see the program mentioned or reviewed. It seems to be well under the radar, which makes me nervous.

All this time, while trialling all these programs, I have being using a "temporary" solution to hold data: Local Website Archive (http://aignes.com/lwa.htm By no means the all-purpose data dump, but a reliable (whole) web page grabber, with the facility to add separate notes and it keeps each item as separate html pages, so all indexers will find the content. It's also "scriptable" (I use the word loosely) in that you can add key sequences to grab content from other programs (I use it to grab emails from Thunderbird if I am collating information for a project). Difficult to explain, but the program forum will help (the program help file is not the best). For someone with light and occasional need for an information grabber, worth a look.

Steve, if you haven't tried it already, take a look at the current version of Together. I think it's the strongest single repository program available at present. It allows you to pull in web pages as *either* webarchives or PDFs, which is a nice choice, and webarchives are fully editable. More important to me, it stores all the underlying files in the filesystem, so you're not locked into the program and everything's transparently accessible via Spotlight. Though Devonthink is still the only program with machine learning algorithms built in.

I gave OneNote another look earlier this year, but it still just seems so crude. e.g. "Print to OneNote" generates bitmaps and it's tedious to edit long outlines. I do much prefer ON 2007's page navigation over the previous version though. Circus Ponies Notebook 3 is finally out and I think now that it offers both structured and nonstructured page elements (even things extending outside of the notebook!) most people would prefer Notebook.

-- Chris

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Is this the ideal solution? No. I have a MacBook for my personal use, and I can see that it
would be possible in the OS environment to have a single-application approach to
data... everything is more integrated in the Mac world... including the ability to
print from almost any application to a PDF which is automatically stored in your
database. Still, I haven't settled on a single application yet. Perhaps when
DevonThink 2.0 is released....

Steve Z.

Chris, I tried Googling "Together" without luck. Where can I find it?

Thanks.

-c

1. Can Web Research export to standard formats?

2. I looked at WR a couple of years ago, but decided to stick with myBase+WebCollect, which, in many ways, is similar to WR.

-c

Here's the website:
http://reinventedsoftware.com/together/
(Not necessarily the most Google-friendly name!)

-- Chris

Cassius wrote:

Chris, I tried Googling "Together" without luck. Where can I find it?

Thanks.

-c

jerryk, I appreciate the thorough post about ON, Zoot, WR and UR. Just wanted to add my perspective with a couple of other apps: ADM and Evernote.

I used ADM from 2004-2007, then switched to OneNote for 07-08, and now I've switched to EverNote3.

***web pages***
ADM worked surprisingly well as a webpage grabber, although the process was slow and manual (cut and paste). Some pages lost some formatting but I always got what I needed. I found it better than ON or EN.

ON: table-based pages are often mangled, but everything else comes in easily using a fairly reliable 3d party plugin for firefox, which is not yet supported in FF3 or Chrome.

EN: tables are hopeless but everything else comes in great. The web capture is by far the fastest and most reliable of any capture program I've seen - mostly because it is web-based and it all happens behind the scenes. It works in any browser because it's just a bookmark.

*** Emails***
ADM: cut and paste is all you get, and no links to the original.
ON: WHY couldn't they figure out how to create links to the original message in Outlook??? Still, the capture worked well.
EN3: capture is perfect EXCEPT no embedded files in EN, so you lose your attachments.

*** text**
EN is by far the best. You get web access and tag-based navigation, which I am concluding is the best option for text snippets

***files***
ADM worked great for embedded file storage: you could attach any number of files to any outline item. Slick. But you couldn't search the files.
ON worked great too, except that (1) you couldn't search the files and (2) it took a lot of clicking and scrolling to find the file in a OneNote notebook.
EN does not embed files EXCEPT for PDFs (for some reason). AND embedded PDFs are searchable.
Currently, I'm mostly just putting links to local files in my EN notes. Not searchable, and not portable, so I need something better - but it sounds like this is what people are doing with WR too.

