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Working with (display+format+restructure) big amount of data (text+graphics)?
Armando:
from what I can see, a Good HTML structure, especially with CSS for formatting, might work very well for you. You can use a masterpage concept to create the outline view, you can skip to any page you want without regard to it's location within the "document", you can add pages with a simple writeup, and you can index it with ANY indexer. Best of all, if you have it on a web server, you can access it from any computer with web access. Alternatively, you can compile it into an .mht file (I think that is what it is called) and carry it with you as an archived HTML file.-steeladept (July 14, 2007, 04:33 PM)
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I've thought about that a bit (but didn't really know where to start because I'm not an HTML expert). So... That also could be a good idea. I wonder if the "masterpage" would be flexible (and smart) enough to modify itself when pieces of the structure and their titles are moved around, edited, added, etc. It seems to involve a lot of editing. But maybe that depends on the software.
Some aspects that I really like about that idea are the portability, accessibility and indexability.
Can you explain what you mean by "zoom out and see a lot of material"?-steeladept (July 14, 2007, 04:33 PM)
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What I mean is that in most word processors (or any viewers for that matter), you can zoom out and see many pages at the same time. I find that extremely useful, especially when I look at some huge tables, graphics... or anything that would benefit from a zoom out/zoom in feature.
With the right editor, it is as easy to use as Word as well. -steeladept (July 14, 2007, 04:33 PM)
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Were you thinking of any editor in particular?
I need an editor that will not get me in the same kind of trouble I'm trying to escape... I need an editor that can manage huge amounts of data all at the same time. And that brings us to the next point…
The only catch is, I am not sure how you would impliment the Unified View, because I am not completely certain I understand what you want out of the view.-steeladept (July 14, 2007, 04:33 PM)
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What I mean by unified few, is being able to have (or the illusion to have) all the data accessible at once, maybe in the same file (and if in different files, it shouldn't feel like it), and, maybe, even being able to have all the pages and sections one after the other, like the "continuous view" in text document (which allows to jump from page 1 to page 1051 without opening another file or changing window is a great thing.)
To be able to look at my work from different perspectives, with different views is very important to me. This is one thing that I (re)learned from the “note-taking” thread. Different views of the same data (hierarchical outlines, tag clouds, tabs, multiple windows, mind maps, …) can help to work more efficiently, understand better what the data tells you, and... be more creative -- E. Tufte's work is very much about that.
Armando:
Just want to share some quick comments on the OneNote solution (for the problem I exposed in the first post).
On the PLUS side (comments loosely based on my previous requirements):
- Managing huge files : OneNote doesn't seem to have problems with huge file (but I should say "notebooks" instead of files -- these can actually contain numerous files. I actually find that the way OneNote manages different files and folders in one unified notebook is actually quite clever... I wonder if an HTML solution -- see steeladept,s comment -- could do the same thing?)
- Interface : the interface is pleasing (the tabs, being able to color-code everything, etc.)
- Formatting : the formatting options are great (and it offers a very flexible way of inserting data -- whether it's text or not -- on the note "pages"), it's easy to use tables, etc. Formatting wise it seems that you can basically do almost anything you can do with a powerful word processor.
- Zooming in and out : I can zoom in and out inside a page (but not whole sections and section groups... I'll talk about it later)
- Performance : It's pretty quick and the memory footprint is quite small (depending on the size of note books you're loading in memory of course)
- Structural/outlining flexibility : it's pretty easy to reorganize the order of the different sections, providing they're actual parts (represented by different tabs) of OneNote's outlining system.
On the MINUS side:
-Outlining : OneNote' s "outline hierarchy system" seems a bit limiting. It goes like that :
* Section groups. Many section groups can be nested into each other; so you can have a section group inside a section group inside a section group... you get the picture. But one has to be careful because "section groups" are actual folders in the Windows filesystem.
* sections. Aren't nestable into each other : you can't have sections inside sections inside sections... Each section corresponds to an actual file (*.ONE).
