MyInfo Community Forums

I

Tags are individual for each tree / file. This is very good since - if you construct your bunch of trees / files in the right way - there might be some trees / files that use the same tags, but then, most of your trees / files will not have much in commun, tagwise (see II).

II

The only exception from this, "Action Tags", like "See Again", "Review", "Delegated to x", "See in the Web", and so on, which you would search for in AllOpenTopics or in AllTopics; of course, there is no way up to now to do this, for several Topics at the same time, in the normal FILTER environment. (You can SEARCH for tags but searching is quite another thing since results are displayed in the Search Results list; normal "standard" working should be done extensively using the filter pane! And it's in this filter pane that you can do "standard displays" day in, day out, using those very fine filters!)

But this would be preferable if it can be realized.

III

Is this a technical problem that cannot be addressed for this technical reason? (Tags are stored in the Topic, Filters are stored in the program itself)?

Could there be a second category of tags: global tags?! They would not be stored in the Topic itself, but in a central file in which MI would write down the items tagged in this way, and from which it would read the so-tagged items whenever you want to see those items. Then you would see a pop-up list with these items from which to choose.

These special tags could be restrained in number, let's say 20 or so, and they could be one-character only for instance, BUT there should be a way to access these littles lists by 2 keys, 1 for the command itself, 1 for the character in question, and NO return / enter necessary; this way, "^f4 a" (for example) would show the pop-up list with the items you would like to "see Again" for example.

The same would apply to do any item INTO that special tag, a "Alt-t t" then would do the current item into your list "tasks for Today" - of course the special key should be assignable (by "Tools - Keyboard Shortcuts"), but the real good thing would be to have this one-character-only, so that no Return/Enter after giving the name of the tag would be necessary, nor for entering, neither for accessing.

IV

It is necessary to have some filter commands assignable to shortkeys. At this moment, the only such filter commands are "Refresh Filter" which is more a "Clear Filter" command and not very helpful, and indeed the "Show Filter" command.

But there is no "Edit Filter" command, and that would be necessary since at this time, you only can access it by mouse click on the "Edit Filter" button... which is NOT at the same place within different topics when you allow then different tree pane widths for different topics! This way, even by employing a macro program to do the mouse click, you cannot be sure the mouse click is on the right spot. And without any doubt, "Edit Filter" is a command that is absolutely necessary to access the filters, so endless mouse clicking on different places of the screen, according to the different widths of your topic trees, is not what you would want to do this smoothly.

V

And finally, the "Edit Filter" dialog is incredibly un-handy when you have to use it hundreds of times a day, most of its elements being accessible only by mouse clicks, and not even the Return = ok Command is accessible otherwise (= not by Alt-x, nor by doing an Enter).

VI

My main problem with tags is this: When you click on a tag in the "Show Tags" window / pane, you get those items in alphabetical order, NOT in the order they are in the tree. Very well, but I NEED them in their tree order, so there should be, in the options perhaps, or, why not, in the right-click menu of the tags, like there is a the command "Show Tags Count" in that right-click menu, a toggle "Alphabetical Order / Tree Order" or something like that.

At this time, clicking on those tabs does not get me them in tree order, but I have to use a pre-defined filter for that. The problem here: Each time, I am looking for ANOTHER tag, so should I do 20 or 30 different filters, each in which the command line "Tag = xx" is DIFFERENT ? (If those commands were accessible by shortcuts, it might be possible to change this one and only different / changing criterion by an external macro, but it's not really handy, a toggle "abc vs. tree order" would smoothen my workflow day in, day out in a VERY considerable way!

VII

Another problem with tags: I understand the idea behind the double Enter, but it's not handy at all. Whenever you want to enter a new tag for an item, you do EditTags, enter it, and do Enter; whenever you want to enter a tag for an item where the tag is not new but used anywhere in the topic, when entering your tag, all possible tags are given in a list from which you can choose your tag, and I agree this is very handy for people who enter "long tags" having 5 or 12 characters, but SUCH tags CANNOT be displayed in the columns, at least when you use several such tags at the same time

(=which is the real interest in tags, I use zero here, one there, but perhaps 3 or 4 in a third item, and if you do this well, the usefulness of MI is MULTIPLIED, COMBINATION of tags is really interesting to boost you productivity, so think about it if up to now you only scarcely use them! It's one of the most powerful features of MI!)

- and when you have your normal notebook screen (even 15" or 17" width), not a 24" or more at the office.

It is in your interest most of the time to CHANGE the "TagsPreview" into "Tags", and then the tags themselves will be displayed on the screen, but then it is in your interest to have 1-digit overall tags and 2- and 3-digit "special" (=tree-individual) tags, and then, the interest of having that list to choose from is greatly dwarfed. Instead, it would be of great interest to be able to do just ONE "Enter" after the tag, in order to close the "EditTags" dialogue, not TWO "Enters".

Thus, would it be possible to give us a TOGGLE command "When editing tags, show proposals yes/no", with yes showing that list (and demanding two times "Enter"), and with no not showing any list, and allowing for entering your tag plus one single enter in order to close the dialog?

VIII

As I stated elsewhere, I consider MI the BEST outliner at this moment, and that all my whining here is given in order to PRESERVE it to hold that position and to make it absolutely overwhelmin in every respect; I am NOT trying to give the impression that MI is full of faults. Just have a look at UltraRecall, where you cannot even display (? I tried for half an hour without succeeding, referring to the help file and trying all my best) user-defined tags, all the less so doing / changing them smoothly (by control-k you get a display and a change dialog, but that's more than awkward). (And that's not speaking here of a dozen other outliners, one even worse than another.)

Technically, MI is REALLY GOOD and more than that, but most of my remarks consider the "look and feel", and there, indeed, there is room for opimization... but let's face it, that user interface optimization is just a little bit of work to be done with tremendous effect, whereas any technical optimization would ask for a tenfold of work to get results. Thus, rendering MI a mind-blowing thing will be VERY EASY since just all the technical foundations to it ARE THERE INDEED.

