Hi Petko,
This is great! I would be delighted to work with the beta also in the meantime.
I think we are on a very good way together. I stopped my lengthy explanations 2 weeks ago since it is evident all major things are on the table, and I wanted to give you time to respire, instead of gnagging endlessly. As I tried to explain during these months, a one-man show could not try to compete with all the goodies an Evernote cloud applic has, with their millions of dollars they can spend on it, so it must look for another niche, and since UR, might it be "better" technically or not, is not user-friendly at all, I saw MI's niche in specializing in real excellent text / document handling, for professionals with money - so with money to spend on (really good) software -, being aware that there is a rather long way to it, but also seeing that MI has all the foundations in order to build up something like that.
I'm in no way trying to have "all my features", as some others did try to impose or at least did try to promote more or less heavily; I've tried to conceive a software that, if it does not appeal to any- and everyone, will appeal to people who have serious - and seriously paid - work to do.
I am aware that not everything of all this can be done in little time, and that some things might be impossible. Especially for MI 6, I would not request the really difficult things, and as said before, one reason of my displaying a "global workout" was to prevent developing this and that which would not be sufficient for professional use in the end, since "taken efforts" often prevent from implementing the real solutions, i.e. when there is something, might it be rather not so good, but which has taken many efforts, motivation to program a much better solution that integrates much better in a new "whole", is rather reduced; for this reason, preventing "bad courses" in the programming process is nearly as important as implementing new top-notch features; if there are existing bad "solutions", the excellent ones will often never see the day.
Hence my exhaustivity, not to make anybody miserable by a spectacular difference in "debit and credit", between "what would be desirable" and "what little has been reached at", but to promote a sort of integrativity in development, not cluttering together of half-baken disparate things, but a "great vision" before decisions where to go - that it's not to compete with Evernote and their millions, is evident... which is not to say that MI should not have connectivity in the sense a majority of users / potential users understand connectivity.
All I say is, MI is not yet specialized in anything; in most things it is not as good as UR is... but then, it is much more "accessible" as UR is... but that must not be it's only raison d'être, it's only reason to be on the market. In order to survive and to succeed in a time when askSam perishes (see below), and when real good programs / ancestors did perish in numbers, MI MUST specialise, marketing-wize, MUST become really excellent in a marketable way, i.e. so that you can SHOW its excellency to professional users, within a first glance... which will have them play a little bit with it for some minutes... in which they will find other top-notch features immediately useful for their work... and so they "buy"... which makes them really buy, the first "buy" being meant in the way, the "adopt" it, they understand that MI brings a real advantage to them.
A software that brings a competitive advantage to a professional user in his paid work... is not prone to die.
It's prone to rise. And from this marketing point of view, I suggest to put into version 6 all the things that can be done with not too much programming work; this way, the "new features list" for version 6 will be long and impressive, and without "costing" too much... but to implement these features, with having in mind the further implementation all those more difficult features that would complement MI 7 to real tremendous software (= without any more annoying functional gaps then), so as to produce some kind of "the real thing", some sort of tremendously useful, "complete" software (which is not bloatware: for an information manager, it's mandatory that it allows for all sorts of information treatment / processing, it must be adaptable to various workflows, not try to force a one and single kind of workflow onto its users (= which will then not be numerous).
As you / we all can see, Felix is really serious about MI, as I am, and with his special skills, he can be of tremendous help to MI... and is ostensibly willing to be: this is fantastic, and we all can be very glad about this - I am indeed.
Hi Daly (and all),
Friday, on bitsdujour, I've been "Thomas Short", and "I.E. Finis" (but without somebody taking note of my tongue-in-cheek pseudonym), you were you... but then, you must know that I am systematically censored by them so I have to withdraw to camouflage - I'm not censored there when I am touting things, of course, and I even understand that that site wants to sell.
You are a very kind guy - I did a little googling that has only confirmed my impression -, but askSam's marketing speek even brought you to your limits, and that's not easy; in fact you were more of a "killer" for once than I as "Thomas Short" had been there; I really wanted to give them a last chance, so to speak, and as we all can see, they didn't take any hand reached out for them but simply continued in their marketing mumble... and they did not succeed in convincing anyone - just compare with Petko's post above, and we all believe in him, without having any doubt...
