I
Let's say you are anywhere in the tree pane.
A )
Mouse Right-Click Menu, then "Web Document" or "Edit Hyperlink" (even when the current item is NOT a hyperlink yet)
OR Menu "Insert-Web Document"
in the two cases then:
"Link to:"
"Web Page or Web Resource"
"Text to display" (...)
Type the address you want to link to:
file://c:\xxx\yyy.txt
B )
This gives a special page with
1 ) the File Address
2 ) "Web resource"
3 ) "Click to open the link" ( and when you do this, the text is displayed in this field 3) )
4 ) "Notes"
5 ) a notes field
Thus, the real link is in B3 ), not at the end of A = in the item name in the tree.
But then, real links can be done in the tree???
Whereas, when you are in the text pane (= editor), the command Insert-Hyperlink is NOT greyed out any more but states:
Hyperlink
Link to:
Text to display: (...)
File or Web Page
Document in This Topic
E-mail Address
Type the address you want to link to: (..)
But there is the Menu "Edit-Copy Link-To this doc/to this copy"
But afterwards, your command control-v will NOT function in a tree but only in a text pane.
Thus, the real link TRIGGER can never be in the tree, whereas the link TARGET can. Why? It should be possible to have links in the tree, and it's even NECESSARY.
II
Let's imagine our lawyer.
Why a lawyer? Since those people NEED such a thing, AND are willing to pay for it. Have a look at this link:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/cases ... vid_sparks
Here, the people behind SCRIVENER tout Scrivener for use in legal work, as they tout Scrivener in other case studies. Interesting here: They don't make the difference between MS Word / "text processing" in general and outliners / information managers, but they make the difference between those MS Word, etc., and Scrivener, as if no other outliner, etc. there were in the whole word - you see, that's manipulating people.
But the point is elsewhere. Indeed, there is a whole different working with information managers and with text processors, so read that link again, but now taking Scrivener just as ANY example of these outlining information managers.
So let's see in which way a lawyer would really need linking / the third dimension; it's understood that you would have read the above-mentioned link (twice if you want to).
III
As said before, I could imagine "projects" where you have a project name (= which is NOT a file but just an item in a project list), and which contains as many (big or tiny) topics as you need it to do.
I said, let's separate every possible topic which is "between" some topics, thus, don't do just a topic "car" and a topic "assurances", then do never know where "car assurances" might be, but do a third topic "car assurances", and so on with any given subject; do it like some legislators do, have all subjects separately, and have those concerning several others referenced, by setting up "projects"; I explained in depth, a project "assurances", a project "house", a project "car", and so on, and many topics would be in 1, 2 or in all 3 topics.
Setting up such a system takes times, but if it is automatically updated by MI when you delete, rename, create new topics (= "no orphans" !!!), it's very worthwile in everyday use.
IV
But there is a problem. As said before, such a system is only a "macro 3rd dimension", not a "micro" one. Let me explain, let's return to our lawyer. Thus he needs some cases, some laws, some big parts of laws in a given project...
but he also needs just certain paragraphs of some laws, the "keys" of his current case around which his project is constructed (again, read the above-mentioned link for Scrivener, I'm not going to repeat in my meagre words what's been explained there in more elegant ones).
But he HASN'T GOT those SINGLE paragraphs separated, in my "macro" three-dimensional system: It stays too much at the surface, it's not detailed enough!!!
V
What does our lawyer need, then? He needs single paragraphs of laws - or of cases or any other reference material, and be assured, any material for a representative of the middle management obeys exactly to those same conditions, it's just that I take the example of legal material in order to explain by a matter everyone can easily imagine in its functional detail, without me having to go into unnecessary details about the nature of the given material that MI would have to present in a "manageable" way.
Thus, he needs single paragraphs, but he doesn't have them but contained within much longer pieces of material - complete laws or part of laws; German Civil Law, e.g., is divised into 5 "books" where the second one is divised into a general part and over 20 special parts, and where the fourth part is divised into two distinct parts (marriage law and family law) - in a whole, it contains almost 3,000 paragraphs over many, many pages when printed, and of course, you would cut up this stuff accordingly if you need it to have it in MI.
In fact, I have a very big item containing the whole text - why? Because the German Authorities publish this whole text in a "consolidated version" then and again, and I need to know where the CHANGES are! Thus, I have the big item, in order to be run, against the new consolidated law text, by BeyondCompare, but then, I have the same big text broken up into many, many chapters and subchapters, for practical use.
VI
This is most handy. What I did 12 years ago, in my own program, was different: I had a big file containing all my legal stuff, and I had every paragraph of all my laws in a separate item - that was about 20,000 items just for a few laws. Of course, I had those items grouped by subchapters, chapters, and so on, but the idea was to cut up the material into its tiniest parts, to form a different item each.
Of course, I had a perfect 3-dimensional system since any item could be inserted everywhere, just like in Ultra Recall, AND with its subitems, etc. - and I even had programmed a (working!) sub-system preventing recursion - whilst in Connected Text, e.g., a can be the father of b, AND b can be the father of a, which is one of the issues that make that program impenetrable for me... and for most other potential buyers of an information manager.
What I didn't have, then, was context! (Remember, for reading some articles, I had to navigate to them, and even be it just the down arrow, in my mind, context was lost, more or less...)
Having your items ATOMIZED, is perfect for the third-dimensionality, but it makes you loose context. In fact, in laws, most articles / paragraphs are to be seen / read in their context, some 2 articles above, some 3 beneath... whereas your sub-chapter would be 15 or 40 articles - you see, just having your subchapter as a clone or a reference, is NOT the solution, since it would probably contain many articles you do NOT want to have here in your project: it's clutter in this context!