I just had a look upon the forum of UltraRecall, searching for that tagging capabilities there, in order to correct myself, in case I overlooked something. Let me cite from there:

vogelap:
"It's been a while since this thread was posted. Has the recommended behavior changed in later versions of UR?" (in fact, there had been FOUR YEARS)

quant:
"let's wait for the keywords pane and then we can discuss ..."

And this is not old stuff, it's from May 30.
http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread. ... attributes

BUT, BUT, BUT...

and this is the reason for which I am writing this,

in other forums UltraRecall is considered, without giving any reason, so much more sophisticated than MI, AND in the kinook forum, there are HUNDREDS of reads for each subject within just several weeks or so, that we must consider this:

Since technically, MI is SUPERIOR, and notwithstanding this, here in the MI forum there are just 20 reads for entries in 3 months or more, it seems to me that there are some psychological problems to be overcome in order for MI to gain the (very high) place it truly deserves in the consideration of the general public (of outliners); being a minority is one thing; being a fraction of that minority when in fact you deserve to be the majority of that minority is quite another one.

Don't be angry, let's see the world as it is. UR is american; America is considered "good" (in technical subjects); Milenix is Bulgarian; why not have some Ltd. somewhere in Great Britain for it, with just a post address? That could help.

In the Windows task pane (=bottom of the screen), there's "Milenix MyInfo - [x]", why not get rid of the "Milenix" part? MyInfo is good, "Milenix MyInfo" is not as good.

The look and feel of MI is not that elegant at this time... and so what? Cannot THAT be re-done in just three weeks? Since, again, technically all is there, and then it should be possible to have some cosmetic repainting here and there in no time!

We can do that cosmetic overhaul just like this, in order to have MI propulsed at its right position within several months.

It's the first two hours - what do I say, the first two minutes - of trying out a program upon which the buy or pass by decision is based on.

I have other things to say, about panes for example, but I'll do this another day.

And I would like to say, of course I do see the "necessity" to apply to the slate comp market, but this would only be a second step; without perfect keyboard GUI beforehand, this could not be done.

I need some positive responsiveness to my 2cents spread over MI's GUI, and within some weeks, MI will be not only a functional superior program, but also a program inviting trial users to put all their stuff in within two minutes' trial, thus leaving its too tiny niche - 20 reads for a forum item in 3 months, bad. We need to change this, and to multiply its market share!

( Just one thing, text in the editor is best seen in Arial 10 points, and there is a "natural optical identation" for this text size, no need to change it, I am speaking here of the width between the frame, the border, and the beginning of the text in each line, the "inner border width" you could call this. Above your text, the title of your item... but which start AT the border... when in fact it should not only start at the starting position of the text in the frame, but should be at least the same size of the "default-sized" text, so please do it a little bit bigger, and in bold, or even better, display it in bold / italics whenever these are selected for the title in the tree - I know that screen real estate is VERY valuable, and that's why, e.g. I would NEVER EVER ask you for doing that Microsoft sh** ribbon (awful awful awful!) -, but the item title in a lesser size than the item (default) text - not good, graphically, that's for sure. )

And so on and so on, I have a LOT of ideas how to improve MI's cosmetic aspects so as to give it a professional LOOK - the professional base is there, but as things are, it doesn't SHOW enough in the first two minutes... and even after 30 minutes. Let's change all this together, and we'll have VERY SOON the best program in the world!

Fred, I admire your enthusiasm, and I agree that MyInfo ought to be much more widely known and used. Having tried out most of the major note-taking programs at one time or another, I can testify that MI is one of the very best -- yet it seems barely visible most of the time. I'm not sure why that is. You seem to think that the fault lies with the slightly old-fashioned look of the program (which doesn't bother me at all, incidentally). That may be the case. But when we consider the example of Evernote, the most commercially successful note-taker on the market now, it seems clear that EN's wide acceptance is connected with its ability to synchronize smoothly across several platforms and to store data in the cloud. Is that perhaps the key to success right now?

Fred, I agree that MyInfo could be improved in order to gain more popularity. We will take into account your suggestions for the next release. I agree that some small cosmetic changes can have great usability effect!

wsp, thanks a lot for this reply, I especially appreciate your passage where you side me in my impression that all this technical excellence of MI doesn't show - it's important that Petko does not think I'm half-crazy but takes my efforts to tout (cf. my touting on bitsdujour.com) seriously, and that implies that he first believes I might be right when I say touting is good, but it won't work but for a perfect program.

First for the look and feel. I took the trouble to concoct another post I am going to publish in two minutes in which I'll prove, I hope, that precisely it's NOT only the look-and-feel, the "graphics" of a GUI, that is the most important thing in trial user's decision-making process, but rather REAL FUNCTIONALITY IN WORK that makes the difference.

But Evernote is a perfect example for masses-applying undertakings, and let's face it, Evernote have millions and millions of dollars for doing their touting, and there's a kind of simplification in it that appeals to the masses; if ever programs like MyInfo or UltraRecall would try to compete with those, well, people would be well-advised to go with the dumb original, with Evernote... and this way, people went with Microsoft Word, not because it had been better than WordPerfect, but because it was the billionnaire's thing, and people go with the winner.

Not having read your post - I am reading it now when I am posting my other post here -, I went into the other direction, I told Petko to go high-brow, since MI has the technical capability to do this, and since I am here with my enthousiasm and my savoir-faire (I think I'm a bad programmer but a rather good software designer), willing to really help, so the conditions to do this are reunited -

and precisely, with all my enthousiasm, I do NOT delusion myself into believing that MI could ever compete with those masses-appealing craps (I do not use Microsoft Word except as an export format for exchanging papers with third parties, an I would not have EN for free; in another categorie, MindManager is such a bad program but which has millions of followers; yes it is ok for doing presentations, but many people try to enhance their thinking with it, in fact restraining, crippling their thinking, there isn't any third dimension to that program, any associative thinking possibility, but people do NOT SEE this...

And this brings me to a rather pessimistic conclusion:

PEOPLE LOVE WHAT HELPS THEM TO STAY DUMB.

Your post is very interesting for me since I think you are perfectly right, and because I think that, without having read you up to then, I took these hours to tout 3 professions / workframes to Petko in order for him to apply to these people there, writers, psychotherapists (of the analytical flavor or when they do analytic work), and lawyers, and of course there are a lot more professions, the higher levels of middle management, and others, where my "philosophy" for MI would apply.

