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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Nov 17, 2008 at 04:52 PM
Over the weekend, Tom Davis answered some questions about the upcoming Zoot version 6.0 (beta supposedly coming in January) on the Zoot Yahoo Forum. Here is what he had to say (compiled from three separate messages) :
[begin quote]
In Zoot 6 you can capture an entire web page or any portion of the web page and Zoot will store it in any one of the following formats:
* Pure HTML (Zoot displays clip in built-in browser)
* Web Archive / MHTML (Zoot displays clip in built-in browser)
* RTF (Zoot converts the HTML to RTF and displays in RTF editor)
You’ll also have the same options to create Web Archives as files on disk (as you can now in z5).
If you save a clip in HTML/MHTML you can always convert it to RTF or plain text later with the click of a button.
All limitations will be lifted in z6, including length of the subject line, document size, # of folders, # of items, # of folder assignments per item, etc.
Z6 will also do e-mail POP/SMTP.
The browser lets you browse and also acts as a file viewer. With File Links, for example, if it’s a file link to a file type that can be displayed in the browser, you’ll see the document, with the option to not see it and have an RTF document to work with, which can be a form with fields. It’s really quite nifty.
[end quote]
Needless to say, this is great news for all Zooters!
Steve Z.
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Nov 17, 2008 at 06:11 PM
Steve,
Thank you very much for the update.
Zoot 6 seems to be very interesting and it can get an outstanding position in the PIM market.
I am waiting…
Dominik
Posted by JohnK
Nov 17, 2008 at 11:51 PM
As with quite a few members here, I imagine, I have spent too many years waiting for Zoot to fulfil its potential to dare to be hopeful.
Having said that, if Zoot 6 does have all those features, and if it is released before I reach my dotage, then Zoot 6 might, just might, be what I’ve been waiting for.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 18, 2008 at 09:12 PM
I bought a license for Zoot when I enrolled in an online MBA course a year-and-a-half ago. I was hoping that it could be my main information manager for all my academic information.
On the way, I found that background information could be more easily sucked into a dedicated application like Surfulater (for web sources) or the file system (for PDFs).I also found a dedicated writing environment such as that offered by Brainstorm unsurpassable. Thus Zoot has become redundant in my setup. Interestingly, I didn’t even miss a bibliography manager, though I may use one now for my dissertation.
That said, I have followed Zoot’s development and concur that Tom Davis is one of the most dedicated and talented developers I have come across. I think he was himself disillusioned by the difficulties he faced when working with 32-bit Windows tools (the original Zoot was apparently written in early Visual Basic). Now that he has come to grips with the environment, he seems unstoppable. I don’t know whether ZOot 6.0 will be ideal, but it will certainly be very powerful.
Alexander
Posted by Derek Cornish
Nov 19, 2008 at 08:55 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>On the way, I found that background information could be more easily
>sucked into a dedicated application like Surfulater (for web sources) or the file
>system (for PDFs).I also found a dedicated writing environment such as that offered
>by Brainstorm unsurpassable.
>
Since Zoot32 came along I find I’ve tended to move in the opposite direction. I used to use Web Research for downloading web pages, but now I use Zoot’s “Archive Web Page” - which is now bug-free (at least using XP, my OS) - or the Zooter’s other features for d/l text snippets. “Archive Web Page” stores the page as an mht file, indexes it and provides a text-only copy as a linked item. I now find WR, which was always slow and cumbersome on my setup, to be completely redundant. Zoot can also be linked to existing pdfs and can import them as text-only copies. Same for doc files. With the upcoming rtf editor, highlighting of text in the text-only copies of mhts, pdfs, etc. will also be possible - though probably not on the original files.
Linking in this way also has the advantage of not locking up data in lots of different places, but keeping it instead in the Windows filing system, where it can be linked into and used by Zoot but also still available for disk-wide indexed searches, or for use by other programs. For example, when I want to browse quickly through my project pdfs, jpgs and so on, then instead of using Zoot - which would be very tedious - I flick through the relevant project file folders using TotalCommander’s plugin viewers to display them. (It’s actually a lot quicker than was using Web Research for the same task.)
Whether Zoot will end up providing a dedicated writing environment is another matter, and depends on the quality of rtf editor it uses. If it’s an off-the-shelf one it may well do for many purposes, but will be unlikely to have outlining features - at least, of the single pane variety. But Brainstorm is primarily an outliner, so it doesn’t really fit the bill for a complete writing environment either.
What I’d like to see for Zoot eventually is (i) a single-pane outliner as part of the rtf editor, and able export into Word’s outlining mode; and (ii) the ability to open up a large number of floating item panes at one time, and a means of arranging and re-arranging these - like index cards on a corkboard, along the lines of SuperNotecard. Zoot already can display items side-by-side in separate floating panes, but that’s about as far as it goes at the moment…
Derek