(And again, for a psychologist's work, or for managerial work, or for fiction writing, or any other task, it's exactly the same problem, just with different material.)
VII
Now we must remember that MI does allow to have links to topics, to items, and even to paragraphs within an item... and this even to items in OTHER topics - thus, the foundations ARE THERE!
But our lawyer again. He's in court. He's got some references to material here and there in some text panes. The opposite party makes some claims. Now our lawyer asks himself, where did I do the links, since I would like to action them, at this very moment?!
Well, he must beg the judge for allowing him some search time, as things are today, and the adversary lawyer will smirk a lot. Having an information management system, and not being able to find you things on-spot?!
In fact, our lawyer has two possibilities, more or less:
a ) He could do all links in the text pane of his first item (= the first item of his project = case)
b ) He could do all links within the context of the texts where they belong
c ) He could try to do a combination of a and b, i.e. have his links in the text panes of some sub-headings; he even could format those sub-headings containing links in a special way in order to easily find them again.
Let's discuss b first. It's the most ugly thing you can do. I know there's wikipedia, and I know it's constructed this way. That's awful, but then, reading thus 50 items in a row, in the evening, in your easy chair, very well, that's spare time... but that's not professional.
In court, you WON'T have a wiki, you simply cannot afford to have one... and in the office, time is money, too...
So, the wiki concept might be adequate whenever you want to demonstrate the "lost in hyperspace" phenomenon, but for real work, (sophisticated) tree concepts are needed. (And PersonalBrain presents the same problem as wikis, by the way... oh yes, I know, in PB you can sort things out which in a wiki you cannot, but then, its graphic representation will clutter your screen... and your brain... that's my opinion, some people do fine with PB, so let'em have their way...)
VIII
Where then, in point VII, would our lawyer put his excerpts and cloned / referenced materials? a? b? c? Not a, since that would make a long list there in which he would need to find the specific item first, in order to click on it = have the target item displayed (= first, perhaps, the topic containing it, loaded).
Not b, since this would really be "lost in hyperspace", LOST, in a word! He simply could not remember where his links are, in which items, first, and then, he would need to scroll those items in their entirety - awful, and simply impossible for anybody having another person in front of him asking for "response" - think of a salesman, think of a middle manager reporting to his superior! (and so on, and so on)
So, at this time, users would finally go to system c, where they would have the links in some "tables" within their project, GROUPED in a way.
By the way, there would be a system
d ) where people would do an item just where the link needs to be, at the precise place in their project tree... but they would need to do double work then, they would need an item they then need to "open", in order to then only click on the real link... in its text pane...
IX
You see, the problem to be resolved beforehand, is MI tree's inability to have LINK ITEMS = links in the tree. You click, and the link is displayed, not you click, and then you must click in the text pane in order for the link target item to be displayed!
Ultra Recall can't do it either (but again, their cloning feature is tremendous, so they are not so much in need of perfect linking); but even ActionOutline can do it, so it should be doable, perhaps with another tree component if the actual one is really unable to realize linking.
X
From then on, you can set up links in your tree, to topics, parts of topics = items = chapters / subchapters / etc., and even to parts WITHIN such items... in ANY other (= reference) topic you wish.
For linking to a subchapter, etc., no problem. For linking to an article / a paragraph, no problem. And for linking to SOME articles / paragraphs, you would link to the first of them, in a row, but the TEXT of your link would be "Art. 324-329"; I know this is not perfect yet, but then, nobody, at this time, seems to have a better way to group specific atomized elements in some order, without falling back on atomizing the original reference information, which, as explained above, is NOT the solution. (I know such a re-programming of order would be possible, but what a fuss in programming, and perhaps, what a fuss in "your" (= our) mind, also?
Thus, when in a certain chapter, two rows of articles, let's say 324-329, and 335-337, are important, I'd do TWO links = two link items, but I would not atomize the articles, and would not link to the whole chapter either. But if article 324 is important for point a, and article 325 is important for point c, and articles 326-329 are important for point m, I would very well do THREE link items...
In those link items (= not the target items, but the "linking items"), the link would be in the tree entry... but any COMMENTARY for the link would be in the text pane!
This is to say, in every project where you need those reference materials, you need them perhaps in a slightly different way, and thus, the text there would be your "memory" of how to perfectly USE them! Since, remember, the link target would be STANDARD reference material, a "clone" if you want.
XI
And this brings me to some other points. First, is it really handy to have the reference material = target link displayed instead of your project? Of course NOT! You want to remain IN your project, AND you want to see the reference material at the same time!
But then, Petko has promised us a 2-pane display, and I have published some development on this here in this forum. And of course, this "linking thing" should automatically bring the reference material in that second text pane!
Thus, your item would be a "totally normal" item if you want to, with "normal" content (or just with some "commentary" on the target item, just as you want), but, at the same time, when it's displayed, to the right of your screen, a second text pane will be displayed, with the text of the target link! And of course, this second text pane might be 1/3, whereas the "normal" text pane might be 2/3, and there's even conceivable an automatism where screen real estate is given according to the text size of each text: When your "normal" pane just contains some commentary on the target link, it might be 1/5 to 4/5, whereas, when your "normal text" is really "developed" = more voluminous than your target text, it would be those 2/3 to 1/3 - for example. It's even conceivable that, when your target text contains a photo / jpg / graphic, the second text pane will allow for this graphic to be displayed in its width, except when then the first text pane will be less than 2/5 of global screen width of text panes 1 and 2.