Imagine Petko, as a one-man show, to compete with EN: he'd get lost.

Therefore, and I am willing to concede that my preposterous lecturing here must appear being of utmost condescendancy on first sight, my idea for MI is twofold:

- using its technical foundations for giving it a high-brow GUI, and as I said, yes, on a graphic level, but that's secondary, the functional level being the thing that must be state-of-art, and then

- selling it, high-brow way, to high-paid professions that are able to understand and SEE the "invaluable value" MI can give 'em... and to h*** with the masses that will end up with EN anyway...

...AND market it to those professions in a way that ENABLES them to see, at a glance, this "invaluable value" MI can bring them.

And then, yes, I think people will go to slate comps, but again, one-man show, no chance to deliver multiple goodies to multiple platforms; let's wait for Windows slates becoming ubiquitous (at this time, manufacturers spread into many different directions, operating system-wise, which is aberrant and will first have to be overcome), and trust me, my ideas for an MI adaptation to such computers will be as opulent as my ideas for MI for keyboard comps.

And then, yes, let's face it, why the cloud, why EN cloud-wise does people attract so much, LURES them into dead ends even? Because behind all this is the promise to work together on things, which in reality, at the time being, is so badly implemented wherever it's implemented, and that's not often.

So, instead of synch, people need co-working, which is much more difficult to attained, and in there, synch is a core concept indeed.

Let's face it, I need a real good program for my needs, and I'm interested in co-working functionality, but I do not have the programming capabilities to serve myself. If Petko wants to follow my "design" ideas - again, my design is functional first and graphics second -, he'll get a tremendous program in short time, since he is able to program it. He needs to trust me, but you see, I'm working in bright daylight, I submit my ideas to discussion, I'm not saying, take it or leave it, I'm willing to hear arguments against my possible errors -

but in the end, Petko has to decide if he wants to do little-little, tiny-tiny, or if he dares to view big.

Viewing big in the EN direction is suicide, the direction I sketch out here in this forum is perhaps not 100 p.c. right in every detail, but for this correction, AND for big ideas, we are a community here, there's you, wsp, for example.

I think my development in the post I'll push into this in a second is valuable; if you, wsp, have comments to do, I'm not going to squander my energies in trying to get you wrong, but I'll try to see you point and to optimize our common target approach.

Let's face it: I WANT that wonderful program that hides behind Petko's MI, and that's waiting for being let loose. And we all would have it, wouldn't that be wonderful? And for Petko's purse to begin with!

I am aware that my stance seems to be a little bit patronizing, and I am not happy with this. Just have a look upon UltraRecall, they are perfect perfect programmers and most awful designers. Petko's a tremendous programmer, and I'm designer who can help, and I'm willing to do so, for my own selfish reasons.

Let's joins our forces. Show 'em the way.


To Petko:

Good evening, Sir, I am very pleased of this very positive message of yours I just happen to read at this moment. Just have a look upon the post I wrote in MI (of course, where else?!) this evening and that I am going to post in just a second. You will see that there's a lot more than just aesthetical corrections here and there, and since you trust me that even minor changes have great effect, what about the changes I am proposing there? And, again, it is not in my intention to force you to big changes that take months of programming up-front, right on the contrary, I try to imagine what's there in the code, and how much it would take to enhance by rather little programming in order for a max of effect. But let's see what you think of my new post there!...

I must absolutely share this with all of you. You must know that there is, in the big, wide web, one site where's continually going on

A LOT OF WHINING AND DINING

i.e. years ago, there had been some tries to establish a real development of ideas, but that had quickly been aborted, and it's mostly a standing-up dinner party where people - even university professors among them - adore to be dumb. It chatting without much constructiveness, and so I lost my temper there rather soon (my postings are under "Fredy" since they don't allow for less-than-5-digits-names) (you can also find me in the askSam forum, under "Fred", but it's simply not worthwhile to post there, the owner is very old, the programming chief / product manager has gone about two years ago, and new posts are regularly by new users whining about faulty imports, well, these are knows issues... for 10 years now - no, I'm not kidding -, and to top all, the Dos version was state-of-the-art and even "programmable" in many ways, and thus, some people there use it even under Windows 7... but then, each item in the Dos version takes 1,000 characters - so you see, real vintage products are rather outdated even when having been spectacular at their time).

Ok, now for this thing in the whining-and-dining (instead of construction) room: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/ ... ppointment

"Profound Disappointment

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Aug 9, 2010 at 08:16 PM

As I continue to explore programs here on my new Mac, a very profound kind of disappointment is growing. Quite honestly, I came back to the Mac with a great deal of optimism that programs, especially the information programs, would be better. All in all, I do not see that they are. I’ve already ranted about that, and my opinion that Mac developers are coasting on Apple’s laurels. [...] But for this I paid a few hundred dollars more than I could have for a new Windows 7 machine.

In spite of my frustrations with both MyInfo and UltraRecall for some of their development quirks, they look far better to me now, having explored the Mac equivalents.

[my formatting] [...] So I have a couple of days - do I keep the Mac, or do I ask Staples for my money back, and get a PC?"

So this is like honey running down in our throats, like Germans say, and should rightly so make Petko's day...

And then, what will good ole Daly say when he sees MI in some months from here?!

He'll have to install some Windows-enabling software in order to make MI run on his Mac - and he will do that, Daly being among the rather smart whiners there!

Addendum: Proof: August 10, he says:

"In the PC world, UltraRecall is famous for wordy descriptions in its help file about what features will do, yet neglecting to specify in a simple way exactly how to use the features."

I could not have said it in a better way, except for that he could perfectly have omitted the "in a simple way exactly" part, in fact you can easily turn round and round and round in UR's help file without ever getting to the how to parts - and that's it for UR. The world is unjust, and UR has a very good name. That helps but it's just as Apple. What did they call them again? Oh yes, there we are:

DREAM MERCHANTS

No real competitor when you get to basics. Their looks are better. Their promises are more prominent. We'll get to that and march past.

Fred, I see we both read outlinersoftware.com !

