Hi All,
I
Oh yes, Alex (= Chrystal), I know what you mean, people cannot follow me anymore, but then, I am SURE Petko follows me, and indeed, I had exactly this intention, i.e. to do a little list of my "demands" / observations in brief, but I had the intention to do so AFTER the next intermediate release, in the form: These issues have been addressed, these issues are waiting to be addressed.
In fact, I've been a little bit angry about wasp, remaining totally anonymous and telling me I've strong opinions of things I don't know anything about, when in fact, all I dare say is, finally, I do NOT understand why people should, in order to just exchange their own data from 1 comp to another, go by the net. Perhaps I'm too old, but I just don't understand it. When it goes to collaborations features, I understand, but for going from 1 comp of my own to another comp of my own, I cannot imagine the sense of doing that by web services, I'm simply too dumb for it, I don't sense, I don't get it.
There have been cables, there's wifi, there are usb sticks / usb hard disks, etc. - why sending your data into a web site of people that have a voice like a salesman, when in fact they offer their services for free and don't even seem to have some advertizing on their site? To intercept data? Understand me very well, I'm NOT suggesting that site there is fraudulous, I'm just saying I don't understand their business model yet, and I'd be happy for encountering somebody to enlighten me; wasp, being a "scholar", should have (had) the brain to solve the mistery; instead he says I'm speaking on everything, knowing almost nothing, in a way...
When in fact, I've touted MI so much, June 22 on bitsdujour.com, that MI extended the offer for a second day - notwithstanding my real disssecting MI since.
II
But I understand wasp is a little bit jealous... without any need to be: I'm NOT asking him for shoving his Apple toys into... instead, I "bended over backwards to make it easy for" him (my gosh, what an expression I get there from my dictionary, in fact, "je lui ai tendu la perche", "ich habe ihm eine goldene Brücke gebaut" = I erected a golden bridge for him, as they say in German, by saying, yes, I understand, the iPad isn't but a toy, I understand its real interest lays in being connected to the net 24 hours a day? He didn't even said, yes, that's it, but he jumped on the occasion that I had dared to give my 2 cents to the above-mentioned problem of synching your own comps by third-party net services - of course, for the iPad, that seems to be the only easy way to do it - BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT THE NORMAL WAY TO DO IT in my humble opinion...
In fact, I had read a real user's experience with the iPad when giving my 2 cents, and I think that reading this experience will be extremely useful for EVERY computer user today, it's the (unsuccessful) try of of a British, bestselling thriller novelist, David Hewson - but he tried deeply, not in a light way! read his experience, it's real info! -, to give the iPad a real use; well, I felt tempted to say, well, wasp is a "scholar", whereas David Hewson abandoned school at the age of 17 (which is a fact), so the scholar is more apt to use the iPad in an intelligent way...
but then, wasp says, MI is almost perfect for him, whereas I said that, e.g., the (perhaps third-party-) search function gives false finds... which for professional use is not acceptable... and the iPad is intended as a thing for dummies to get them to a sort of a simili-comp where they are heavily patronized... but where they get done a certain minimum of things, whereas "normally", they wouldn't accept to own a comp (= your father / mother / step-... but then, even your little sister would be frustrated with it)... in fact, it's a Porsche for people who cannot afford a Porsche: See, folks, I can spend 1,000 dollars on a toy that I'll dump for 300 next year on Ebay when the successor will be released.
But I see the real problem, wasp is railing against a sort of a "super user" coming out of nothing, giving straightforwad advice on everything, when up to now, wasp had the impression to be "on top here", which is gone.
But then, wasp, I'm not paid by any university where I would have liked to be, so this hat goes to you, and my expertize on outlining is a very special one, as I said, I'm not even a real programmer, I just devoted a part of my life to the development, from scratch, when any other possibly existing outliner out there wasn't know to me, I reinvented the wheel... and I did many things very well, 12 years ago... I even had end notes - not footnotes, that's right, since I leaned on the sh** printing function of ToolBo..ok, instead of integrating some third-party printing program... in a way, I had been state-of-the-art and really dumb at the same time.
