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General Software Discussion / Re: How to work with (display, format, restructure) big amount of structured data?
« on: July 19, 2007, 10:16 PM »
Hello there,
I’ve tested MS Word 2007 today for about 4 hours at some friends place and, for what I want, I'm not too impressed. I was hoping that the experience with “huge documents” would have been encouraging… but it really hasn't been the case.
Not only did I find the 2007 version sluggish compared to Word 2003 (on my computer, Word 2003 fires up almost instantaneously; on my friends laptop — an 8 months old HP with an Intel Core duo, which compares favorably against my inspiron 6400 — Word 2007 took at least 15-20 seconds for… a blank page,) but it refused to open several of my biggest documents (I admit that they contained a lot of text boxes and frames — they were mainly precious OCRed material — but still…).
Isn't that amazing? (At some point, one of these documents opened after 10 minutes!). Maybe not actually…
So, I'm still finding it hard to find an application which would allow me to manipulate big amounts of mostly textual data (but ALSO containing some images and tables — some kind of visually attractive structured database, I guess…) with formatting and all that, AND which also provides a flexible outliner.
I haven't tried LyX yet (I will, in 5 minutes…), but, from what I read, I doubt that it will provide any good solution. I might just go back to my old strategies. [Edit : Nope. LyX won't do it... Way too much tinkering and it's more a "write it, edit it, format it, and publish it solution" where format comes in third or even fourth place. i.e. :To much of a "styles, formatting and WYSIWYG is for prettiness" mentality. I might use it to format articles though... But, for that task, Endnotes + Word seems already more than enough...]
But — sorry if that seems like a dumb question — what are the writers, researchers and Ph.Ders in the DC community using when structuring and restructuring big amounts of mostly “textual” data (ALSO containing images and tables — almost inevitable in my field)? Softwares like myBase or Ultra Recall? Despite the format restrictions they impose? Just wondering…
(Of course, some clues have already been provided... :
suleika and Jimdoria --> tiddlywiki or other wiki solutions
urlwolf --> OneNote
steeladept --> HTML editor
f0dder --> LyX (with some... reservations?) )
I’ve tested MS Word 2007 today for about 4 hours at some friends place and, for what I want, I'm not too impressed. I was hoping that the experience with “huge documents” would have been encouraging… but it really hasn't been the case.
Not only did I find the 2007 version sluggish compared to Word 2003 (on my computer, Word 2003 fires up almost instantaneously; on my friends laptop — an 8 months old HP with an Intel Core duo, which compares favorably against my inspiron 6400 — Word 2007 took at least 15-20 seconds for… a blank page,) but it refused to open several of my biggest documents (I admit that they contained a lot of text boxes and frames — they were mainly precious OCRed material — but still…).
Isn't that amazing? (At some point, one of these documents opened after 10 minutes!). Maybe not actually…
So, I'm still finding it hard to find an application which would allow me to manipulate big amounts of mostly textual data (but ALSO containing some images and tables — some kind of visually attractive structured database, I guess…) with formatting and all that, AND which also provides a flexible outliner.
I haven't tried LyX yet (I will, in 5 minutes…), but, from what I read, I doubt that it will provide any good solution. I might just go back to my old strategies. [Edit : Nope. LyX won't do it... Way too much tinkering and it's more a "write it, edit it, format it, and publish it solution" where format comes in third or even fourth place. i.e. :To much of a "styles, formatting and WYSIWYG is for prettiness" mentality. I might use it to format articles though... But, for that task, Endnotes + Word seems already more than enough...]
But — sorry if that seems like a dumb question — what are the writers, researchers and Ph.Ders in the DC community using when structuring and restructuring big amounts of mostly “textual” data (ALSO containing images and tables — almost inevitable in my field)? Softwares like myBase or Ultra Recall? Despite the format restrictions they impose? Just wondering…
(Of course, some clues have already been provided... :
suleika and Jimdoria --> tiddlywiki or other wiki solutions
urlwolf --> OneNote
steeladept --> HTML editor
f0dder --> LyX (with some... reservations?) )