Re the MAC: It is going back to Staples. I love the hardware, and the stability of the platform. With the possible exception of DevonThink, the information programs are over-rated, and/or poorly presented, and/or poorly explained, and/or have feature sets with serious gaps.

During my recent rants on outlinersoftware.com I noted how unusual it is to see a Mac developer taking part in the discussions - at least more unusual than a PC developer.

Re UltraRecall - the program has a great deal of power, perhaps more than MI, but its interface is, to my mind, less straight forward and appealing than MI's (though MI could be spiffed up a little).

UR's manual has been a stumbling block for many people, and UR's not all that intuitive, so it ends up being harder for people to get used to. This problem has been brought to the attention of UR's developers many times, and generally ignored.

I think both UR and MI compare well with anything I saw in the Mac world - DevonThink compares more to EverNote and Surfulater in my view. EN's success comes now from having realized the value of being present on every platform, and being able to grab and sync existing information. Because of the need to quickly grab that market niche some of us feel the program was, at least for a while, dumbed down for Windows users - the CEO in an email to me has assured me EN will move ahead in its ability to actually process information.

My one concern with MI is its ability to handle material with the web. I have never understood exactly how to do it, and when I thought I understood, I was wrong. For example, I thought that if I saved a web page in MI, it would not change. I came back to some NYT pages months after saving them, and discovered they had been updated to the current date's news.

For me, I need easy-to-use columns (please, let's have word wrapping and expansion of cells that works), tags, links - and MI has that, and it is easier to use than UR. One advantage of UR is that within the same tree you can have numerous sets of columns because columns are based on a parent's attributes. I suspect Petko could develop that capability as part of v6.

The deal maker for me is the assurance Petko gave me yesterday that a service upgrade of MI, before v6 (I mistakingly referred to v5 in my post) will allow multiple open windows - which means MI takes a real step forward in terms of being user friendly to writers and researchers.

I purchased v5 standard yesterday, and installed it on the PC which will be replaced with a PC once I take the MAC back.

Fred, I agree that Petko does extremely well for a small developer.

Daly

Fred wrote:I must absolutely share this with all of you. You must know that there is, in the big, wide web, one site where's continually going on

A LOT OF WHINING AND DINING

i.e. years ago, there had been some tries to establish a real development of ideas, but that had quickly been aborted, and it's mostly a standing-up dinner party where people - even university professors among them - adore to be dumb. It chatting without much constructiveness, and so I lost my temper there rather soon (my postings are under "Fredy" since they don't allow for less-than-5-digits-names) (you can also find me in the askSam forum, under "Fred", but it's simply not worthwhile to post there, the owner is very old, the programming chief / product manager has gone about two years ago, and new posts are regularly by new users whining about faulty imports, well, these are knows issues... for 10 years now - no, I'm not kidding -, and to top all, the Dos version was state-of-the-art and even "programmable" in many ways, and thus, some people there use it even under Windows 7... but then, each item in the Dos version takes 1,000 characters - so you see, real vintage products are rather outdated even when having been spectacular at their time).

Ok, now for this thing in the whining-and-dining (instead of construction) room: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/ ... ppointment

"Profound Disappointment

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Aug 9, 2010 at 08:16 PM

As I continue to explore programs here on my new Mac, a very profound kind of disappointment is growing. Quite honestly, I came back to the Mac with a great deal of optimism that programs, especially the information programs, would be better. All in all, I do not see that they are. I’ve already ranted about that, and my opinion that Mac developers are coasting on Apple’s laurels. [...] But for this I paid a few hundred dollars more than I could have for a new Windows 7 machine.

In spite of my frustrations with both MyInfo and UltraRecall for some of their development quirks, they look far better to me now, having explored the Mac equivalents.

[my formatting] [...] So I have a couple of days - do I keep the Mac, or do I ask Staples for my money back, and get a PC?"

So this is like honey running down in our throats, like Germans say, and should rightly so make Petko's day...

And then, what will good ole Daly say when he sees MI in some months from here?!

He'll have to install some Windows-enabling software in order to make MI run on his Mac - and he will do that, Daly being among the rather smart whiners there!

Addendum: Proof: August 10, he says:

"In the PC world, UltraRecall is famous for wordy descriptions in its help file about what features will do, yet neglecting to specify in a simple way exactly how to use the features."

I could not have said it in a better way, except for that he could perfectly have omitted the "in a simple way exactly" part, in fact you can easily turn round and round and round in UR's help file without ever getting to the how to parts - and that's it for UR. The world is unjust, and UR has a very good name. That helps but it's just as Apple. What did they call them again? Oh yes, there we are:

DREAM MERCHANTS

No real competitor when you get to basics. Their looks are better. Their promises are more prominent. We'll get to that and march past.

May I clarify my remarks about Evernote? I wasn't suggesting for a moment that Petko should use EN as a model for MyInfo; I was merely reflecting on why EN is so phenomenally popular, and its connectivity across platforms was the only explanation I could offer.

I was a very heavy user of the old Windows version of EN and accumulated in it a ton of notes for two books in progress, but when EN was reborn as a cloud application, stripped of many of its old features, I realized that it was no longer capable of organizing research notes. At that point I jumped ship. I painstaking copied all my notes into MyInfo and have been using it happily ever since. EN is still in my life, but on the periphery: I use it as a rather messy file drawer for lots of miscellaneous bits of information I want to save but haven't the patience to organize properly. MyInfo, on the other, is my main instrument for collecting and organizing structured research data.

As an owner of both an iPhone and an iPad, I am occasionally frustrated that I can't easily carry around my MI notes on those two devices, but Petko's recent hints about an MI website (presumably synchronizable with MI files on my computer) suggest that a solution may be on the way. If so, I think that will make MyInfo a much more attractive choice rfor all of those folks who are preoccupied with cross-platform compaitibility.

Good evening to everybody, I must post a warning. I just lost here, in the blog software, more than 3 hours' work. I had been logged in, wrote for hours, clicked on "Submit" (without taking the precaution of doing some copying my text to the clipboard beforehand) - and was shown the screen "You have to log in first". Then I made my second error, I suppose, in clicking on the going back button in order to get back to the page containing my text, and it was not possible any more to get back to it, so my text is lost, no chance. Seems the blogging software throws you out of itself when some time counter is down, and this without warning.