Thus, saying, oh yeah, a "scholar", but who thinks MI were almost perfect, such a statement wouldn't be my style, since elsewhere, wasp said he owns InDesign, and I know very well that this is the royal solution; in fact, where around 95 p.c. or more people export to MS Word, he exports to InDesign, then, and thus, he's able to do some cryptic codes in the text, like {|fn=xyz}, and so on, in order to have his works typeset ways over those MS Word manuscripts.
But then, stating falsely that MI were almost perfect, IS NOT HELPING MI, whereas my dissecting IS helping it. Because, let's put it frankly, in almost any way, MI is INFERIOR to UR, except for easy access (which is not nothing, I know), and except for tagging, but real tagging is FIRST on the UR agenda.
And, as everybody can see, UR's "community" is tenfold MI's... and this is WITH wasp aboard...
Whereas my intention here is to defend David against Goliath; call me crazy, but then, (re-) read my, it's some 70 posts of mine, and you'll see that MI has very strong potential IF those IMPORTANT advice issues of mine will be followed.
Thus, it'd be CRAZY to show jealousy when some "professionals" "overtake" this forum... as long as those "professionals" - I consider myself as a professional in software design, and see what Michael's credentials are!!! - are really and wholeheartedly interested in MI's future! (And Petko undeniably has the intelligence to not going let astray on this.)
Thus, wasp, please, leave your perfect anonymity, and we'll respect you for your scholarly credentials; have a look at professor Manfred Kühn, the leading (? = one of the leading without any doubt) Kant specialists worldwide (another born German, but Canadian by his heart at least, by naturalization perhaps), who some weeks ago, in the forum outlinersoftware.com, said, I don't need this, when in fact nobody really attacked him, it just had been the LEVEL of discussion there with which he finally got totally fed up... just like me, many months before him.
(Kühn isn't the guy who just whines and dines, he tries to go a little bit further here and there; see his blog, it's worthwhile your visit:
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/ )
Even when I don't read the NYT on an iPad - and then, I don't like the man, politically, who's bought the NYT -, there's always this famous clipping from The New York Times Sunday Book Review, January 30, 2005, by Steven Johnson, and I wanna help with finding solutions...
So, I'm very happy to have given a push to the discussion here, in, let's put it bluntly, having given a real RISE to its level before some intelligent people (= perhaps more than I am, but as wasps knows, I'm ALWAYS ready to give in when somebody is right and I'm not, so this doesn't set the slightest problem for me) join us here (Michael) and / or RE-join us here (= Alex)... and I'd be happy to have more people of this high standard aboard... unfortunately, somebody like Florian Gehrke, from the AS forum, seems to be fed up with everything, at least for the time being... after having done a TREMENDOUS work (for free) for AS... not only on the English language forum, but also on AS's defunct German language forum, and after having "lost" one "man year" of his life there; one thing is sure, or do I overlook something really important?:
The greatest loss in software history is Framework (and that not because their programming language was called "Fred" - see the "Framework" item in the English Wikipedia!) - and the second-important loss is askSam, I think, oh yes.
But then, and this FROM THE BEGINNING ON, the AS folks NEVER understood that items have a NATURAL place in ONE category = a tree, AND multiple other places = affiliations in secondary tree structures; AS always relied on their (tremendous) search engine, but WITHOUT implementing "artificial intelligence" = automatic searching of synonyms, or automatic dismissing of non-contextual homonyms; any linguistic consideration simply wasn't in the field of vision of AS staff... whereas a Florian Gehrke told them TEN YEARS AGO about it: Thus, AS simply relied on their core ideas from 20 years ago, and weren't in any way apt to listen to any reason whatsoever, even if it came from their most prominent and incredibly investing advocate...
Of course, I've got Florian's fate there when investing here, since my position is a little bit similar: I'm working for a third party, for free: for Petko.
So, I've got in my mind some fears like, "Sharing is loosing.", and other paranoia-driven ideas, "perles before swines", etc., here and there... and on the other hand, I understand perfectly that indeed, when considering Petko's situation as a one-man-show, we MUST give him time to first eliminate all those little things that indeed do that MI is FAR from perfect as wasp pretends, AND give him time to thoroughly consider our propositions...