This way, reference material will NOT kick you out of your current project, forcing you to an interminable "last viewed item", "next viewed item" toggel orgy, but reference material will finally have its "natural" place in your project: it's handy, it's there, it's available... but it's accessory, it doesn't EAT your project anymore.
XII
Next point, why clones, then? Really, I don't know. Let's say, WITHIN a topic, clones are there, so we leave them alone for those among us who really use them - but bear in mind that only the main item is really cloned = updated here and there whenever it's updated here or there, whereas the child items are not (?) updated in such a way, and whereas there is NO updating whatsoever of this "children's part" of the item's tree, i.e. whenever you add some child item to the original subtree, it's not cloned within = added to the clone item's subtree. (In fact, I fiddled a little bit around with it but never took time to analyze it since compared with UR's cloning, MI's cloning is underwhelming... but well, if MI's referencing is perfect, no other program will be a real contender!)
So, what I want to say, clones are there, I know, but there are useful, if really, just WITHIN your current topic, whereas MI's reference routines allow for "referencing to everywhere". Thus, instead of expanding the cloning feature to items in other topics, an optimization of the reference feature should be the right way, and we'd AVOID cloning in this "construction of projects over multiple topics" (topics = projects or reference containers, ancient topics becoming reference material... and even current projects being possible reference material...)
XIII
Thus, when we have all these things in "link" form, another question arises: When are those "reference topics" (= topics containing material being targeted links of our project) to be loaded into memory?
Let's say you have 3 projects loaded, and 5 other topics, whatever they may contain. You are in court, or you are especially working on project 2 of the 3 you must work on this afternoon in the office.
Now this project "2" has some 20 or 30 links, the targets of which are contained in some 15 or 18 different "topics" = files. Such a target might be a rather big one, say, you linked to article 325 of a law that contains 3,000 articles, why not, or even 600 might be big. In court, you click on an item, and since it's a linked item, it first will load your target file? And this with 20 target files, each separately, before the judge and your enemies? Not good - not good in office either if you have real work to do.
But then, those two other projects?! You've loaded since you must work on them, this afternoon, but you need to work first on project "2", and do you want all your screen cluttered with 80 tabs, of which 20 belong to project "2", and 60 other to the other projects you just want to work on afterwords? Of course not.
XIV
Therefore, I do NOT propose coding every topic in order to have it "loaded with all referenced material" or not, since this would pose the same problem as with our (macro)projects when loading MI: last time you worked on MI, you had 40 topics loaded, and this time, you just want to note something, and thus, just ONE topics to be loaded would suffice, whereas you must endure the loading of your 40 topics since that was your last "choice" for next time... (see my development there).
This way, it would NOT be handy to be forced to decide BEFOREHAND if the project is to be loaded, next time, WITH all its reference material, or without.
But the solution is simple: Never load any project / topic automatically with its reference material, but just do a command, "load current topic's references", and then, all those materials will be loaded into all those additional tabs: Our lawyer would load his projects for the morning, but would only load the reference material, for his current case, before the arrival of the judge.
XV
And this brings me, almost finally, back to the "MACRO project system" - why not INTEGRATE my ideas developed there, into THIS "MICRO project system" - which is needed anyway, just like the MACRO system is needed anyway? Integrating the two parts would be best, again, for dogmatic, and for practical reasons.
In fact, as I said at the beginning, in any project, you need topics, ok, but also parts of topics, and even, just elements of parts of topics (= references to topics, to items, to paragraphs). Then, let's have a TOPIC "assurances", let's have a TOPIC "car", a TOPIC "car assurances" - you got it.
And within these topics, all those other topics, or items, or just paragraphs, would be listed in the tree, as LINK ITEMS... and then, we'd have the command "load all links" -
nous y voilà.
XVI
As an almost last point, let me say that there should be a reference table where MI, unseen by the user, checks for any updates, broken links because you did some rearranging of reference material, e.g. break up of a big law into some parts, would NOT be acceptable to professionals. I know that in CT you can produce broken links, like you can produce them in MI, up to now, and like you do in many other programs... but INTERNAL UPDATING of all those references would be necessary to their RELIABILITY, and reliability is the prominent point in any professional use.
XVII
All this might be considered by some as their usual "I don't need it" - but then, we are not speaking of leaving MI alone, in its current state where only a few exotic, dispersed users buy it here and then and even this or that update... we're speaking of
preparing MI for primetime.
MI NEEDS such a system in order to be marketable on a professional level - or a better one than the system developed here. But then, develop something better and share it with us, instead of sillily repeating, "I don't need this".
When MI'll be sheer excellency, it'll be an HONOR for computer magazines, etc. to tout it. But we cannot get there if we pretend, "MI's almost perfect as it is now". (And I have the right to criticise, I think, since I explain the steps to get it on top of the crowd, at the same time.)
The Real Thing
I
See my today's post in "Welcome to MI" for more developments, and indeed here in this post, my very first number "I" point was, as I can very happily say, erroneous, real links even right in the tree are possible even today. I had not found my own post stating it, trying anew was in vain, so I falsely assumed first time I had got it wrong.
But no. You just need to double-click on these false website hyperlinks, not just single-click, and the real link target is shown, NO need to then click again on "click this link" in the text pane.
Of course this must be consolidated, but the technical feasibility of doing all linking right in the tree is very wee there!!!!!
And please, not by double-click only, normal click or having focus more than a second would suffice, and anyway, it would be so nice to have it in that second text pane (as opposed to the main text pane) as said above.
II
It's a bit difficult since I cannot find the notes on this I thought I had somewhere. So let's try to dissect:
a )
We have 3 link commands in the Edit menu. Those commands put the given (= 1 out of 3 according to the command specialization) TARGET object (= topic, item, paragraph) into the clipboard.