That is, AS simply does not have many programmers left but seem to squeeze out the last drop out of their (once spectacular) fruit... as I said many months ago there... but then, I would have liked to see them survive, even having left their program years ago.
I would like to give an example, for MI usage / development also. Of course, AS's ability to display a list of all finds in all items is tremendous, it's special interest laying in the fact that this list, other than in MI, cannot just show the first line of those items, but (if you want it to do so) the first line of the concerned items in which the find occurs: the finds' contexts!
I hope that MI will get this feature also, not that in my work it would especially helpful, but again, I'm thinking of the lawyer I am always speaking of (because they are numerous, have not get yet real tremendous software, thus would be willing to adopt MI... and have plenty of money to make Petko rich...), and thus, I know that this was one of AS's finest features... and would be one of MI's great (and marketable) features.
But then, AS did show this for the first find in each item... but NOT for many finds in the same item! Understood, many items are rather short, so no problem with that for those, but some items must be rather long and should not be divided up, and then such an identical function within the item would perhaps produce 20 or 30 finds... that at this time, in AS and in MI, you would need to check one by one, in the text.
So, MI first must get this "finds context table view" in the first place, before optimizing it, but AS has had this special view for more than ten years now, and they never bothered with adopting this EXISTING feature for single items, and in fact I cannot remember a single occasion in all those years they adopted something their users asked for.
They simply did their thing, and they did not produce but crap, far from that: By 6.1, they introduced, years ago, their tree in a before-that tree-less database (where you could not do but searching, incl. even some fuzzy searching): a tree built up on the spot (and thus not well functioning for large databases), depending on fields and their contents.
But this was years ago, and afterwords, quasi-nothing new, just some graphical enhancements (and new bugs)... when in fact it was their tree, their "excellency feature" now, that should have been enhanced: stored tree views (instead of having to manually enter (or by external (mouse!) macros several settings) again and again some standard tree views - so GTD and other project management theoretically possible, but for each view, 1 minute or so manual fussing with the settings, again and again...
And also, since these trees were built on a (rather flat but mostly sufficient - and malleable, hence the greatness!) hierarchy of fields, some improvement would have made it possible to have one item at several positions in the tree, a sort of synch-third-dimensionality, something unique in the world.
But no, no way with AS staff, they simply did nothing on it, notwithstanding our urges to improve their finest feature. So, even many years after the introduction of 6.1, even today, in spite of tree building on the spot depending on various fields, no way for an item to appear in two subtrees at the same time. It would have been unique the world, and we users would have let them get away with all their bugs, unadressed for years or new ones, since we would have got a software really in a world apart.
But no, just Wade's kind mumble mumble, he never lost his temper - we did -, but he never did anything to sustain our love for his program of which potential we all (= with Flo's, Felix' and my help that is) were perfectly aware.
Thus, if AS is dead (which is not 100 p.c. sure yet), it's a suicide.
Other folks, read Daly's post on bitsdujour, in some lines, he wrote in a very elegant way, nothing really new, especially since "Thomas" ' had posted before him, but I had said in in my usual lengthy way, and he put it all in a fifth of that, and as said, really elegant, it's a joy to read (just look under "History" there, and then it's been just a few days ago, you'll find it instantly, then search for "Daly".
Daly, I hope you will recover soon, and that's it not too serious. It's a shame that people who have mor to give to other than your regular guy, and that's undeniably your case, have more than their share of suffering; the world is deeply injust.
Once, AS was one of the worlds greatest programs, and they had a very large customer base... and many, many long-time customers left, as their good-bye posts on their forum prove, or as their "latest warning before leaving" posts prove, all followed by sheer since (I could have said, roaring silence, but then, I try to avoid clichés).
MI does not have this customer base yet, but then, MI is the opposite of being suicidal and thus can build up a customer base that will allow for further growth (I'm speaking of the development manpower here once its appeal to big spenders will be at least partly established, and with guys of value on board, Petko very first as the captain, why should it now go any other way than up?
Daly, hang in there.