III
All the more so since our propositions are NOT refined yet, i.e. my "macro third dimension thing", developed in this forum, almost each day, I discover details where my proposition must be refined first, and THEN ONLY - and after discussion between intelligent people INCLUDING WASP - shall we have the "moral right" to ask Petko to implement it:
All those little things, Petko WILL amend them... but we simply CANNOT tell him, do this and this and this, which will take him a year... and afterward, we'll say, excuse us, we were mistaken, you should better do it this other way!!!
Thus, give me some more time, I'm currently becoming acquainted with AutoIt, and I'll SHARE my script with you, in order for some of yours loading it, working with it, and then we'll discuss in which way a perhaps MORE intelligent solution of the problem, than the one delivered by me, could be implemented into MI.
This is to say, I would like to "implement" many of my suggestions by AI scripts beforehand, for commun use, in order to TRY THEM, before we'll ask Petko to do the encoding... and then, it would be tremendous if Petko would give HIS opinion, as we are giving ours. Thus, I would like to trigger a REAL DISCUSSION of future MI features...
and if Petko does not follow THEN, we'll go to Goliath - but why should we do this, long before knowing?
Let's put it bluntly, a year or so before touting MI on June 22, 2010, I went to UR, wanting to discuss some idiosyncrasies of that software. The chief developer pretended to not understand me, and he said, English doesn't seem to be your native language? Of course he was right, but then, did I ever NOT succeed in making me understood, anywhere?
IV
And no, I did NOT forget to mention David Hewson's link:
http://davidhewson.com/2010/10/22/the-i ... nite-fail/
Understand me well: I'm not agains tablets, I never was. Just have a look at anoto.com, the make their living out of the absence of useful tablets - but iPad isn't that yet.
V
I agree with you, Michael, it's caricatural, but I'm VERY glad in several respects: France has been the dream of my life - but my Wallonian compatriots are not intelligent enough to see that our joining France would make the day of our all's life -, and Belgium is so tiny that our problems don't even really get into the minds of other Europeans, let alone any "transatlantic" considerations - the US, Canada
and then, going, with your FRENCH wife, to Switzerland to make your living, well, it's PARADISE for you (and your family), it's simply not possible to get a happier life than yours... but your credentials show that you worked hard for getting where you are now... but I said so, you are a very serious guy... and then, you are even more serious than I had thought... and let's put it bluntly, expatriate Germans are an elite group, whereas most of Germans who have their say in Germany today, AIN'T worth that much... and whereas you can find, at an intermediate level, many, many Germans of very high value, even IN today's Germany... seems that the formation of Germany's elite is highly contestable; btw., there are quite a few sociological studies backing my point - so, please, wasp, not again!
VI
For your "lazy migration", Michael, this abhorrs me: You simply couldn't do this for thousands of AS items?! Of course, it would be inadequate to propose you my scripting help, since what could be difficult for me, should be less difficult (if not easy) for you, but we MUST find a solution....
I had erroneously assumed that it could be done without too much problems: As I had said elsewhere, MI exports PERFECTLY to UR, by exporting to TreePad Plus, and then by importing the TreePad files into UR [the post in the UR forum that either you lose indentation = levelling or formatting, is NOT valid anymore, and even pictures in the formatted texts are transferred in a perfect way).
But indeed, the opposite direction is obstructed! (I had hoped one could use UR as an intermediate step between AS and MI.) In fact, UR does import TreePad files, but does not export them; MI does export and import TreePad files and exports rtf files, but does not import those rtf files - if it did, any detour by UR would be unnecessary anyway.
Thus, as a first step, it would be helpful to see if the rtf export from AS can be correctly transferred into (a) TreePad file(s); if yes, I suppose that MI will then import those TreePad files correctly, since, as stated, MI does the EXPORT to this format 100 p.c. faultless.
Importing from another outliner as the original source would set the problem of indenting / levelling = getting lost by exporting the items to the intermediate rtf format; in AS, there is no real tree, hence a tree cannot be lost either. You've got many fields? MI at this time doesn't even has a "Replace in the whole topic" function, but then, I published a macro how to do this months ago yet (any macro program would do)... and Petko has promised to deliver this function soon, thus the macro necessity will not subsist for long!