I would agree with Steve Z. that a single repository for everything is for now unrealistic --and, as far as my own needs are concerned, probably for the future as well.

For example, I have a large quantity of project-related photographic material that would bloat any database file to the point of uselessness. I only recently delved into movie files, and already my library of TED (www.ted.com) lectures representing valuable references, has grown to several gigabytes. So I would suggest that the file system remains unchallenged as the repository infrastructure.

Focusing on the large percentage (in terms of discrete items rather than volume) of information that many of us have to deal with, I would suggest that much of what has been mentioned is capable enough, as long as it can incorporate links to items held in external repositories, be it the file system or other dedicated applications supporting such links to their content, e.g. Evernote, Surfulater, UltraRecall, Zoot etc. In this way, rather than exporting/importing information around, one can simply link to where that information is currently held. (Mind you, a long-term discipline in file management is required so that such links don't become redundant overtime).

An additional reason for this is that the near future may easily bring more kinds of information items. E-mails, websites and files have been mentioned, but how about RSS? Omea Pro incorporated RSS as a repository and the first time I read about it I thought it was of marginal importance, but now RSS constitutes an important part of my reference information. OPML files grouping several RSS feeds together are now widespread and dynamically linking to them is preferable over importing. And, I'm sure there's more to come.

In fact, I can't stress the superiority of linking over importing enough: as flexible as all-in-one applications may be, dedicated applications usually do their job better. For example, even if one imports emails to a single mega-repository, one will probably keep sending e-mails from the original e-mail application. Another example are websites: with dynamic Flash-driven sites almost becoming the norm, reliably grabbing information from the web is becoming more and more difficult for general-purpose applications.

Last but not least, it's incredibly easy to end up with multiple outdated copies of one's data. I see "Outlook address book importing" in just about every software imaginable but, overtime, this may be useless if the imported data can't be synced to the original. But then, if it needs to be synced, why not simply link to the original?

Cheers
Alexander

Chris Thompson wrote:

Steve, if you haven't tried it already, take a look at the current version of Together.
I think it's the strongest single repository program available at present. It allows
you to pull in web pages as *either* webarchives or PDFs, which is a nice choice, and
webarchives are fully editable. More important to me, it stores all the underlying
files in the filesystem, so you're not locked into the program and everything's
transparently accessible via Spotlight. Though Devonthink is still the only
program with machine learning algorithms built in.

Chris,
Thank you for the Together suggestion. I have looked at Together in the past, but thought it was too redundant to Yojimbo, which I bought early on in my MacBook life. However, the more I learn about Together, the more it seems like a better product than Yojimbo. I am also intrigued by EagleFiler, especially now that its smart folders can perform actions on data... which makes EF start to sound like a Mac version of Zoot.

Before shelling out money for either of those applications, I want to see what DevonThink 2.0 is like.

Steve

Interesting... I didn't know about that update to EagleFiler. I haven't tried EF for a while. It's definitely true that EF and Together are very close competitors.

One thing I've noticed is that QuickLook across the operating system is starting to pay off. For instance, you can store OmniOutliner documents inside Together now and interact with them (open/closing nodes) inside the program, without Together's programmer having to add any special support for OO. Similarly, MindManager documents can also be stored and previewed. This really makes having a single repository a lot more practical than it would otherwise be.

-- Chris

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Thank you for the Together suggestion. I have looked at Together in the
past, but thought it was too redundant to Yojimbo, which I bought early on in my MacBook
life. However, the more I learn about Together, the more it seems like a better product
than Yojimbo. I am also intrigued by EagleFiler, especially now that its smart
folders can perform actions on data... which makes EF start to sound like a Mac version
of Zoot.

Before shelling out money for either of those applications, I want to see
what DevonThink 2.0 is like.