It's 3h30 in the morning, I won't redo my text. Just let me say I am very pleased Daly's bought MI (and got rid of his Mac and is willing to leave crimping), and that I am sure he will soon be very happy with MI. Just a hint: When UR does different columns sets in one tree, that's overwhelming excellency, like their very elaborate hoisting feature... but then, they need to show such excellency in order to overcome the limitations of their all-in-one-tree philosophy. In MI, hoisting will be easy; in MI, you'll display your different subjects in different trees, and each will have its own columns set proper to that topic, and if you ever feel the need to have two columns sets in one topic, well, be sure it's the topic that's faultyly constructed!

Well, that's a little bit poor four 4 hours or more - could have been 6... but quicker to read, that's for sure. I fear this software threw me out after 6 hours. Not happy. DUMB DUMB DUMB, too late in the evening. Write everything in cloud softwares you want to write there, but do some ^c before triggering probably vanishing commands. (And I knew this, it's not been the first time...)

Oh no, it's Friday 13th! BEWARE WHEN DRIVING OR WHEN CLIMBING LADDERS TODAY!

Hey Fred, happy Fri 13th - here it is still the 12th.

I may remain a CRIMPER, in the sense I have an interest in this kind of software, and will probably always keep up to speed on what is happening in terms of development.

I have used MI before, and had got away from it - perhaps the crimping had got out of control!

With UltraRecall, as with MyInfo, you can have tabbed data bases, so it is not true to say everything has to be in the same tree. However, there are times it would be nice to have more than one column set in the same tree.

I'm curious, Fred, whether you ever saw ADM, which was developed up until a few years ago? Rather than define column sets from the parent, it saw them as views. This meant that more than one set of columns could be used for the same items - this provided flexibility in terms of function. Of the different programs out there, I think MI would have the easiest time reviewing ADM and "appropriating" ideas and features from it.

Re the Mac - for me it was an experience of looking at Emperor Jobs and seeing that he had no clothes on, to mangle a metaphor. The quality of Mac programs is highly exaggerated, and it appears to me that some of the "name" developers in the information and outliner sector have been living on the basis of the prevailing mythology, rather than by enhancing their standards. Today, I re-established my planning and organization system in MyInfo far more easily and quickly and at a higher level than I could have done in any of the Mac programs I tried.

The moral of the story is the need to support with constructive and creative suggestions the independent, competent, and conscientious developers such as Petko.

Daly

PS Hope the disappearance of your original post is the first and last piece of Fri 13th luck you have!

Fred wrote:Good evening to everybody, I must post a warning. I just lost here, in the blog software, more than 3 hours' work. I had been logged in, wrote for hours, clicked on "Submit" (without taking the precaution of doing some copying my text to the clipboard beforehand) - and was shown the screen "You have to log in first". Then I made my second error, I suppose, in clicking on the going back button in order to get back to the page containing my text, and it was not possible any more to get back to it, so my text is lost, no chance. Seems the blogging software throws you out of itself when some time counter is down, and this without warning.

It's 3h30 in the morning, I won't redo my text. Just let me say I am very pleased Daly's bought MI (and got rid of his Mac and is willing to leave crimping), and that I am sure he will soon be very happy with MI. Just a hint: When UR does different columns sets in one tree, that's overwhelming excellency, like their very elaborate hoisting feature... but then, they need to show such excellency in order to overcome the limitations of their all-in-one-tree philosophy. In MI, hoisting will be easy; in MI, you'll display your different subjects in different trees, and each will have its own columns set proper to that topic, and if you ever feel the need to have two columns sets in one topic, well, be sure it's the topic that's faultyly constructed!

Well, that's a little bit poor four 4 hours or more - could have been 6... but quicker to read, that's for sure. I fear this software threw me out after 6 hours. Not happy. DUMB DUMB DUMB, too late in the evening. Write everything in cloud softwares you want to write there, but do some ^c before triggering probably vanishing commands. (And I knew this, it's not been the first time...)

Oh no, it's Friday 13th! BEWARE WHEN DRIVING OR WHEN CLIMBING LADDERS TODAY!

Thanks a lot, Daly!

First, ADM, it's some mythical thing for me I only know by the praise of others; my urge to optizime one outliner is a little bit my wanting to have such a thing, really to the max in every respect, but not dumped but functional here-and-now! I tried to really refine askSam, but those people weren't interested in not a single hint - but then, when Petko sees my posting there, in chronological order, and given he's the time for it (doubtful), he'd see that, yes, MI hasn't been my first love, but that I am able to stuck with something really long, so that could serve as a kind a a trust-me credential for my ideas here. (And again, technically so much is here already, it's really the do-some-bright-brushes kind of thing more than any serious hard programming work, and thus, it's feasible.)

I had been writing in this blog software, right into the cloud, for a little bit more than 3 hours (=after midnight to 3.30) ... but it can be that it throws you out even after 1 or 2 hours; anyway, same thing occured to me with emails in the past when I got stock "too long" to it... without being smart enough to copy my work into the clipboard at least, before clicking on "Send" - with REAL cloud computing, there are some automatic saving routines out there in order to not let you lose your work this easily, but having your work on your hard (or your stick) is, for old people me, something reassuring, no doubt of that!

Again, wsp, I think your explanation for EN attractiveness is perfectly right, the appeal for young people is tremendous. It's "let's do all in Facebook", and the city of Paris, for example, does offer public Wi-Fi for everyone - but each time, it's a session of 2 hours, then you must reconnect again (and postings like this and mine in the night would be lost if done as I did here some hours ago) - in Belgium and Germany, the two countries where I live, there isn't any public Wi-Fi without lenghty inscription formalities, high fees, and so on - why? For legal reasons, when people send (or download) something "ugly" (=by authorities' opinion, and giving your 2cents on something could suffice for those procedures to be declenched), the owner of the Wi-Fi spot is legally responsible for what he is considered to have "allowed" (=without even knowing)... and so this universal cloud computering phenomenon isn't as strong here, as it is in other countries, and by this, I happen to underestimate sometimes its importance for people not as strongly rendered sheep.