Then only, you can, by control-v, INSERT this link (= in 3 flavors) into ANY text pane (= any means, even in other topics), but into text panes only, not into trees. And then, if you trigger such a link to a target being in a not-loaded tree, the tree even loads in order for the target to be displayed.
Very well, except for those two little things, whenever you rename something, you've got broken links - and since there is NO TRACE of it's having been linked in the target itself (= at least no visible trace for the user), the user will rename such a target, months later, WITHOUT knowing that it's target of a (henceforth) broken link... - the second fault being that those links cannot be put but into text panes, not into the tree; I developed upon this thoroughly.
And "Insert - Hyperlink" is greyed out also; I must say I have great problems with the terminology, always searching for differences between "link" and "hyperlink" in MI and never really finding an answer...
Both "Paste" (= control-v) and "Insert - Hyperlink" work very well in the text pane, though...
b )
In the same "Insert" menu, we have "Web Document" also, and interestingly, this entry is NOT greyed out when in the tree - neither in the text pane.
Then we have "Link to web page or web resource", with 2 entry fields, for text to display, and for target address.
And here, we can put in, e.g.,
c:\mi\a.mio
Then, click on "Insert" (in the same dialogue window).
This puts a new item into the tree, designed for a web address and formatted as a link, but able to contain any file address, and thus, any other MI topic; here, "a.mio".
Now click on this item, and you get this akward item in which you have to click a second time, on the real link, as I said before...
but instead, DOUBLE click on the link in the tree, and you get to that file / MI topic, directly!
c )
This proves:
- that this 3x link, 1x Insert Hyperlink and 1x Insert Web Document thing drives me totally dizzy and messed up, up to the point to not even find again my already written ideas on it
- that it is indeed possible, from a technical point of view, to have links in MI's TREE, since even today, I am able to "misuse" that "Insert - Web Doc" thing for linking to any other file / MI topic. So this gives us the first normal "link", to a topic - in the tree!
What we NEED is, to have links, in the tree, to items = "documents", and even to paragraphs... and even the topic link in the "normal" form, instead of having it to type!
So it is feasible... and it's greatly needed, for the reasons developed in this thread's first post!
And of course, in a second step, updating after renaming, etc., should be possible, but then, what's a, let's say 50 MB, reference table = array always loaded into a memory of which everybody has at least 1 GB today? And again, let's make that in a second step; first step would be to make those 3 normal links available in the tree.
And now I've contributed sufficiently, for this evening.
See my today's post in "Welcome to MI" for more developments, and indeed here in this post, my very first number "I" point was, as I can very happily say, erroneous, real links even right in the tree are possible even today. I had not found my own post stating it, trying anew was in vain, so I falsely assumed first time I had got it wrong.
But no. You just need to double-click on these false website hyperlinks, not just single-click, and the real link target is shown, NO need to then click again on "click this link" in the text pane.
Of course this must be consolidated, but the technical feasibility of doing all linking right in the tree is very wee there!!!!!
And please, not by double-click only, normal click or having focus more than a second would suffice, and anyway, it would be so nice to have it in that second text pane (as opposed to the main text pane) as said above.
II
It's a bit difficult since I cannot find the notes on this I thought I had somewhere. So let's try to dissect:
a )
We have 3 link commands in the Edit menu. Those commands put the given (= 1 out of 3 according to the command specialization) TARGET object (= topic, item, paragraph) into the clipboard.
Then only, you can, by control-v, INSERT this link (= in 3 flavors) into ANY text pane (= any means, even in other topics), but into text panes only, not into trees. And then, if you trigger such a link to a target being in a not-loaded tree, the tree even loads in order for the target to be displayed.
Very well, except for those two little things, whenever you rename something, you've got broken links - and since there is NO TRACE of it's having been linked in the target itself (= at least no visible trace for the user), the user will rename such a target, months later, WITHOUT knowing that it's target of a (henceforth) broken link... - the second fault being that those links cannot be put but into text panes, not into the tree; I developed upon this thoroughly.
And "Insert - Hyperlink" is greyed out also; I must say I have great problems with the terminology, always searching for differences between "link" and "hyperlink" in MI and never really finding an answer...
Both "Paste" (= control-v) and "Insert - Hyperlink" work very well in the text pane, though...
b )
In the same "Insert" menu, we have "Web Document" also, and interestingly, this entry is NOT greyed out when in the tree - neither in the text pane.
Then we have "Link to web page or web resource", with 2 entry fields, for text to display, and for target address.
And here, we can put in, e.g.,
c:\mi\a.mio
Then, click on "Insert" (in the same dialogue window).
This puts a new item into the tree, designed for a web address and formatted as a link, but able to contain any file address, and thus, any other MI topic; here, "a.mio".
Now click on this item, and you get this akward item in which you have to click a second time, on the real link, as I said before...
but instead, DOUBLE click on the link in the tree, and you get to that file / MI topic, directly!
c )
This proves:
- that this 3x link, 1x Insert Hyperlink and 1x Insert Web Document thing drives me totally dizzy and messed up, up to the point to not even find again my already written ideas on it
- that it is indeed possible, from a technical point of view, to have links in MI's TREE, since even today, I am able to "misuse" that "Insert - Web Doc" thing for linking to any other file / MI topic. So this gives us the first normal "link", to a topic - in the tree!
What we NEED is, to have links, in the tree, to items = "documents", and even to paragraphs... and even the topic link in the "normal" form, instead of having it to type!
So it is feasible... and it's greatly needed, for the reasons developed in this thread's first post!