I posted the following in UR Is Dead before I realized it would fit better in this thread:

Jan and others, though I stopped using UR some time ago, I thought they had a going concern so I am somewhat surprised. However, I had noted the responses on the forum seemed less frequent than before.

And I agree with you, Jan, about the ?warmth? fact of Kinook?s corporate culture. I felt the cool in a number of ways; for one, as far as I could see, there was never any personal comment or indication even of where Kinook or who is Kinook.

As well, the documentation was more descriptive than instructive, and for a klutz like me that is not a good thing.

IQ and My Info, as I see the market, are the only ones doing metadata in columnar form. I am watching IQ carefully.

I notice that in the My Info forums the developer?s responses are also less frequent than they once were. I suspect that other, more lucrative aspects of the business are taking his attention. There has been no date given for beginning work on version 5.

IDEA! hasn?t upgraded since 2006. I wrote to the developer and asked, receiving a vague response about a future upgrade. It?s too bad, because IDEA! seems to be a neat ?dashboard? kind of program.

Omea and Chandler are both open source, and Chandler may be more actively developed than Omea, but both are moving like over-fed snails, ie. you wonder whether they are moving at all.

I have recently installed Surfulater 3 http://www.surfulater.com . I am impressed with the development of Surfulater, and its ability to capture web information accurately. It is now better than Evernote, and certainly for serious web researchers it offers more capability, with both a full folder and full tagging capability. Evernote 3, in an effort to be the app that can be installed on just about anything, excepting the kitchen sink, left its loyal info-centric users behind; the developer?s continuing assurances that EN would eventually restore version 2 features removed from version 3 began to wear thin some time ago.

InfoHandler for many of its loyal users might as well have gone out of business because its IH2008 product, for which it charges, is still incomplete and the Yahoo group has been dead for most of the last several months, except for a long post today wondering if 2008 was completed yet.

So I am happy with Surfulater web clipping performances, and am looking at it as a notetaker. It has some templates, and the frame that surrounds Surfulater?s content is in essence a metadata card. I am rethinking my love of columns, and wondering whether I and perhaps others use programs that are more feature rich than we really need.

And I miss ADM and the potential of that program. The only program I see that could fulfill the ADM vision and move beyond it is IQ.

Daly

I like Neville Franks, Surfulater?s developer. He is consistently responsive to all manner of customers concerns, and is fast to make sure that they are dealt with.

Jan Rifkinson wrote:

Altho this is greatly disappointing..... & frustrating..... this action does not
come as a surprise to me. In fact, I suggested it?s possibility once before & was
shouted down. So be it.
>I strongly believe that besides having a great product?
like UR?open, kindly, friendly, welcoming customer support is just as essential to
the potential success of any product.
>Yes, for those of you who are technically
oriented, kinook has always been prompt in replying to technical questions posted
here. Now I suppose this is all that should be required of technical support, ie.. ask a
question, get the answer.
>But, to me, both the information & the approach has always
been highly technical & cold & frequently over my head.
>A smile goes a long way in this
world. IMO, UltraRecall was never going to break out of its small technoworld with
that approach.
>Like Agenda, Ecco & ADM before it, UR leaves behind a mature,
unfinished product & a bunch of users who now have a tough decision to make.... and if
they decide to move on..... hours & hours of work before getting their life back in
order.
>None the less, I don?t wish Kinook any ill. I hope they succeed as I do all other
small software companies whom I have spent thousands & thousands of dollars
supporting over the years.
>Happy Halloween.
>--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT
USA

Interesting topic (the main game I guess) and thought provoking comments.

It's disappointing about UR but that is the bleeding edge world of software. While I own a licence I haven't used UR since a particularly nasty experience with Kinook. I'm afraid that I can't say any more in an open forum.

My observations FWIW:

I agree with the comments that a single PIM repository is not necessarily a good thing or a realistic expectation. After a great many painful experiences backing the wrong software horse and even operating systems (I wasted half a life on OS/2), I've lately realised that it is all about contexts.