This being said, if you have some working stick (and without having to fear permanent indexing will wear out its cells), carrying around your date on that stick would always be a good thing - see my experience some hours ago -, if and when there are export features that allow for easy shuffling around the "export-wanted" parts of your things to others...

Again, that complete-sharing philosophy of young people that's evident in Facebook goes into another direction... but then, let's face it: Are we sitting on a sinking ship, not here with MI especially, by with EVERY non-cloud application? Speaking frankly, I do NOT want to think about this, I am the guy who's happy WITHOUT ribbons, WITHOUT writing right into the cloud (but that's what I'm again doing here and now, for this peace, oh my!)... and in our lifetime, if we PRESERVE (the very very best of) those "hard-disk applications", we'll not run out of them, there ARE some here around yet that want to carry around their things (on a stick or whatever), and there always will be, even if we do not multiply our numbers, that's for sure!

But I want you to know that I see the problems even when I prefer to not permanently look at them, our commun enthousiasm would take too much a blow if we conceded too early that our "individual cause" was lost.

Again, I see the phenomenon, without really understanding WHY young people so much want to do everything out there - could it be kind of the new possibilities' attraction thing that would be attenuated by time?

I see the formal beauty of the iPad, and you, wsp, you've got one in spite of its not having (easy) no-cloud communciation facilities, no usb stick access but by using the stand if I see it right - so more and more people ACCEPT having to go what I would see as detours... but what's more and more considered the normal way now?

All this shows that my "choice" to propose MI as a NICHE product, instead of my wanting it to compete desperately with the big elephants (which are not better, just more powerful on the market place), wasn't as delusional as I thought in the first moment - indeed, SPECIAL features that give to special advantages over the lot (=over those goodies given to everybody), might indeed be the way to succeed in a world where the lot WILL end up with EN or similar.

Finally, it's exactly the same thing, again, now with the cloud, that is going on with outliners in general and MS Word, 1 outliner user for 200, 300 Word users? Even more? I don't know, but I'm aghast.

I would NOT know how to do with an outliner, and even that tremendously poor ActionOutline thing did 100 times better for my needs than Word would have done (several times, I tried to change back to Word for several months, so I'm speaking out of real experience, not just fiddling around) - but those 200 or 300 people out there, even when you try to prove real outliner's possible value for them, they stuck with their word processor... Thus, my idea to give special professions / occupations (=writing, among others) special features which would appeal to them, the general public not wanting any of those goodies, being happy with what they got and what they think is good... and the perhaps most interesting part here is that most people leaving Word do NOT leave it for an outliner, but leave it for that free thing that does everything in an even more bloated way than Word (=at least this was the state of things in the past), but doesn't offer any REAL alternative to Word, except for its being available for free.

And, interesting again, this gives it its market share, when in fact in the eighties a word processing software alone (Word, WordPerfect, some others, Exel and Databases went on top) were sold 500 dollars (just like Adobe does its pricing even tody), and when, in fact, when you work hours and hours in a program, every day, your interest should be, am I working with a perfect software really helping my way of working up to the core... and then, it's of no importance if that software is for free or is 500 dollars (not to be renewed every year, that's for sure): it's all about productivity in the end.

A last thing, that PB software which seems to be strong with some enterprises, does that cloud thing lately - it might be interesting to see in which way they develop. Why? Because there are NOT a real contender, beware, it's too special in its data storage concept - so let's watch their cloud efforts and learn from them if ever possible, without having to fear they will get much of that market (=that will always be to EN, not to PB)... (Too much learnin from your direct competitors can be risky, they could gain too great a lead; gaining insight from "accessory competitors" could be helpful, though, and that's what PB is for MI and others.)

Back to ADM and its different sets of columns, I grasp what you, Daly, want to explain, without knowing the realization there, and I see the interest. (Whenever PB gets such a multi-dimensional filtering feature, it could be really helpful.)

I am not sure I fully understand the concept, but what I have in mind is not different LISTS depending on tag / attribute combinations, but different TREES depending on those, right? Oh, I see the importance of this; I thought nobody in the world has yet come near to realizing this?

But then, I just made a clipping out of the wining-and-dining, where somedy said, there's outliners / trees, there's tags, and there's the best of both worlds, hierarchical tags. He put it like this, without explaining anything, but you see, I do the right clipping with MI, out there in the cloud, when something really smart occurs there, and be it just a hint, and I see it, I fetch it, and I'm willing to share.

So I suppose ADM HAD such a feature? Well done indeed; are you aware my lenghty explanations on the subject the tag combinations for writers, with th, ma, ch, and then th(i), ma(thisandthat)... would, when well enough constructed, ENABLE such a system? It's complicated since it's third-dimensional in permanence, so it ask for people who have the mind to travel in this with ease... but you see, I crave for getting to something like that; perhaps we can MI enhance in this way if we join our "design" forces (the problem laying in designing the programming, starting programming such a thing without knowing its put-out yet would lead nowhere - and that designing would have to be done in several intermediate steps, my "inner grouping of tags" being just ONE of several possible starting approaching for that first step).

But you imagine where we're at here... and the great numbers in their happy cloud thing... when even most basic outlining doesn't appeal to them to begin with. Special applications for "special people", and giving them special capabilities with them, that's the niche. I think we approach this by several directions but are perfectly united in the vision of the end product.

Not easy to get there, but I'm more than pleased that this forum, in the middle of the summer, is regaining strength and gaining focus. MI is a good program, my efforts to enhance it greatly will not fade soon, and I am happy people - INCLUDING THE DEVELOPER - join my efforts. (Now compare this with askSam - no, let's leave them alone, we've better to do, here!)

Here's the citation:

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1835/10
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 19, 2010 at 10:10 PM
I’d be surprised if more tag-based PIMs don’t appear soon; tags have become the modern way to organise stuff, to the extent that their “superiority” over hierarchical systems has been highlighted by works such as D.Weinberger’s “Everything is miscellaneous”. (There is of course also the best of both worlds - hierarchical tags)

And please, note the "" around "superiority" - and note that Alec did NOT say what I thought he had said, and I remember that in first reading this passage, my thought was:

"Oh yes, he's speaking of tags and subtags it seems, a tree FOR the tags, for organizing the tags between themselves. But there's quite another, much more interesting thing you could realize, tag combinations for TRIGGERING new trees, depending on those combinations!"

