Feature request: Web clipping, permanent note keeping

[rjbull]

Oh, dear.  This is way over my head.  Quoting my OP:

improving CHS as an application for keeping permanent notes, particularly when they're Web clips.

And that's all, really.  I'm certainly not going to read tomes on relational database theory.

On Edward de Bono, you might be interested in this quote:

"De Bono though is a child of the Enlightenment: he really believes that people can do better, and only shoddy thinking prevents them from so doing.  He has no idea that much inefficiency is deliberately caused by the power-hungry, paranoid, back-stabbing, glory-hunting, spiteful, grudge-bearing human beings who infest the world of organised work."
  -  Robin Potts, reviewing Edward de Bono's "Simplicity" in The Guardian, 5 Sept. 1998.

[IainB]

@rjbull: Your requirements for:

...improving CHS as an application for keeping permanent notes, particularly when they're Web clips.

- are captured iin the draft of the provisional summary analysis of User Requirements for CHS

I have invested a fair bit of time in doing this, so I shall await @mouser's resonse. There are 21 or so items that he would need to review to see whether he is prepared to change CHS to meet the defined requirement.

I can't see that there's any need for you to "read tomes on relational database theory", though.
I might find that interesting, as the whole area of the use if IT for information management - and especiallly knowledge management - is something that I find quite absorbing, but it's not everybody's cup of tea. It would be as dry as dust for many people.

[rjbull]

There are 21 or so items that he would need to review to see whether he is prepared to change CHS to meet the defined requirement.

-IainB (September 03, 2011, 08:57 AM)

Be aware that there have been suggestions - not, I think, recently - that mouser should merge CHS with his other program, The Form Letter Machine.  That might present synergies, but it would more likely move CHS away from your requirements.

I can't see that there's any need for you to "read tomes on relational database theory", though.

-IainB (September 03, 2011, 08:57 AM)

That's what you said you you were doing, in another thread!

the use if IT for information management - and especiallly knowledge management - is something that I find quite absorbing, but it's not everybody's cup of tea.

-IainB (September 03, 2011, 08:57 AM)

Just as long as the IT staff truly understand end user requirements, rather than imposing a solution from above without consultation because "they know what the user wants."

[IainB]

@rjbull:
1. Requirements: Your requirements are included in the User Requirements for CHS, and so are mine, but I have by no means expanded the requirements to fit all of the existing functionality that currently exists in CHS.
However, each requirement is shown where it matches a clipboard-type function, or a PIM-type function (there's a column for each function) or both. You could add a third column to reflect the Form Letter Machine-type application.
The spreadsheet can be used as quite a powerful tool to identify and define the specific user requirements. That's q good way to remove ambiguity.
@mouser will be able to easily identify from that which requirements he might not want to implement.

2. RDB theory: Sure, I am reading up an intro to this theory, but that's only to help me to understand more fully the technical aspects of CHS. I like to dig into a subject before I can feel that I more fully understand it. Currently I do not understand very much about how CHS works. I don't advocate that you or anyone else needs to read up on the theory though, unless you would like to.

3. IT comprehension of requirements: Good point. IT people are usually far removed from the users and do not usually have a good grasp of the users' business processes that tend to illustrate why their requirements are such-and-such.
That's why I provided the link to the post about a methodology for collecting user requirements, and I applied that method in building the spreadsheet.
If the IT people did not know what the CHS user wanted beforehand, they would know more by the time they had finished looking through the spreadsheet (assuming that the spreadsheet has been rigorously developed and "signed off" by users).

In my experience, it is a combination of poor method/rationale in confirming user requirements, coupled with arrogance and ignorance, that lead IT people to tend to impose a solution from above without consultation - that's what gives them the feeling that "they know what the user wants' ", I presume. It's irrational. I've seen it happen a lot of times, and I've had to help clear up the mess after it has happened.

[rjbull]

@rjbull:
1. Requirements: Your requirements are included in the [...] @mouser will be able to easily identify from that which requirements he might not want to implement.

-IainB (September 04, 2011, 11:55 AM)

Inconsistent, perhaps...  but while I don't feel too bad about asking mouser for "another little feature," or what seems to me a little one, I'm less comfortable about making this look like a big commercial project.  It's just one of mouser's personal projects: and just one of the ones he doesn't make any money on.  What mouser really needs to do is

Spoiler

finish his Ph.D and

get well-paid work...