CONTEXT 1
Is it a work context or personal hobby context? I'm in the first context and I simply don't have the time to be moving data into a central repository no matter how easy it is. I have tried it many times, most recently with OneNote, and as soon as work pressures build, I stop moving emails, file links etc into the central PIM.

My work system has to be totally automated and in my face most of the time for me to maintain the discipline. Also the benefits have to justify the effort. You soon realise that if the effort involved in maintaining and interrogating the central repository does not consistently help you directly, you fall off the wagon. Sometimes it happens subliminally, without you even being aware that you have stopped doing it, before it is too late. You then feel guilty about your failure to be "productive".

CONTEXT 2
So what system should you use? What's been working for me lately (spectacularly so, to my great surprise) is that the system I use is rooted in the context in which I operate most of the time. Specifically, do you operate in a world driven by email, or project management, or creative writing, or web research etc etc?

I'm currently in a world in which most of my tasks and projects are driven by email. After years of trying to move data out of email systems, I now use Outlook "properly" using Clear Context and the Michael Linenberger system. It's like a load has been lifted off my shoulders. My productivity has increased and I'm no longer worried about maintaining "the system". It looks after itself and I can concentrate on the things that matter. I still use OneNote - but more creatively for drafts, meeting preparations and so forth - not as a catch-all repository. I'm also keeping an eye on InfoQube which seems to be progressing very well.

By inference, if I was writer or a researcher I would be using alternative tools that work better in those contexts.

In summary it's horses for courses. Use what works best for you and your world - and don't get too distracted about the latest you-beaut all in one solution that seems to promise the world but is unlikely to deliver.

Jack

I guess one has to start with their own personal definition of a single repository. For me, it doesn't make sense to store everything in one place, e.g. email is already stored in an email client (why duplicate?), RSS is already in an RSS client, likewise with media and photos. All of this is searchable in a single systemwide search with modern operating systems.

The need for a heterogeneous repository in my view is largely for things that don't have a more natural "home." Saved web pages, scanned newspaper articles, PDF files, audio recordings from meetings, miscellaneous notes and outlines, snippets of thoughts. If I wasn't storing that somewhere, it would just start to accumulate on the desktop, so doing nothing isn't really an option. Using the filesystem is fine (and better than clunky software, for sure), but you end up with things that should be in more than one topic or directory and it's difficult to work organically with subsets of the items for short term projects. Good software can help here. Obviously one might have a handful of repositories for different types of information (e.g. work-related/personal) too.

-- Chris

I had the good fortune to be able to use Together on a MacBook Air that I was trying out as part of a pilot program at work. It is much like Devonthink and Eagefiler, but I found the implementation of Smart Groups(Folders)to be very nice and easy to use. Eaglefiler has a new version which is supposed to work as well as Together, but you need to be running Leopard to take advantage of the features. I downloaded and installed Eaglefiler's latest version and I will probably upgrade to Leopard soon so that I can take advantage of the Smart Groups, but I am also waiting to see what Devonthink Pro 2.0 is like
The bottom line is that we Mac users have a very rich set of options.
This is not to start a religious war over Mac vs. PC. I use them both, and these days both operating systems are very close in capabilities.
However, the Mac seems to have drawn the people who want to do the info management thing, at least as far as development s concerned.
I'd love to have a version of any of these programs to run on my work PC.

Jim

Let me then push the linking idea more aggressively. We can try to "link" items in separate repositories into some db program such as UR, WR, 1N, PB (Personal Brain). But has anyone done it successfully with simply the OS folder?

The Planner Beta (http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/index.htm is one gesture at this. Generally folks need to do the following:
* store files, emails, web pages, snippets
* organize the data by folders and/or tags (preferably in some outline/mmap like fashion)
* recall by navigating through the hierarchy or through search

An OS stores files just fine. One can also drag *.msg into a file folder. XYplorer has a nice feature where it will rename outlook emails upon drop to include sender, date, etc. Web pages are a pain, which is why so many of us use WR or surfulater or something else. MHTs or PDFs might be a solution (why should this be such rocket science?) Snippets of text are also a pain (although txt files are a possibility); this is also why so many of us use UR or Zoot.