MI's filters allow for (very basic) sorting - that could be enhanced, I know -, even askSam's flying tree constitution-on-the-spot was (and is) a great thing for doing so, up to a point (and I said so there, I acknowledge excellence as soon as I see it) - and you see, Alec's post there did not trigger something new in me, it was just something I had known before (and perhaps he WAS speaking of tag-driven, dynamic trees); anyway, no new idea presented here, just a reminder what CAN, and indeed SHOULD be done (in the middle range).

So if ADM did all this up to a higher point, it would be helpful to have a detailed description of what it does, and in which way. Seems that ADM's developer has literally got LOST if I understand the situation. Incredible. But well, hoping he will come back one day would be crimping again, and more so, doing injustice to Petko, upon whose trust in our decision to STAY HERE we all depend in order for his motivation to give us that wonderful program we all are craving for!

So what exactly did ADM do so well, in what way exactly? I could not find any help file or other...

And this brings me to a last point, ADM obviously STAYED confidential in spite of all its superiority at the time - bad marketing, "general marketing" I suppose, putting the program onto the marketplace without showing special professions by which features ADM could have helped them do their thing(s) - another proof for what I said, it's not sufficient that MI HAD tremendous features, it would also be necessary that it got'em displayed at first sight. (=which makes the appeal of PB, it SHOWS its goodies right on the spot, and people say, WOW! - and then they've got 100,000 items in it, and they don't say wow anymore, but the program's been bought in the meantime, for 249 dollars, right?

Yep, there's work to do, but all basics are there. And Petko's got a live community.

(Emperor Jobs Naked - that's funny (and he's the most successful dream merchant of our time...for the time being that is)! But thrills sell, so let's 'em display. And now I'm doing "Submit"... with the ^a and ^c beforehand!) (I must do work, I'll have a look upon the other posts next week.)

YEEEES, the same thing as this night!!!! Except for my not going to the previous page, but giving name and code, then receiving the message "You'll be redirected to the previous page" - and than being shown an EMPTY field for my entering text, NOT my text as typed here for some 1 hour and a half or so, only, so last night, I didn't have any chance to regain access to my lost text, as I didn't have here.

Since this blog software seems to throw you out when typing more than one hour in a row, type in MI, then copy your text into this field. (I should have known this before Friday 13th...)

Fred, about the iPad. I find it great fun and useful for various things -- but not so hot for note-taking. When I need to read and take notes in a library, I sync my MyInfo files (via Dropbox) with the files on my netbook and then carry it to the library. Of course when I return home I have to make sure that I sync any modified files in the opposite direction.

In a pinch I can use the iPad in a library, but the lack of a physical keyboard means that I type at only about half my usual speed. And then afterwards I have to copy and paste the new material into Myinfo files on my desktop computer. It hardly seems worth all the effort. But I find it difficult to generalise about the iPad, because new apps are introduced daily, and I live in hope that eventually I will discover an app that works nicely with MI.

Hi wsp. Since you do not attempt to make us believe the iPad is the Real Thing, we all agree that we are - no irony whatsoever - really happy you have fun with yours - oh no, what a condescendance again, and I do not want it to be it that! I am really glad you have fun with your iPad, and hope indeed some smart pads will come our way so that I will not be in the obligation to buy the second generation next year. You put it right, this synching pain is not tolerable, and so iPad is for fun - but didn't they say even videos must be transferred into another format? Terrible in my opinion.

What I want to express, I do NOT want to spit into the soup but have you have a max of fun with it, but I CRAVE for such a tablet with Windows XP on it (or something as smooth), AND with that quality the iPad indeniably has - I once tried the iPhone, and I was deeply impressed with the touch screen, so having such quality at 10" must be a tremendous joy, and whenever I am speaking of my ideas for MI on such devices, it's exactly that quality I have in mind as the basic for MI making us happy on such a device one day.

So you see I understand your fascination with the iPad, it must be a joy to manipulate it. (But are you aware, it's crimping again, in your case here? Since, if ever there is a real good Mac outliner adapted for it, chances are you're leaving us - so my hope for Windows devices of that quality is also expressing my hope I won't have to do NO CRIMPING ANYMORE for the rest of my life, instead of jumping in all directions like a "cat on a hot tin roof" (stage play, and film with Taylor and the sausages man).

Unfortunately for your immediate well-being in the iPad world, that outliner there is NOT in the making, to OO Daly's "Deep Disappointment" applies... and so we better all share our longing for better Windows slates.

But then, is he totally megalomaniac, Jobs? Doing such a wunderful thing with so tiny a real usefulness? Again, it's the operating system's fault, iPad's is so much different from Mac's (thank God, we all would have to jump there if otherwise!), that even good Mac application would have to be programmed from scratch on - and that gives to Windows devices the manufacturers to come by.

I am dreaming of a Windows device like the iPad... and upon which I could use a stylus for precision. That's not tempting anyone else, I know, so I'll very probably have to do without. My let me STICK to "my" MI, at the very least!

My gosh, are they really dumb, out there? iPad is ten hours, some netbooks it's ten hours, with Win 7 Basic (or whatever they call it. So it's the touch screen that - but under Windows only - cannot be powered / empties the battery in 90 minutes? Come on, some years ago, MS tried to do that "Windows portable", for smart phone, and well, it's almost gone; why? Because, yes, strip your system to the basics, do adjoin something for the touchscreen use... but leave the core parts of the system alone, so that MI and other application will run on it without re-programming from scratch. THAT would be a portable Windows, not that alternative operating systems that need reprogramming! It like that MS and Apple also was the ENEMY of programmers, forcing them to do the same work, again and again for other platforms, instead of giving them some breath in here, so that they can do some REAL work, refining their softwares instead of just reprogramming them again and again!

But then, cui bono for this madhouse? The BIG development houses, the millionnaires, the EN's of the profession. In forcing them to reprogram again and again what they've already done, you end up by forcing them out of the market, leaving that market to the powerhouses. See my point? That's why I am not with them, but with Petko for the time being, and it's not I that want out.