And of course, in a second step, updating after renaming, etc., should be possible, but then, what's a, let's say 50 MB, reference table = array always loaded into a memory of which everybody has at least 1 GB today? And again, let's make that in a second step; first step would be to make those 3 normal links available in the tree.
And now I've contributed sufficiently, for this evening.
Some thoughts...
- As said before, toggling between tree and text pane (when search pane is not in the way), by "Pane Forward", "sometimes", when triggered from text pane, goes into the left pane, but showing the filter there, and when triggered from tree, stays in that left pane (instead of going to text pane), again showing the filter there. In the last weeks, this behavior has quintupled, it's not "sometimes" anymore, it's outright "often" now, and with no predictability; sometimes, it's 30 or 40 p.c. within some minutes, then again I am not bothered by it for 30 minutes. It's terrible... (Hope the new, real toggle between left and text pane will not show this.)
- OrgMode (which for other reasons wouldn't be a competitor) indeed has that "tagging then filtering over all files" feature, allowing for a real GTD (David Allen) / project management system spanning over all your things, it's multi-dimensionality isn't confined to just one file as in most other programs (in MI as we know, you can at least search for tags, but as I said, if those files ain't loaded, it takes a lot of time, and the search results are not yet consolidated with filter results: no way to process them further on, except for clicking them on in that list that will vanish with your next search, let alone some pouring the list into a new links list item or any other, hence my proposals for doing reference tables for processing all this needed complexity that doesn't bother us for now, but doesn't support our work either, for the time being).
- Have a look at the (English) wikipedia's item "The Tortoise and the Hare": it's instructive, especially the Lord Dunsany part, explaining a large part of the misheaps of this world even today... nothing really changed since Aesop's days in the human collective brain...
- When you are a professor, student or any other erudite on Wash DC campus or any other, you have wifi access there for free, 24 hours a day, even in Europe (but here it's not 24/24 in most places), so Steve Jobs' gadgets make sense there (if not for real work that is), whereas people who have to pay for their continuous 24 hours web access, in Germany, it's easily 50 euro / 70 dollars a month, and in Belgium, easily the double of that, thus people are not that keen on devices with continuous web access even when dreaming of such a feature.
- No need to give you the link, it's not worthwile, but somewhere, somebody / a student I suppose, said, has xyz this Evernote's cloud feature, I wouldn't want to install anything on my friends' computers? Well, I don't think lawyers would like to install anything on their friends' computers, either... but then, perhaps they don't have got any friends, then? Anyway, a lawyer need access to all his stuff anywhere, like anybody else today... but not for sharing but for private access. Thus he wouldn't do with a Jobs tablet or any other ridiculous netbook, he'd have an expensive subnotebook with him... but he need full office functionality on it... including web access to data banks, e.g. - but not to his MI or other information management software files, since he would have them with him (in secured form of course where needed - for the cases, not for the official reference material) - and he would need perfect screen real estate management wherever he is, whatever he wants to do, subnotebook screen size not being an excuse for not being able to do real work - try to do some work on Jobs' tablets.
- Elsewhere, I read some US professor said, in 2010, 30 p.c. of his students use Macs (not iPads, stupid: Mac notebooks) now... but from his first-year students, more than 50 p.c. use Macs! They didn't gave his special field, so probably this is not representive for all students, but what do I know? It's frightening for the Windows world all together, not for "cloud or not clound" decisions within it.
- But let's comfort ourselves by the fact that Mac format and iPad format are not compatible, just as Mac format and Windows format aren't.
- I don't like Android at all - again, it's not a compatible format -, but people seem to rave about it, and perhaps we'll see some compatibility between it and Windows format in further versions? Like we can expect to see some compatibility between Mac and iPad in some time - Jobs is no fool, but many MS people seem to be fools, then.
- Somebody somewhere said, Microsoft seems to become more and more SteveBallmer Soft; I roared with laughter: he's so right, and remember, MS becoming BS Soft, that abbreviation is mainly used for something else, then...
- Whatever information manager software developers might want to do cloud-wise, Evernote will always be there first, and some other specialised collaborative cloud offerings (thinklinkr.com and others)... and OneNote, of course (and whenever Bullsh** Soft decide to add features, they can put 100 men upon it... but let's rejoice by the idea they will not change their basic ideas, jus add features)...
- Hence my looking up Tortoise and Hare... but is there any professional information management software going ways up above all those standard features almost everybody offers? Nope, I didn't find it.
- So where's the niche? Running after Evernote and OneNote, just for discovering you ever will be behind?
- Just days ago, Evernote did their Android 2.0 update, and people rave about it, as they rave about Android. So what to do, running after them, knowing they invested millions of dollars, and millions of dollars are pouring onto them in order to make them invest any more millions of dollars they might judge necessary to make another leap forward you'll not be able to catch up in another 20 years... in which they will make other jumps, not have a nap like our hare?
- The only solution, as with everyone wanting to "compete" with MS / BS, is to have a look at the philosophical differences, since those have chances to remain: Third parties' chances lay in the big players stucking to their convictions, hence niches in which they can excel their very special philosophy, not the "please to the masses" variety.
- As said, I'm not against connectivity. Let me give you an example. In Germany, there are some 130,000 lawyers or even more now. In legal information, there is one big player in Germany, Beck, a specialized marketing house that might have more than 90 p.c. of the legal market now (they don't give numbers, it's just a guess, but for every other legal publisher's book around there, I see 20 from Beck, so...) - and they invested heavily into information management, so that at this time, they make millions and millions (each month, that is; again, I suppose) buy renting out their information in various combinations, and it's even possible to rent access to "Staudinger", the biggest and most expensive law commentary I've ever seen - for not speaking of various specialist journals, all of them indexed up to the last paragraph. Thus, by paying them several hundred euros each month, a lawyer can "have it all" - all that counts, that is - all at his fingertips - and then he would try to make his cases out of all this, in MS Word, for most of them - can you believe this? But that's the reality of German law in 2010.