WDS could index all of this.

The real weakness is in the outlining/organizing. Most file browsers are terrible. What I'd like is a view that allows one to see subfolders and their contents indented. Dopus has a view like this, I think, but I find that program difficult to use. Also, if we could somehow have an outline order (based on some *.xml file in the folder directory) so that we can move items up and down and indent, that would be great. And the xml file could also be used as a tagging system for files.

In any event, by now you get the gist. Does anyone use a file browser in this way? Which one?

Many thanks.

I do work this way, for the most part.

A "view that allows one to see subfolders and their contents indented" is one of the standard OS X file browser views. There isn't any way to control the order within a level except by alphabetization (or modification date, etc.), but you could rename files with prefixes.

I store my bookmarks as either PDFs or webarchives (basically the same as .mht), use the filesystem as an outline of topics, and then tag them with Spotlight comments. Images work the same way. The OS can create custom search views (only collapsed lists, not in outline context). I used to use a program called Leap that would create alternative graphical search views, but ended up switching to a different program (Together). But the program I use doesn't have a proprietary database... the filesystem is its database... it's just a convenient way of getting things in the right places and tagging them.

I generally don't like the "old" notion of custom databases that you squirrel your information into and then can't get it out. The filesystem exists and stores searchable metadata for a reason. But on the same token, data that already has a logical "home" (email, RSS items, music, etc.) makes more sense to keep in its original application, and you just store links to it in your project's working hierarchy.

-- Chris

jerryk wrote:

Let me then push the linking idea more aggressively. We can try to "link" items in
separate repositories into some db program such as UR, WR, 1N, PB (Personal Brain).
But has anyone done it successfully with simply the OS folder?

An OS stores files just fine. One can also drag *.msg into a file folder.
XYplorer has a nice feature where it will rename outlook emails upon drop to include
sender, date, etc. Web pages are a pain, which is why so many of us use WR or surfulater or
something else. MHTs or PDFs might be a solution (why should this be such rocket
science?) Snippets of text are also a pain (although txt files are a possibility);
this is also why so many of us use UR or Zoot.

WDS could index all of this.

The real
weakness is in the outlining/organizing. Most file browsers are terrible. What I'd
like is a view that allows one to see subfolders and their contents indented. Dopus has
a view like this, I think, but I find that program difficult to use. Also, if we could
somehow have an outline order (based on some *.xml file in the folder directory) so
that we can move items up and down and indent, that would be great. And the xml file could
also be used as a tagging system for files.

In any event, by now you get the gist. Does
anyone use a file browser in this way? Which one?

Many thanks.

Chris Thompson wrote:

I do work this way, for the most part.

A "view that allows one to see subfolders and
their contents indented" is one of the standard OS X file browser views. There isn't
any way to control the order within a level except by alphabetization (or
modification date, etc.), but you could rename files with prefixes.

Unfortunately, I am a Windows user and not likely to be able to switch anytime soon. It's nice to hear that that's a standard OSX view.

I generally don't like the "old" notion of custom databases that you
squirrel your information into and then can't get it out. The filesystem exists and
stores searchable metadata for a reason. But on the same token, data that already has a
logical "home" (email, RSS items, music, etc.) makes more sense to keep in its
original application, and you just store links to it in your project's working
hierarchy.

I mostly agree... but this is where the file v. pile distinction can become relevant. I'm happy to pile most email becuase it's fairly easy to serach (I keep coming back to NEO as a front end to Outlook email). But I probably want to "file" 5 % of my email, in which case, I might as well drag it into an OS folder if I can drag it into an Outlook folder.

Thanks for your thoughts.