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Recent Posts

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1
Screenshot Captor / Minimal
« Last post by limelect on April 25, 2025, 01:55 AM »
Is it possible to have a minimal program?

I caught your screen with mine
https://limelect.com...oads/screen-capture/
basic difference that it catches with a handle that takes NETO
2
Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Lattics - observations and comments from a user
« Last post by Dormouse on April 20, 2025, 08:14 AM »
When I started using Lattics it was a very slow and gradual process; initially I moved in simple WIP, and expanded from there. The timeline feature didn't even exist. The documentation was incomplete (it's been better done imo for recently introduced features). It took time for me to get my head around the most comfortable workflows for starting new projects or bringing over more complex WIP. So I've written a simple summary of how to do it - originally for my own use.

Suggestions for starting a project and planning/plotting in Lattics.
The key fact to remember is that content text exists only once in the database. Everything else is an editable view of that content - articles, cards, timeline events, mindmap nodes (and will be &etc when they introduce new views - whiteboard apparently on way) - edit one, edit all; and don't delete cards unless you want that content gone (you can always retrieve them from the trash).

The best starting point, once you know you want a new project, is to work out the tagging system. Lattics uses hierarchical tags and they're not simple to edit once you have them set up; but it is quite simple to work out the system at the beginning and to add to it afterwards. It can all be set up later, and it is quite simple to add tags to a group of cards, but it might require a bit of effort to check that you have tagged everything you want.

First set up your project - ie create a folder for it.
You should gather all the already existing cards you want to use and add them to the project; that won't remove them from any other project they are already in. You might want to add project tags too.
Then it's just a question of preference and the needs of the project.

If you like traditional outlining, there a couple of options.
You can just write the outline on a project page or in a card (no need to use bullet points); because each entry is a block, it is easy enough to convert them to cards (the text will still show in the outline). Alternatively, you can just outline using the document tree directly. Or you can use tables to do something similar. Personally, I'd choose the first because it's simpler to add comments. This is the simplest place to start if you already have a clear idea of the narrative structure

If you are still brainstorming, with no idea of structure, a better place to start may be the mindmap/graph. If there are no articles, then it's a blank canvas and it's easy to click to add cards and draw arrows between them. There's little control of appearance, just enough to start playing with possibilities; presumably the whiteboard view, when it comes, will bring a richer visual experience.

If you have some idea of "events", then look to the timeline. Events on a timeline can be given start and end times - but they're optional, and you don't have to think of them in that way. There are lanes which contain tracks and events are placed in the tracks. Many projects won't need more than one lane. Effectively it's a grid making it easy to see arcs and people over time. The mindmap/graph is a blank canvas and the timeline is a gridded canvas. It can be used in exactly the same way as the plotting and character grids in other writing programs. It's worth remembering, if you are setting times, that there's a minimum size for an event on the graph which can make them look a bit out of place at some zoom levels.

Of course, it's entirely possible to follow all these approaches at the same time - edits in one will update all.


Again, when I started I was slightly apprehensive about how fragile the workflows might be and stuff just breaking - an all too frequent experience with many newser apps. But it has actually (touch forests, cross toes) been robust so far; and felt like it too.
3
I have the solution: ExcerptText DESC NOCASE
4
Is there a way to set the ordering of clips case insensitive?

I use favourites extensively and alphabetical sorting is still the best way for me to keep an overview. I was able to find out quite quickly that alphabetically descending sorting is possible by entering ‘ExcerptText DESC’ under ‘Custom Menu Sorting SQL’.

Unfortunately, the entries ‘ExcerptText DESC CI’ or ‘ExcerptText DESC CaseInsensitive’ only lead to error messages.

PS: And last but not least, thank you very much for this ‘little’ programme, which makes life so much easier for me as a neurodivergent person. I have tested dozens of comparable and less comparable programmes. In my opinion, CHS is still the undisputed leader, certainly for the way I use it.
5
DC Gamer Club / Re: Latest Game Giveaway
« Last post by Deozaan on April 14, 2025, 01:40 PM »
6
Living Room / Re: AI Coding Assistants (Who uses them and which)
« Last post by 4wd on April 14, 2025, 02:24 AM »
Lately I've been using LM Studio + Qwen2.5-coder-14b-instruct LLM, (running on an Intel Arc B580), accessed via VSCode with the Continue plugin which is helping me modify a Java program, (a language I know nothing about), by expanding upon highlighted errors and telling me where I've screwed up along with possible ways to fix it.
7
Living Room / Re: AI Coding Assistants (Who uses them and which)
« Last post by erikts on April 13, 2025, 03:32 AM »
FYI

Gemini 2.5 Pro vs. Claude 3.7 Sonnet: Coding Comparison

Google just launched Gemini 2.5 Pro on March 26th, claiming to be the best in coding, reasoning and overall everything. But I mostly care about how the model compares against the best available coding model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet (thinking), released at the end of February, which I have been using, and it has been a great experience.