- But then, Beck has procedures, functions, that integrate with other programs, and they invite developers to use them! Which is to say, this is the connectivity a professional information management program needs to have in order to make raves into that market where money runs down the walls, like we say in French. (Yes, there are some specialized "lawyers' softwares", for doing enforcement issues and other agenda tasks, but then, their text processing cabalities are rather rudimentary, and most invite you to use MS Word, again, in order to draft your legal papers.)
- There's one more feature such a program - MI - need to have in order to please professionals (be they lawyers or other people writing to be read): Reference links that survive into printing. Many of those programs, MI and others, allow for numbering items by exporting / printing... Very well, but in such papers, you do heavy referencing ("see xyz" / "cf. abc", where you would like to have exactly that number, "1.3.2", e.g., the item's title, or both). Problem: You don't know that future number yet when you are writing, and even when you print out the tree, with numbers, a lot a times, in order to have a list on your table, what are you going to do when you rearrange your items? And there will perhaps be 500 such rearrangements, big or small, from first draft to final printing... even when your final document will not contain but 100 items...
- There's InDesign and XPress. I don't have any of those - too expensive for me, I don't get them for "student and scholar" prices, but I've got an old PageMaker; the principle is the same. Thus, I suppose some people have created a tagging system within their texts, with macros by which they insert things like {&ag=75} here and {&&ag=75} there, in order for their desktop publishing software to know what to do, for example to insert a reference to the passage's item title / number and / or even print page number.
- Why two codes, not one? Since it's absolutely necessary to have access to the corresponding thing during your writing process - access by searching those codes... well, not easy in MI since precisely such code characters are not indexed and thus not found... Thus, in MI you cannot even use the original codes for your DTP program, but you must use pseudo-codes that will be indexed, in the form xxxag75, for example, then replace them after exporting your text (same with footnotes, etc., but way more easy).
- We must see one thing: All those (in-file or inter-file) references in MI or other programs don't export into (to-be-) printed material! They only work in writing, for editing... and afterwards? Since you write to be read by others in these cases (be it "published" or just "printed out"), we must find links that will automatically be translated into "written links" when printed, and into MS Word / DTP tags (= those {abcx} things above) when exported for being further processed by such a DTP program - and since those programs have different tags, MI needs an editable "conversion table" in which the user would enter the codes which he needs for his links, and others, when he exports his MI files into export formats - make it several such conversion tables, for several target programs, the rtf format being the commun base of all of this.
- And as said, and differently from now, those links must be accesible both ways: It's not enough to have a link formatting by which clicking you get to your target, you also must have a special formatting for the target point itself, indicating "this is a target to which there exists at least one link / one or several links" - and clicking on this should show a little window in which those several links are listed, and clicking to one would go to this referencing point - or if just one, go directly to it, and of course, with a function to delete the link, from both sides...
- As you see I think that this "visible" feature should be integrated into the current, non-visible, "non-exporting" link feature, since, why do it two times, why do it in parallel?
- Why do I say, make those links exportable in professional tag format, and in just "written links" / "written-out links", for MS Word and other text processors? First, technically, it would be rather similar; in the conversion table, those codes would just be "resolved" into item name, item number or both, with some "formatting options": "(See Itemname (1.4.3))" or "(cf. 1.4.3 - Imemname)", and so on. And then, most important, 99 users out of 100 do not have - or do not use - any DTP software for this, so they need MI to resolve their links into real item names / numbers.
- Even when a lawyer's secretary has InDesign for doing brochures, they will certainly not begin to use it for his papers being send to courts, adversaries, clients, within normal cases: He will print out from MI, and he wants to read his references / links in this print-out, immediately, not sending a file to the secretary who then will have to fuss with a third-party application, together with all those risks to have it wrong in the end that involves (for a book to be published, that's another thing, that's not everyday work; for a book, it's even possible to have those InDesign tags in order for the publisher doing a print-out with it, in order for the author, not owning InDesign, to have a last look upon it before going into printing).
- Finally, I would like to give a hint for doing this even now, manually, but it's awful. Whenever you refer to another item, insert a code as above with a number; within the target item's title field, or in a (shown) attribute field of the target item, do a similar code, with the same number. Example: in the referencing item's text, "#r067", in the target item's title field (of every outliner even without columns) "#t067", or in MI, just "067" in the attribute "R" (for "referenced"). After exporting, do a manual search and replace orgy, perhaps by script. And beforehand, in order to not using one number twice, print out 1,000 numbers 000 to 999 to cross them out, by pen, one by one... Yeah, there are more amusing ways to drive yourself crazy, but then, think of Kant who needed to do all this manually, on index cards...
- If now, fellow users might wonder why so many, many scholars and other lawyers, let alone middle managers, always use MS Word when there are such great outliners available... Well, I just gave you the answer to this up-to-now unfathomable secret. Indeed, all our outlining competitors have a precise lack in functionality that make them almost unusable for real work, whereas MS Word allows for this, in spite of all its shortcomings. Now you see why we are, all outliners combined, constitue a minority of perhaps 1 p.c., against 99 p.c. MS Word users.
- And now imagine MI not having this lack anymore. From then on, all this outlining trinkets will suddenly become useful. It's not that professionals love MS Word, it's that they need it in order to function, up to now, and so, outliners being so much "better" or not, they simply cannot do with 'em, core functions they need not being available there.