[IainB]

@rjbull: Well, I don't know about any of that. All I have done is my level best in terms of trying to clarify the requirements and what probably needs to be done to meet those requirements, and removing any ambiguity about them - as much as possible. Whether CHS is somehow "forked" in its development lifecycle at this stage, or stays as is, will probably be up to @mouser and his available time and his preferred direction for CHS/PIM/TFLM.
This doesn't look like a "commercial" exercise to me, though I could be wrong, of course. Do you think it may need to made into a commercial exercise, so that it could be profitable?

[rjbull]

Do you think it may need to made into a commercial exercise, so that it could be profitable?

-IainB (September 05, 2011, 10:32 AM)

Well, that's up to mouser, who doesn't seem supremely commercially-minded    But if it's going to be the King PIM, and will take work, effort and expenditure on tools and libraries to maintain, then it could command a fair price.  Of course, there are so many PIMs out there already.

Have you looked at NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Ethervane Echo?  A new clipboard extender with

Virtual views with user-defined sort order and filters

[IainB]

Thanks, no, I had not looked at Echo until you pointed it out to me just now.
Why would I want to use that? It looks like it's "just" a clipboard proggy - a good one too (a Ditto duplicate) - and I don't need one of those any more, as, earlier this year, I started to commit my data to a rather good one - one which also happens to be a sort of hybrid PIM. It's called CHS.
I haven't seen anything as close as this to matching my peculiar needs since the early '90s.

[rjbull]

Offer a configuration option to include the URL on a line at the bottom of a clip, so that when you want to paste the clip into a document, the URL automatically comes along with the text, without needing any extra action?

-rjbull (August 21, 2011, 03:58 PM)

mouser, I've had a supplementary thought.  I know it's possible to export from CHS, but only into a CSV file and only, as far as I can see, the entire list in the current folder.  Please can it be made possible to only export marked clips, and in a user-specified tagged-field format?

I'm thinking of something like the following, with the tagged fields based on the display columns, but allowing the user to (a) specify whether the tag is open (single tag at the beginning of a field) or closed (separate tags to start and end the field, like HTML or BBcode) and (b) give the tag a different name from the CHS column, as appropriate:

Tags Open[X] Closed [ ]
Column      Tag
Excerpt     {Title:}
Notes       {URL:}

Tags Open[ ] Closed [X]
Column      Tag - start       Tag - end
Excerpt     [Title]           [/Title]
Notes       [URL:]            [/URL]

It might be necessary to allow only so many characters of the Excerpt field, or direct editing of it, to give more sensible titles/headings.

This should help with the following:

• Manipulation of the text with scripting programs like AWK, PERL, REXX, etc.
• Modification of the text with editor/word processor macros for formatting for presentation.
• Merging of the data with data from other sources.
• Import into other data storage systems, e.g. DB/TextWorks®

Here I'm thinking, perhaps too much, of the job I used to do but do no longer, where this would have been extremely useful.

Quick (probably) request: currently, when you export, CHS automatically pops up Notepad containing the export file.  Please can it optionally not do that?

[mouser]

what if i export to xml format -- so presumably any number of conversion tools could post-process the export file.

[rjbull]

what if i export to xml format -- so presumably any number of conversion tools could post-process the export file.

-mouser (September 07, 2011, 02:45 PM)

I realise that real programmers are able to get to grips with XML, so that would be a nice addition.  The trouble is that I don't understand XML.  It's a more complex format that I meant, and one would have to find tools to do what one wanted.  On the other hand, even I can write simple AWK scripts, and used to use a lot of them.  Very convenient for modest data-twiddling tasks.

That is, I'd like a really simple format that ordinary computer users with modest skills can work with easily.

[rjbull]

what if i export to xml format -- so presumably any number of conversion tools could post-process the export file.

-mouser (September 07, 2011, 02:45 PM)

I realise that real programmers are able to get to grips with XML, so that would be a nice addition.  The trouble is that I don't understand XML.  It's a more complex format that I meant [...] I'd like a really simple format that ordinary computer users with modest skills can work with easily.

-rjbull (September 07, 2011, 03:10 PM)

I suppose that XML is now what programmers immediately think of when asked about exchanging data between programs.  For the end user, something like ClipMate's Templates would be much easier, and more versatile than what I suggested above.  They're just plain text files that allow you to freely mix fixed text with tokens representing the clip itself and its various attributes.  That's pretty close to the idea of merging CHS with FLM that others have suggested.  However, ClipMate appears to apply the templates as the clip is captured.  As I said before, I'd rather apply them at pasting time.  That would allow many different "views" of the same data, for different purposes.