Let’s compare these two coding models and see if I need to change my favourite coding model or if Claude 3.7 still holds.
8
I have always been aware of the importance of forgetting.
And of minimising cognitive effort.
And yet notes programs tend to focus on total recall and users often choose high effort strategies for managing their notes. Brute force rather than optimised effort.

My mind was drawn to this by a Reddit query from a user who appeared to systematically go through all the notes they had taken and classify or discard them. Wasting the effort in the discarded notes and losing the potential value to future needs.

I will massively oversimplify human memory:
Two main recall/memory systems: episodic/sequential and semantic/categorical. Forgetting avoids recall being clogged up by irrelevant memories - but this forgetting is more akin to fading losing the path than it is to wiping the memory out. Fading is governed by recency and frequency. Recognition memory is possibly used even more frequently in everyday life but needs the stimulus in front of us.

The highest brute force recall in programs is Search (but with the disadvantage that search terms need to be fairly precise). Folders offer Search within defined limits (but user has to know where the desired note is kept and there's often significant user effort in deciding where to put the note originally). Tags are kin to simple predefined Saved Searches and filters; they all depend on recognition of the desired note(s). The advantage of the tags etc system is that it also shows notes that are in some way similar - and notes are rarely wanted on their own. Effectively these are semantic/categorical equivalents.
Programs are less often designed to present notes in an episodic sequence. iirc the original Evernote was designed around it. The Daily Notes popularised by Roam Research is another way of achieving the same thing, but it only does this if all notes are in Daily Notes. Programs using Folders tend to put them into silos and so explicitly don't have a 'see everything in sequence' view. iirc Heptabase had such a view, but the best I have seen is in Lattics. This allows all notes to be seen as cards with view options for summary, summary with images, preview and list. The advantage is that it enables very fast visual scanning with notes being chosen by recognition. Sequence is by latest edit, so I have a recency effect as well.
Another feature popularised by Roam was wikilinking, where notes can be seen as a network of links from a note and backlinks to a note (similar to Luhmann's zettelkasten, but also reminiscent of the Citation Index tomes I well remember from academic libraries; many happy hours spent going backwards and forwards between papers and tomes until I had distilled a network of key papers, researchers and topics; computers just don't have the same aura as reference libraries and books, preferably tomes). Again, it's a typical feature of human memory where one memory will stimulate others to come forward.

Forgetting
Why exactly is forgetting important?
Primarily it's about resource management, prioritisation, and limits to attention and conscious thinking. It clears the memory and thinking palette of noise.
Forgetting is not about the deletion of memories; it's about making them progressively harder to access. The mind also needs to be open to random thoughts and submerged memories: wide open increases the potential for creativity; focus and trying to remember closes that shutter. Bringing one of those into the palette reinforces it and improves future accessibility.
The same factors are important with PKM notes.

But I know of no program that advertises its ability to forget. That's something the user has to devise for themselves - so long as they are aware that forgetting is important.
And the lowest cognitive effort way of doing this is by doing nothing where that is possible.
The difficulty is that most programs are not well set up to do useful forgetting. They either lose the note completely or render it inaccessible except through a very time consuming search process (ie high effort). Because of its fast scanning through episodic notes, Lattics offers another way of finding untagged, unfoldered notes. I only tag or link notes when I know I want that route and at that point it's very easy to do.
And from time to time I delete tags that I know I won't need in the future. The underlying notes are unaffected but there's less overhead when scanning the tag list.

The scanning with Lattics only works for me because I use a large monitor (8 cards on one row) and many of my notes are visually distinct. I'm not sure it would work with the other notes programs I am familiar with. Obsidian probably - but the tweaking is the very definition of high cognitive effort. But I'm sure something similar could be done in some other programs. Maybe the whiteboard notes programs. I assume that the next way of doing this will be using AI.
The system is different to zettelkasten (which has it's own semi-forgetting system - where notes have a parent but no children, are never referenced by any other zettel, and aren't indexed) and structurally different to the process I previously diagrammed (the actual process is somewhat similar but the cognitive effort is much reduced, and the overall structure is essentially flat).
9
FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: FARR C# SDK and Documentation V2 (19/10/2008)
« Last post by wraith808 on April 02, 2025, 09:05 AM »
Thanks! I didn't know it had been merged into the main plugin SDK- I thought it was still unmerged.
10
Screenshot Captor / Re: Color Picker
« Last post by james48 on April 02, 2025, 06:15 AM »
Dear Ath, thank you very much for your response.
Screenshot Captor is a fantastic program for me, but it is too bad it is not (or hopefully not yet) possible.
I have seen it for the first time, the right side below this color code.
When I click the cursor on a color, I read #4D4D00 at the bottom right.
When I click on Paint Brush Object, a number of Brush Options appear,
if you click on Brush Color, you can't enter the code #4D4D00 there.
That's how it is, you can't get everything you want.  :Thmbsup:

James48
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