Well, I suppose a Windows slate is one possible solution; but Petko has also indicated that he is considering a web version of MI, and that would make it feasible to work in MI on an iPad. Then we just have to solve the typing problem!

Good evening,

Oh my God! He's doing that?! Well, for me that's very strange, but then, it would be interesting how such a think works. If crippled, good night.

Here in "Tags, Filters", I have news.

In fact, I spoke of tag combinations, and of 1-character and of 2-character tags, and Daly spoke of the impossibility of filtering (=which leaved the possibility of searching) for tags a and b and c, but not a or b or c alone.

Well, I happened to use tagging rather extensively, but now must see that even by using the filtering dialog, it is not possible to do elaborate tag filtering, and that 1-character tags are to be avoided at all costs.

- In fact, in filter dialog, "Tag is abc" shows ALL items (always of current topic, not beyond (yet...)) containing abc, even when their tags are e.g. "xyz abc lmn"

- And (I saw, and I said, that before,) "Tag is abc def" ONLY shows all items with "abc def" in strictly that order, NOT items with "def abc", NEITHER items with "abc xyz def"

- And "Tag is a" (= here I'm speaking always of the filter dialog, but this "Tag is a" can, as we all know, also be triggered by clicking on the tag in the ShowTag list; when this is done, it works exactly the same) not only shows items with "a", e.g. "a bc d", "bc a d" and so on, but also items with "ai", "xia", and every other word just CONTAINING that "i".

You can imagine, when you are not aware of this particularity, you will, at the latest when you do a "Replace tag 'i' with tag 'xyz" " get a perfect mess in your tagging.

And thus, using 1-character tags is OUT OF THE QUESTION (but see below).

It was pure coincidence that I heavily displayed 2-character tags only up to yesterday, not looking for my 1-character tags, and thus hadn't been aware of the problem. Whenever you use "normal words" as tags, EVERY encoding with just 2 or 3 characters can mess up your tagging system, since it could be contained in any word without your becoming aware at time.

A way to overcome the problem: Instead of using "global" 1-character tags - I said so, use identical = "global" 1-character-tags in every topic, l for "look up", r for "review", d for "delegate", o for "ok/done" and so on, and 2-character tags in your topics, particular to those particular topics -, use "global" 1-DIGIT tags (=not 26 but 10, which might not be enough, and it's not very mnemonic), or perhaps, if you need more (or need it to be more mnemonic), use 1-character "global" tags, but the first character being a digit (perhaps not "1" but "7", "7" being easily reachable on the keyboard), so it would be "1l" for "look up", "7r" for review, and so on - and then, for your particular tags, use anything you want (=even 2-character tags) but beware of using short tags that may be contained in longer tags ("evi" being contained in "evil", and so on ad nauseam).

There is another hint I would like to give since I happen to spend several hours with replacing tag.

In fact, I have topics in which I have 30 or 50 tags, and I thought I would not mess them up; well, I did. Because most tags can be grouped or "clustered" in one way or another (with some possible superpositions here and there, I agree with that), and when I do "real words" - or abbreviation of "real words", tags that "belong together" in a quite natural way, are, in the ShowTags command (where tags are displayed in alphabetical order), and also in my mind (where tags are displayed in associative but not exhaustive order if I may say so), rather dispersed: it's CHAOS!

So the solution is the same as with the naming of topics (=there, in order to load them into memory, by groups, see my commentary on that): have them grouped by giving a commun prefix to tags that belong together!

To give you an example taken from my "MI for Writers" idea: Let's say you have characters, Thomas, Mary, Christopher, and themes, say Love, Hate, Envy, Joy (could be some of the characters, yep). This way, you have messed up 2 categories of tags wildly when you look them up in your (alphabetical) list. With 7 entries, no problem whatsoever; with 35 entries, it's awful!

Same procedure, do not th, ma, ch and then lo, ha, en, jo (or even the entire words), but do ct, cm, cc for CHARACTERS Thomas / Mary / Christopher, and do tl, th, te, tj for THEMES Love / Hate / Envy / Joy!

Of course, with my two-characters system, you would have some difficulty here and then to find the second character, already given to / taken by another tag. All of you know at least one foreign language, and even if not, there's always the possibility to look up a foreign word in a dictionary (thus in the US, you could take a Spanish term, throughout Europe, it would be an English term instead of that in your native language if that term's first character is taken - or try to change the first term into some synonym or some quasi-identical denomination, thus freeing the character for your second tag. (If character names of a novel, avoid giving names beginning with the same character, or "rename" Elizabeth to Lizzy in your mind and in your tags, in order for her to appear as "cl" instead of "ce" when "ce" is taken.)

It goes without saying that this impossibility of MI's filter function to do "whole words only" (=as we might expect for a tag function) should be amended. And we need better access to changes we want to make to combinations in that dialog, as I said before.

wsp's AVOIDING of the filter function is NOT the solution (since, as I said, it's the WORKING on the filter results that's so smooth then, no comparison with having to work on the SEARCH results...), but a perfect proof of my thesis that at the current state, filtering is not yet perfect, far from it.

AND I have become aware there is very probably another reason for wsp's avoiding filtering: See my theory about pouring the filtering results into the COMMAND pane, not into the tree pane (for the reasons given there: "MI for Writers...") -

The SEARCH results indeed ARE in the command pane already, the filtering results are NOT. And I gave the reasons why according to me those results MUST be in the command pane: THERE, and there only, there are at their natural place...

and there you can indeed work onto the search results AT their natural place, i.e. without going two lists (=search results and tree) fighting against each other in ONE pane, but search results SERVING your working in the tree pane:

With search results, there IS perfect coexistence between list and tree already, and that's why wsp likes to use it this way; by using filtering, that perfect coexistence of 2 functions is lost, giving way to combat. And that's weird, and even when you cannot identify why you don't like it, you avoid it altogether.

I am speaking of the unconscious here, so I am asking for quibble that this might not be the / another = additional reason, when I am rather fond of it, but anyway: Using the filter function ist a little bit avoided when Petko has put a great deal of work into it though -

and that's a very important additional reason to enhance the filtering / tagging functionality in order for it to be frenzily used very soon by everyone!

^a...