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Software for bridging gap between notes and digital media
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Posted by Graham Rhind
Mar 7, 2020 at 09:33 AM
> With your use case, is it possible to add detailed notes to the actual photograph? So for instance, would you be able to add a description within the photograph’s entry? Or do you need to create a separate entry, like a note, and link them? As I remember, Zoot had different types of entries. There were notes, Journal entries etc.
You can add comments to each file, regardless of type, as part of a file’s metadata – this is separate from “notes” within Zoot – and information within that comment can also be used to define rules for views in Smart Folders.
> This sounds attractive. I do not want to be spending a lot of time creating the structure. Can Zoot automatically monitor a file on your computer and import items from that file as separate entries? I realize a smart folder is different- I just am curious if that is possible. I typically save different files to different folders. It would be nice if my Info Manager could automatically import items into from a folder and create an entry. Even better would be going beyond the file name to create tags. In the case of an academic journal pdf/journal- pulling the tags from that. This seems to be something limited to reference managers.
If you link an entry in Zoot to a file it is monitored every time Zoot starts. You can also set a directory to be monitored, so moving files between directories could be made possible without breaking the links. I’m not sure about importing items from files as separate entries. About the “automatic tagging”, to be very clear, I create tags using file names because it is intuitive to me, it can be read simply by me and it is useful should I want to use different programs, such as Tagspaces, which Alexander mentioned above. But Zoot can create views based on hundreds of aspects of the entries within it – mileage within a task, cc field contents within an e-mail, URL within a web page, author from a feed, artist from a music file, city from a contact name …. It’s almost unlimited.
By the way, I tried Tagspaces and I did like it, but it has a database size limit which I kept bumping against. I now use Tabbles - https://tabbles.net – which might also suit your requirements. It can be made to work offline, though that does take some technical knowhow.
>I remember correctly, Zoot can process emails in some interesting ways. There is a way that you can set it up to monitor an email account and have it create entries from incoming messages in a similar way to infoqube. Taking your current cataloguing project, would it be possible for you to create the same type of entry in zoot that you do currently, by emailing the photograph? Can you email a photo to an account you are monitoring, and have the name, location and event tags pulled from the attached file’s name or elsewhere in the email?
Short answer: yes. (I haven’t tried this, but I’m pretty sure it can). Zoot treats any information you put into it in the same way, and you can create views on any file’s contents, metadata, name etc.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 7, 2020 at 02:47 PM
Got it now; it was clear enough but I somehow assumed that was only in the context of TheBrain, not of the file system.
Great approach, this way most of the work is valid regardless of the tool you will then use.
Graham Rhind wrote:
>Yep. No need to assume - I wrote it in my post: “Each photo is carefully
>named (who, where, when etc.).”.
Posted by Graham Rhind
Mar 7, 2020 at 03:50 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Great approach, this way most of the work is valid regardless of the
>tool you will then use.
Exactly. I’d like to say that I planned it that way, but it’s just a by-product of what I was naturally doing ;-) . It helps a lot in programs such as The Brain, where you can tag “thoughts” but not each file attached to that thought.
Posted by Nomatica
Mar 8, 2020 at 05:54 AM
Graham Rhind wrote:
>If you link an entry in Zoot to a file it is monitored every time Zoot
>starts. You can also set a directory to be monitored, so moving files
>between directories could be made possible without breaking the links.
>I’m not sure about importing items from files as separate entries.
>About the “automatic tagging”, to be very clear, I create
>tags using file names because it is intuitive to me, it can be read
>simply by me and it is useful should I want to use different programs,
>such as Tagspaces, which Alexander mentioned above. But Zoot can create
>views based on hundreds of aspects of the entries within it –
>mileage within a task, cc field contents within an e-mail, URL within a
>web page, author from a feed, artist from a music file, city from a
>contact name …. It’s almost unlimited.
That does sound attractive. Thanks for clarifying.