A macro could even put field contents into tags or other attributes, for example: technically it's easy... And then, perhaps it would be smart to do a lot of swapping in AS yet (= in a COPY of your file(s) of course...), BEFORE any exporting? Or the other way round: First, a report in AS, with csv export, and importing this into MI, and then only, this, and MERGING by macro, perhaps with manually checking each hundredth item in order to be sure that fields and rtf texts are synched...
So what to do? Exporting into rtf, then...
On the site
http://www.treepad.com/conversion_utilities/
I found this for downloading:
Word2TreePad
Freeware program to convert an MS Word document to a TreePad file or an XML file. The Treepad 2.x file is created right from active Word document, following it's structure.
Download: word2tp11.zip (18 Kb).
Platforms: MS Word 97 or higher.
Created by: Andris Shleiters.
And from then on, importing the file(s) into MI (perhaps after checking them, if necessary, in a trial version of TreePad...) - and then, the manual building up of trees would need to be done ;-( But then, it could be done, by a macro, depending on some field contents...!!!
VII
Which would be, using TreePad as the intermediary format - where I very well hope that the above-mentioned routine gets your rtf formatting, and not just text -, AND it shows ANOTHER MI structural / marketing deficiency to Petko and to all of us: At this moment, MI does NOT yet allow import of rtf / MS Word files - WHEREAS ULTRA RECALL DOES!!!!! -, and thus, any MS word user wanting to transfer his data into an outliner program, will discover this MI inability as soon as he tries the transfer... and voilà, UR tenfold the user count of MI's!
As I often said, Petko makes real marketing errors - and again, I'm here to turn the knife in the wound... in the most constructive way -; thus, allowing for easy MS Word files import is, without any doubt, the UTMOST NEXT NECESSARY STEP in MI's development - since this transfer of MS Word users is, undeniably and by far, the greatest potential user group, and that is, up to now, virtually put off by MI:
People who want to leave MS Word... go elsewhere, simply CANNOT come aboard, by lack of, in most cases, even a tenth of the technological background Michael has...
And then, downlad the above-mentioned program (and TreePad trial version) soon... since TreePad and its human context will certainly not be happy to serve as just an intermediate step for transferring data from third-party application x to third-party application z...
VIII
See, Michael, there really seems to be that intermediate step for importing your data, without too much scripting, I hope. Let us know, we don't want to lose you for such a minor reason!
Oh yes, another matter, it could be that before exporting to rtf, it would be advisable to reformat in AS, or doing straightward encoding of real paragraphs vs. just ends of lines, AS has, among other faults, a very annoying tendancy to replace normal line endings by paragraph endings, so be prepared to run and reformat its rtf export file in MS Word, e.g. - but who am I to give you news about AS, knowing you know it far better even than I could ever have known it?
As for the keyboard "Swiss romande", you might indeed be that other MI user who works with it - most people never heard of this feature; it's a tremendous invention, you simply pass from English to French to German, without any crazy jumping keys from one side to the other, I've been using these keyboards (= this keyboard layout, independently on any physical keyboard designs) for more than 20 years now, from Windows 3 (or 3.11) on - there are SOME things that are WELL designed in our Windows world...
Oh yeah, and speking of design, Scrivener is a fine thing... and even more beautiful is... Storyist - and as our fellow Daly will confirm, the more beautiful your writing instrument, the better the results, all other factors maintained.
Oh, and then, the master of Belgian BD is dead, unfortunately... but this forum seems to have risen from the dead!
And yes, IOU the Johnson citation:
Changing the way we think, of course, was the cardinal objective of many early computer visionaries: Vannevar Bush's seminal 1945 essay that envisioned the modern, hypertext-driven information machine was called 'As We May Think'; Howard Rheingold's wonderful account of computing's pioneers was called 'Tools for Thought.' Most of these gurus would be disappointed to find that, decades later, the most sophisticated form of artificial intelligence in our writing tools lies in our grammar checkers.
;-(