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Working with (display+format+restructure) big amount of data (text+graphics)?
Armando:
Maybe I'm just drowning inside the smallest cup of water... :-[
OneNote is definitely well done and powerful.
Urlwolf : in your list, I notice that the most unique OneNote features are probably not the one I need the most :
[…]
- images containing text are OCR'ed and can be searched (!). Ideal to paste stuff from an article
[…]
- 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!)
[…]
- no need to hit save ever
- recognizes handwriting. Ideal with a tablet or a wacom interface
-urlwolf (July 15, 2007, 11:22 PM)
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I must admit that I like the “no need to hit save ever” and “most flexible ‘page’ ”features. They're not absolutely important to me though. Not at that point.
And, maybe predictably, the other features you mention are almost all (albeit not exactly in the same way) found in MS Word, :
here are some definite pluses from my POV:
- […] outlining (inside a page) […].
- fast tables
- easy to reorganize and tag items
- keyboard friendly
[…]
- formulas possible (!)
[…]
- can attach any file type
-urlwolf (July 15, 2007, 11:22 PM)
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So am I back to square one ? Do I finally just need a word processor, one that can gracefully handle huge documents and show me the data in different ways (mostly, structurally speaking) with great outlining capabilities? I'm starting to think that, stupidly, it could very well be the case… Especially since other solutions like Ultra Recall, myBase, Surfulater, etc. seem to limits what I want to do (although they're great in many other aspects).
TexNotes Pro could also be an option. But... TexNotes seems to suffer from the absence of a zoom in / zoom out feature. (TexNotes aficionados : please tell me if I'm wrong) .That zoom in / zoom out feature might seem a bit of a caprice but, actually, the more I think of it, the more I realize it's really not a whim — especially in cases where I want to be able to see the totality of a big diagram.
Maybe evernote would do more of what you want.
And the underlying format is html.
-urlwolf (July 15, 2007, 11:22 PM)
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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).-steeladept (July 16, 2007, 08:25 AM)
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Thanks for the suggestion guys. I'm already a big EverNote user. After using it for several months I have decided that I would not use it to structure data in any fixed ways, but just to capture random bits of text and images, articles and web pages, that I can categorize loosely (using specific tags), to be used later in more structured thought processes (in my own articles, research projects, etc.). To be used in any other way I find that EverNote misses some kind of “knowledge tree” like Surfulater… plus, you can't zoom in/out and the formatting options are more limited. :)
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. -steeladept (July 16, 2007, 08:25 AM)
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Yes, the zooming in and out seems to be a problem, I might still look at different html options.
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.-steeladept (July 16, 2007, 08:25 AM)
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No problem. I’ll wait for suggestions and try different options on my own too…
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. -steeladept (July 16, 2007, 08:25 AM)
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Since I need a very flexible structure, all that custom coding and thought concerning the underlying structure would definitely be a drawback.
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).
-suleika (July 16, 2007, 08:53 AM)
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I have to look at that too. Thanks!
I have the feeling that these wiki solutions might require a lot of maintenance work. We’ll see…
But I have the feeling that I'll be coming back to some kind of more traditionnal word processor. Nothing else seems to really fit the bill. Oups?
I wonder if some of you actually use Word 2007. Like many others, I'm still using Word 2003 and never really considered buying office 2007. But what if word 2007 handles huge documents beautifully? Any first hand experience?
Thanks a lot!
steeladept:
I use Word 2007, but not the huge documents. I know the specs are for much larger documents though if that helps.
Armando:
Thanks steeladept. I've checked around and saw Zaine Ridling writing that :
For the sake of sheer size, Word 2007 allows the biggest documents and most processing power. After creating a 32,767-page document, Word 2007 had reached its upper limit.
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http://www.thegsblog.com/?m=200609
That's a lot of pages. But I wonder how safe (and smooth...) it is to use at that point. Prone to crash or not?
Let's see if anybody else has something to say about Word 2007's ability to handle really large documents.