>
>By the way, I tried Tagspaces and I did like it, but it has a database
>size limit which I kept bumping against. I now use Tabbles -
>https://tabbles.net – which might also suit your requirements. It
>can be made to work offline, though that does take some technical
>knowhow.
I will need to look up what those limits are. When I looked I believe I liked Tagspaces more than Tabbles but I do not remember why
Thank you again for al the information.
Posted by Slartibartfarst
Mar 10, 2020 at 02:43 PM
@Nomatica:
From experience, I have observed that it’s not often that computer PIM (Personal Information Management) tool users sit down and methodically analyse and try to understand exactly what their PIM requirements are, let alone what data types they need to cater for. I was thus struck by the “list of files” you provided - per copy of text of your post of Mar 4, 2020 at 10:31 PM, copied below.
A good deal of what you seem to be looking for - including the various data types - is covered in a post relating to a personal, now 10-year experiment in the use of Microsoft OneNote (which can provide Cloud-based AND/OR Client-based PIM databases) - refer:
Microsoft OneNote - how to make it your 21st century Zettelkasten PIM.
Whilst that (the use of OneNote) includes:
* the automatic OCR and indexing and search of all text embedded in images and handwriting on touchscreens (which latter is a feature that I currently do not need);
* the automatic indexing and search of text in inotes, web clippings, etc.;
* the automatic indexing and search of intelligible words/phrases (in many languages) in audio files and the audio tracks of video files;
- it does NOT provide the following 3 things:
1. An elegant/feasible solution to your apparent requirements relating to extensive image metadata. The best tools that I could recommend for that are:
- the excellent CHS (ClipboardHelp& Spell - which is a database tool where all text can be exported/imprted to/from a spreadsheet format, if required), which can be integrated with an image management tool (I use the excellent Irfanview) and an image editing/screen-capture tool (I use the excellent ScreenshotCaptor) - refer:
Re: snipping tool with image editor - Using CHS as an image clip management tool
- to be used in conjunction with the amazing Picasa - refer:
Google Picasa “Sunset” version - Mini-Review and anchor-point
2. An elegant/feasible solution to your apparent requirements relating to DM/ARM (Document Management/Academic Reference Management) and indexing/search of the text in douments/references. The only and best tool that I could recommend (scans your drive or specific folders and does cataloguing and automatic OCR of image-based PDFs also) for that is the superb Qiqqa - refer:
3. A general file metadata tool. The simplest and most effective tool that I have found and which I would recommend for that is not a file cataloguing tool, or similar, but a humble application-sensitive or file-sensitive (you can use it how you want) note-making application that saves its notes (metadata) to a text file linked to a relevant application window or file properties name, which text file [fully searchable on the drive] can be set to pop up in a discrete window whenever a particular application, screen, browser window or *file properties box* is opened up - refer:
Stick-A-Note + Universal Viewer - Mini-Review
__________________________
Access, Search and Retrieval benefits of the above:
The above relate to working with the concept of YHDAD “Your Hard Drive [and Cloud drive] As Database”.
Thus, with the possible exception of some of the complex image-specific metadata that Picasa may need to create (depending on what you use it for - e.g., linking people’s faces to their IDs/profiles/email addresses in your Gmail contacts), the applications referred to above do NOT lock your notes, data types and related metadata up in a proprietary tool/database, which means that most/all files on your client hard drive and in linked Cloud-based stores (such as OneDrive) can be indexed and searched by:
- WDS (Windows Desktop Search) - as installed with the Windows OS.
- GDS (Google Desktop Search) -
Filenaming methods:
Be aware that, with the limit on filename/path langths in Windows having been increased to some obscene size, filenames have become potentially very much more useful for containing lots of metadata and which can include Tags (so you DON’T need a proprietary tagging subsytem).