* pages (I couldn't nest them into each other)
* and sub pages (don't appear to be able to be nested into each other; you can't have... just read my previous comment on sections) so you're basically limited to 4-5 levels easily viewable hierarchy. of course, you can create numbering and outlines inside a page... but that structure doesn't seem to be viewable with some kind of "outline view" (like in MS Word or OpenOffice, for instance).
- Zooming in and out : predictably, I can't seem to be able to zoom in and out a whole section or even a section group. Of course, I can have the outline view of what's inside a section group (and see the different sections and pages), but I don't get to have a continuous view of "everything"... as if it was one big chunk of text. I don't know if I'm being clear...
- Exporting : that was not necessarily a big consideration, but... since OneNote doesn't seem to be able to give me a unified view of the my texts, it does become a problem : in onenote the only way for me to get that unified view would be to export it to a single file. And that's when I realized that I can't export a whole notebook to another format than OneNote's own "2nd" native format for that specific task (*.onepkg). Of course, I could export a notebook section by section (each section can contain an considerable number of pages and sub-pages), but that doesn't seem very convenient if a notebook contains something like 50 different sections or section groups.
- Searching : I like OneNote's searching abilities. Pretty quick and thorough. But, for more power I'd need to add another desktopsearch software to my collection (I use Archivarius and X1, mainly -- and for good reasons...) to be able to index OneNote's files. And I'm very reluctant to do that...
Temporary conclusion : right now, I find that the minuses are a bit hard to deal with...
Still pondering.
I might have a look at the HTML solution... but which editor should I try for that?
urlwolf:
Maybe evernote would do more of what you want.
And the underlying format is html.
It uses tags, so your idea of a giant outline may not hold.
OneNote does have all the minuses you list.
here are some definite pluses from my POV:
- best outlining (inside a page) ever.
- fast tables
- easy to reorganize and tag items
- keyboard friendly
- images containing text are OCR'ed and can be searched (!). Ideal to paste stuff from an article
- formulas possible (!)
- quick napkin operations, e,.g. 2 + 2 = will produce 4 automatically.
- most flexible "page": point where you want to start writing and it works.
- can save video and record sound (dictation!)
- can attach any file type
- no need to hit save ever
- recognizes handwriting. Ideal with a tablet or a wacom interface
steeladept:
Thank you for the explaination, that helped a lot. The zooming, to my knowledge can not happen the way you described if you want to keep the pages separate. That is just one of the drawbacks of using HTML. As URLWolf mentioned, maybe using Evernote would work for that. Other than that, though, HTML can do exactly what you want. Since I tend to code my own HTML directly in a text editor like Boxer or Notepad++, I can't really make any good suggestions as to what WYSIWYG editor would work best for you, but hopefully someone else here can. Perhaps Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express? Just a though where to start anyway. What I can say is you would need to put a lot of thought into the underlying structure before the editor would work the way you want (for pagination and navigation for example). Most likely that would also require a lot of custom coding before using the editor. I think if I were you, though, I would try Evernote first, as this route could take a long time to streamline and make effective (assuming the missing zoom feature didn't disqualify this to begin with).
suleika:
Had you thought of using a wiki? There are so many indexing and categorising possibilities with the sophisticated ones (MediaWiki, obviously, but also PMWiki for example) that jumping around should be easy. And I believe with most of them you can insert pages, which dynamically update when they are edited, into other pages (like master pages).
By zoom, do you mean visually until text is unreadable, like with a pdf file? I don't know how you could get that view of a collection of pages on a wiki or with html but with html you can zoom in and out of tables very easily in a browser. Also, you can click around pages with indexes and categories and use inserted pages to make very long pages with automatic indexes and stuff like that.
I thought of a wiki because it is organised on the fly and yet links are easy and maintain themselves automatically, and categories are easy to change and add. Most of them have good search engines too.
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