Jimdoria:
Hi Armando -
Amplifying suleika's suggestion, I'd suggest you take a look at TiddlyWiki: http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
TiddlyWiki will do a lot of what you want, and addresses many of your concerns. It is a strange beast - halfway between an application and a document. What it is is a wiki system written entirely in JavaScript, and therefore it runs entirely in the browser. Your tiddlywiki is a single file that you can take with you (or save on your hard disk) but you can also put it on a server or other network spot and access it like a regular web-based wiki. You define chunks of content that can be as long or as short as you want, and you arrange them however you like by opening and closing them. It uses a fairly comprehensive wiki format for editing. Since the content is all HTML, it should be indexable by any search engine you've got.
Outlining and other formatting capabilities are similar to what HTML provides (hardly surprising.) You can even create tabbed sections within the body of your text, if you'd need that for some reason. Tags are built in. Topics are tracked by both a main menu of links (which you maintain) or by an automated list that lets you view topics by timeline, by tag, by link info, or just all in a list.
Printing is going to be pretty much limited to what your browser can handle, so that might be a concern. On the other hand, all formatting based on CSS so it's immensely customizable if you know what you are doing. (It's possible to create custom CSS files for print and do some fairly sophisticated DTP-style layout - or so I've read. Don't ask me how to do it, though! :-) )
You can set Tiddlywiki to make backups whenever you save it (or whenever it autosaves) so corruption shouldn't be an issue. It has some synchronization features as well. It's really kind of hard to believe this thing does so much and works as well as it does, and requires only a web browser. It's an amazing system! Oh, and it's open source, too.
Armando:
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, jimdoria.
Right after I read your post last night, I tried tiddlywiki for about 3-4 hours. You're right : it IS a strange beast and an amazing system.
At first, I had some problems saving my “wiki” in Maxthon (even after following all the indications), so I decided to download and install the latest version of Firefox, which solved the problem.
So…I like what I saw and I can see how flexible tiddlywiki is or can be.
Some notes on…
What I really like:
- Portability and accessibility
- visual presentation (pretty sexy)
- “indexability”
- possibility to zoom in and out within the browser (a bit weird, but it does work…)
- its structure flexibility, and all the other things you said (“create tabbed sections within the body of your text […] Tags are built in. Topics are tracked by both a main menu of links (which you maintain) or by an automated list that lets you view topics by timeline, by tag, by link info, or just all in a list.”) + being able to jump from one section to the other, jump from one concept to the other, etc.
- the formating options (but these could be a bit hard to really master... : html.. will talk about it in a few lines)
- the saving and backup features
- the fact that it's… open source and that it’s just HTML (This is one thing that I don't like about *.doc, and even more about *.one, or *.docx… since these formats are not as widespread and they’re closed.)
- It is possible to have a kind of “unified or continuous view” of all my data — even if a bit awkward (maybe a plugin could allow me do that, I don’t know…)
And some notes on…
What “frightens” me and makes me hesitate:
- the “work” (and language learning) involved to be able to insert images, numbering, graphics, tables, etc. Like I said ealier, I’m not an html expert. I’m willing to learn, but I must not forget my — ahem — other work (this thing for which I’m trying all these productivity software for… ;D)
- the “tiddlers” indicated by “[[ ]]” don’t seem to be treated exactly as the “normal” CamelCase one : the cross referencing and hyperlinking doesn’t seem to be created automatically throughout the wiki. (While I was playing with tiddlywiki, I couldn’t help but wondering why word processors and most note-takers haven’t integrated this feature yet)
- The outlining is not as clear as a “regular” outline — like in a word processor, or like in a “tree view” (Surfulater, EverNote…). Off course, it does work in a different way : each series of levels can be opened from a tiddler, etc.
And the reorganizing of all the structure levels (+ the sorting, etc.) could become a bit of a daunting task (remember, I want a “very easy way to reorganize the order of the different sections”).
Well, this is the outcome of my limited experience. I have to do a bit more work now, but I’ll continue my explorations later.
Thanks again for your suggestions.
And I’m also still willing to read about others experience with MS Word 2007 (dealing with huge documents).
[edit] PS : jimdoria : have you used Zulupad before ? Just wondering... http://www.gersic.com/zulupad/zulupad.html
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