Two examples:
Example 1: If I am manging (say) a project called “CASE Implementation” which has a file-naming convention such that all documents created are titled thus:
ISODateOfCreation DescriptiveFileNameOrTitle (VersionNumber) STATUS (InitialsOfAuthor).Extension
- then I might have a report about it in an MS-Word document named thus:
2020-03-11 [CASE Implementation] - Review of CASE tools offering IDEF0+3+ABC modelling (V01.52) DRAFT (JB).docx
Here, the ISODate is at the front for ease of cataloguing and sorting and the square brackets are used deliberately to create a Tag: [CASE Implementation]
Creating [Tags] like that out of parts of a filename can be extremely useful when searching for that metadata using a fast file search tool such as (say), Everything.
Later. I might want to add another Tag to that file, so I might rename it thus - by adding a Tag of the name of the tool the report recommends most - [Platinum] software.
So the new name is:
2020-03-11 [CASE Implementation] - Review of CASE tools offering IDEF0+3+ABC modelling (V01.52) DRAFT (JB)[Platinum].docx
(The added Tag can be anywhere you think it fits without breaking the sense of the filename description or the filename convention.)
Example 2: Let’s say that I want to capture a web page that I am reading containing a blog post - maybe in case it gets expunged later - in such a way as to have it on disk, as a single file, so that it can be indexed and catalogued by the search tools (WDS or GDS). I can do this most easily and space-efficiently by saving it as an .MHTML file (a sort of .ZIP email file) - which can be saved by the browser (and opened/viewed within the browser or other viewing tools) - and I would use a similar filenaming convetion as above:
ISODateOfBlogPost TitleOfBlogPost - RelatedDomainOrOtherMetaData.Extension
So the filname that I “Save As” might be:
2020-03-11 Review of [Platinum] CASE Tool and bugs - casenet.com.mhtml
Here I have Tagged the [Platinum] part of the blog post title; the full URL will be contained in the .mhtml file.
______________________
That’s all I have to suggest in terms of recommended “PIM tools that work really well for me” as an IT nerd, but of course your specific requirements could be different to mine. I’m still not entirely “sold” on OneNote, as it still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of ergonomics and structruring of data - the latter being something that the excellent IQ (InfoQube) seems to be rather good at.
___________________________
You might also find this interesting:
There is one rather novel PIM tool that specifically I would suggest you might be interested in, but I personally have not yet fully explored it.
It is KFTF-Planz:
Keeping Found Things Found™ - refer:
Version 8.2 (2010-06-18)
Refer also:
It is based on the concept of YHDAD.
Having read the background to its development history, it seems like quite a nifty application, but CAUTION: In use, it can accesses and manipulate actual data (files) on the hard drive (i.e., not really in a self-contained proprietary database), so, if trialling, you may need to use the tool carefully. If the tool is used incorrectly, then you could indvertently delete that data with no warning or “Undo” capability (apart from retrieving it from the Recycle bin, or a backup).
The application seems to have been finished OK and works OK, but it seems to have been abandoned in 2010 (no further updates/maintenance), and though the website is still alive (and exists in Wayback), the forum (uses the old phpBB bulletin board software) seems to be present, but defunct.
There is an interesting report on XooML:
XooML: XML in Support of Many Tools Working on a Single Organization of Personal Information
Hope this all helps or is of use/interest.
_________________________________
Posted by Nomatica
Mar 4, 2020 at 10:31 PM
(must not have copied all the text to my post)
>
>These are the types of files I work with:
>
>Photos Notes (a photo taken to remember something)
>Voice Memos (phone & voice recorder)
>Saved Web Pages (offline)
>Saved pages (read it later)
>Bookmarks
>Screen Captures
>Copied Text (win clipboard)
>Emails & File attachments
>Audio & Video Interviews & and accompanied notes (text)
>PDFs, Open/MS word documents, power-point slides
>PDF Notes/ Highlights
>Scanned Documents, Business cards, Family Artifacts
>Notes & Journal entries (text, video & audio)
>Hand Written notes with pen and paper then scanned (though I would like
>to switch to a tablet).
>Contacts (Personal, & Business)
>Photography & Video files (downloaded from camera)
>
>Thank you