I want to gather data (text, rich text, diagrams, graphics, files, etc) and organize them for research purposes
I want to have a fully-featured text editor and rich text editor, a fully-featured diagram creator, a fully-featured table creator, a fully-featured graphics editor, a fully-featured file organizer, and all these inside an environment where I can organize in various ways (chapters, treeviews, etc) all that data
I lately figured out that there are some so-called desktop wiki programs, that seem interesting, do you know which is the best?
-kalos
My first question would be: Why would you need to do all this within one software? Even if you find such a Swiss Army Knife of a software, chances are that at least some of its functions would be better performed by separate pieces of software anyway. It's just not possible to stay competitive in so many areas at the same time. Case in point: Mindsystems Amode 2 (which I like as a project manager but it also has most of the features you mention but which I have better software for).
As for desktop wiki programs, I haven't tried them all but the one that I did try I became a big fan of (using it on a daily basis for the research purposes that you describe) is ConnectedText. But with CT you only import text materials into the actual database, everything else (files, images, programs etc.) are linked to and kept externally, though they will be displayed within the CT document itself. To get started with CT, check out some reviews, tips and tutorials by Steve Zeoli, Manfred Kuehn, and yours truly.
-dr_andus
dr. i am amazed by your work at your blog
i would be very interested if we could sit down and put together all the features we would like in a knowledge software and try to create it
for instance, i wouldnt settle for less that MS Word's capabilities for rich text editing, EmEditor's capabilities for plain text editing, and so on
but a single application is something essential, because we need a file format that will support all these
isn't html or xml or something like that, a format that can handle almost anything? ie. it can both display and be edited by numerous applications, MS Word, plain text, it can display embeded pdf with a pdf editing plugin, etc