- Make 'em available, and make a fortune.
- As said before, toggling between tree and text pane (when search pane is not in the way), by "Pane Forward", "sometimes", when triggered from text pane, goes into the left pane, but showing the filter there, and when triggered from tree, stays in that left pane (instead of going to text pane), again showing the filter there. In the last weeks, this behavior has quintupled, it's not "sometimes" anymore, it's outright "often" now, and with no predictability; sometimes, it's 30 or 40 p.c. within some minutes, then again I am not bothered by it for 30 minutes. It's terrible... (Hope the new, real toggle between left and text pane will not show this.)
- OrgMode (which for other reasons wouldn't be a competitor) indeed has that "tagging then filtering over all files" feature, allowing for a real GTD (David Allen) / project management system spanning over all your things, it's multi-dimensionality isn't confined to just one file as in most other programs (in MI as we know, you can at least search for tags, but as I said, if those files ain't loaded, it takes a lot of time, and the search results are not yet consolidated with filter results: no way to process them further on, except for clicking them on in that list that will vanish with your next search, let alone some pouring the list into a new links list item or any other, hence my proposals for doing reference tables for processing all this needed complexity that doesn't bother us for now, but doesn't support our work either, for the time being).
- Have a look at the (English) wikipedia's item "The Tortoise and the Hare": it's instructive, especially the Lord Dunsany part, explaining a large part of the misheaps of this world even today... nothing really changed since Aesop's days in the human collective brain...
- When you are a professor, student or any other erudite on Wash DC campus or any other, you have wifi access there for free, 24 hours a day, even in Europe (but here it's not 24/24 in most places), so Steve Jobs' gadgets make sense there (if not for real work that is), whereas people who have to pay for their continuous 24 hours web access, in Germany, it's easily 50 euro / 70 dollars a month, and in Belgium, easily the double of that, thus people are not that keen on devices with continuous web access even when dreaming of such a feature.
- No need to give you the link, it's not worthwile, but somewhere, somebody / a student I suppose, said, has xyz this Evernote's cloud feature, I wouldn't want to install anything on my friends' computers? Well, I don't think lawyers would like to install anything on their friends' computers, either... but then, perhaps they don't have got any friends, then? Anyway, a lawyer need access to all his stuff anywhere, like anybody else today... but not for sharing but for private access. Thus he wouldn't do with a Jobs tablet or any other ridiculous netbook, he'd have an expensive subnotebook with him... but he need full office functionality on it... including web access to data banks, e.g. - but not to his MI or other information management software files, since he would have them with him (in secured form of course where needed - for the cases, not for the official reference material) - and he would need perfect screen real estate management wherever he is, whatever he wants to do, subnotebook screen size not being an excuse for not being able to do real work - try to do some work on Jobs' tablets.
- Elsewhere, I read some US professor said, in 2010, 30 p.c. of his students use Macs (not iPads, stupid: Mac notebooks) now... but from his first-year students, more than 50 p.c. use Macs! They didn't gave his special field, so probably this is not representive for all students, but what do I know? It's frightening for the Windows world all together, not for "cloud or not clound" decisions within it.
- But let's comfort ourselves by the fact that Mac format and iPad format are not compatible, just as Mac format and Windows format aren't.
- I don't like Android at all - again, it's not a compatible format -, but people seem to rave about it, and perhaps we'll see some compatibility between it and Windows format in further versions? Like we can expect to see some compatibility between Mac and iPad in some time - Jobs is no fool, but many MS people seem to be fools, then.
- Somebody somewhere said, Microsoft seems to become more and more SteveBallmer Soft; I roared with laughter: he's so right, and remember, MS becoming BS Soft, that abbreviation is mainly used for something else, then...
- Whatever information manager software developers might want to do cloud-wise, Evernote will always be there first, and some other specialised collaborative cloud offerings (thinklinkr.com and others)... and OneNote, of course (and whenever Bullsh** Soft decide to add features, they can put 100 men upon it... but let's rejoice by the idea they will not change their basic ideas, jus add features)...
- Hence my looking up Tortoise and Hare... but is there any professional information management software going ways up above all those standard features almost everybody offers? Nope, I didn't find it.
- So where's the niche? Running after Evernote and OneNote, just for discovering you ever will be behind?
- Just days ago, Evernote did their Android 2.0 update, and people rave about it, as they rave about Android. So what to do, running after them, knowing they invested millions of dollars, and millions of dollars are pouring onto them in order to make them invest any more millions of dollars they might judge necessary to make another leap forward you'll not be able to catch up in another 20 years... in which they will make other jumps, not have a nap like our hare?
- The only solution, as with everyone wanting to "compete" with MS / BS, is to have a look at the philosophical differences, since those have chances to remain: Third parties' chances lay in the big players stucking to their convictions, hence niches in which they can excel their very special philosophy, not the "please to the masses" variety.
- As said, I'm not against connectivity. Let me give you an example. In Germany, there are some 130,000 lawyers or even more now. In legal information, there is one big player in Germany, Beck, a specialized marketing house that might have more than 90 p.c. of the legal market now (they don't give numbers, it's just a guess, but for every other legal publisher's book around there, I see 20 from Beck, so...) - and they invested heavily into information management, so that at this time, they make millions and millions (each month, that is; again, I suppose) buy renting out their information in various combinations, and it's even possible to rent access to "Staudinger", the biggest and most expensive law commentary I've ever seen - for not speaking of various specialist journals, all of them indexed up to the last paragraph. Thus, by paying them several hundred euros each month, a lawyer can "have it all" - all that counts, that is - all at his fingertips - and then he would try to make his cases out of all this, in MS Word, for most of them - can you believe this? But that's the reality of German law in 2010.
- But then, Beck has procedures, functions, that integrate with other programs, and they invite developers to use them! Which is to say, this is the connectivity a professional information management program needs to have in order to make raves into that market where money runs down the walls, like we say in French. (Yes, there are some specialized "lawyers' softwares", for doing enforcement issues and other agenda tasks, but then, their text processing cabalities are rather rudimentary, and most invite you to use MS Word, again, in order to draft your legal papers.)
- There's one more feature such a program - MI - need to have in order to please professionals (be they lawyers or other people writing to be read): Reference links that survive into printing. Many of those programs, MI and others, allow for numbering items by exporting / printing... Very well, but in such papers, you do heavy referencing ("see xyz" / "cf. abc", where you would like to have exactly that number, "1.3.2", e.g., the item's title, or both). Problem: You don't know that future number yet when you are writing, and even when you print out the tree, with numbers, a lot a times, in order to have a list on your table, what are you going to do when you rearrange your items? And there will perhaps be 500 such rearrangements, big or small, from first draft to final printing... even when your final document will not contain but 100 items...
- There's InDesign and XPress. I don't have any of those - too expensive for me, I don't get them for "student and scholar" prices, but I've got an old PageMaker; the principle is the same. Thus, I suppose some people have created a tagging system within their texts, with macros by which they insert things like {&ag=75} here and {&&ag=75} there, in order for their desktop publishing software to know what to do, for example to insert a reference to the passage's item title / number and / or even print page number.
- Why two codes, not one? Since it's absolutely necessary to have access to the corresponding thing during your writing process - access by searching those codes... well, not easy in MI since precisely such code characters are not indexed and thus not found... Thus, in MI you cannot even use the original codes for your DTP program, but you must use pseudo-codes that will be indexed, in the form xxxag75, for example, then replace them after exporting your text (same with footnotes, etc., but way more easy).
- We must see one thing: All those (in-file or inter-file) references in MI or other programs don't export into (to-be-) printed material! They only work in writing, for editing... and afterwards? Since you write to be read by others in these cases (be it "published" or just "printed out"), we must find links that will automatically be translated into "written links" when printed, and into MS Word / DTP tags (= those {abcx} things above) when exported for being further processed by such a DTP program - and since those programs have different tags, MI needs an editable "conversion table" in which the user would enter the codes which he needs for his links, and others, when he exports his MI files into export formats - make it several such conversion tables, for several target programs, the rtf format being the commun base of all of this.
- And as said, and differently from now, those links must be accesible both ways: It's not enough to have a link formatting by which clicking you get to your target, you also must have a special formatting for the target point itself, indicating "this is a target to which there exists at least one link / one or several links" - and clicking on this should show a little window in which those several links are listed, and clicking to one would go to this referencing point - or if just one, go directly to it, and of course, with a function to delete the link, from both sides...
- As you see I think that this "visible" feature should be integrated into the current, non-visible, "non-exporting" link feature, since, why do it two times, why do it in parallel?
- Why do I say, make those links exportable in professional tag format, and in just "written links" / "written-out links", for MS Word and other text processors? First, technically, it would be rather similar; in the conversion table, those codes would just be "resolved" into item name, item number or both, with some "formatting options": "(See Itemname (1.4.3))" or "(cf. 1.4.3 - Imemname)", and so on. And then, most important, 99 users out of 100 do not have - or do not use - any DTP software for this, so they need MI to resolve their links into real item names / numbers.
- Even when a lawyer's secretary has InDesign for doing brochures, they will certainly not begin to use it for his papers being send to courts, adversaries, clients, within normal cases: He will print out from MI, and he wants to read his references / links in this print-out, immediately, not sending a file to the secretary who then will have to fuss with a third-party application, together with all those risks to have it wrong in the end that involves (for a book to be published, that's another thing, that's not everyday work; for a book, it's even possible to have those InDesign tags in order for the publisher doing a print-out with it, in order for the author, not owning InDesign, to have a last look upon it before going into printing).
- Finally, I would like to give a hint for doing this even now, manually, but it's awful. Whenever you refer to another item, insert a code as above with a number; within the target item's title field, or in a (shown) attribute field of the target item, do a similar code, with the same number. Example: in the referencing item's text, "#r067", in the target item's title field (of every outliner even without columns) "#t067", or in MI, just "067" in the attribute "R" (for "referenced"). After exporting, do a manual search and replace orgy, perhaps by script. And beforehand, in order to not using one number twice, print out 1,000 numbers 000 to 999 to cross them out, by pen, one by one... Yeah, there are more amusing ways to drive yourself crazy, but then, think of Kant who needed to do all this manually, on index cards...
- If now, fellow users might wonder why so many, many scholars and other lawyers, let alone middle managers, always use MS Word when there are such great outliners available... Well, I just gave you the answer to this up-to-now unfathomable secret. Indeed, all our outlining competitors have a precise lack in functionality that make them almost unusable for real work, whereas MS Word allows for this, in spite of all its shortcomings. Now you see why we are, all outliners combined, constitue a minority of perhaps 1 p.c., against 99 p.c. MS Word users.
- And now imagine MI not having this lack anymore. From then on, all this outlining trinkets will suddenly become useful. It's not that professionals love MS Word, it's that they need it in order to function, up to now, and so, outliners being so much "better" or not, they simply cannot do with 'em, core functions they need not being available there.
- Make 'em available, and make a fortune.