Recent Posts

1826

General Software Discussion / Re: Q-Dir (File Manager)

« Last post by Dormouse on April 12, 2008, 10:33 AM »

 
Ah yes. I practically never had the treeview open, so never saw that button. 

1827

General Software Discussion / Re: Q-Dir (File Manager)

« Last post by Dormouse on April 12, 2008, 08:20 AM »

I've just had a look. Seems very impressive for a free file manager, though I haven't worked out how to get the view in the bottom left of your screenshot.

I don't think I've seen another free and portable file manager as good as this. A 4 pane file manager, each pane with its own tree view if that is wanted. I can actually think of times when I would use this rather than Dopus or anything else (sometimes I have 2 instances open just because I'm doing a lot of switching between more than 2 directories).

Very good find.

1828

General Software Discussion / Re: False Positive on Software (Generic.Dx) by McAfee Today: McAfee Response and Fix

« Last post by Dormouse on April 11, 2008, 03:21 PM »

I just had a thought.. should we actually try to organize a "official" boycott/protest against McAfee?

-mouser (April 11, 2008, 03:58 AM)

But doesn't anyone with any sense/knowledge avoid McAfee anyway?

1829

General Software Discussion / Re: GAOTD & Virus

« Last post by Dormouse on April 07, 2008, 05:52 PM »

Here's the info from the comments in last sat. GAOTD...........

-Cuffy (April 07, 2008, 05:36 PM)

Quotes from a remarkably ignorant and chauvinistic poster. Seemed to think that 'Eastern bloc' (sic) meant Asian rather than East European and being suspicious of everything, but not careful enough to avoid being ripped off multiple times. The British Virgin Islands (in the Caribbean) were reported in 2000 to have over 41% of offshore company registrations in the world. All it means is that the GAOTD co is registered there, presumably for tax reasons. No idea why he thinks a lot of the progs are coming from China ... or what it has to do with the Outpost AV.

1830

General Software Discussion / Re: GAOTD & Virus

« Last post by Dormouse on April 07, 2008, 05:38 PM »

When I read the comments I immediately unsubbed from GAOTD.  

-Cuffy (April 07, 2008, 05:19 PM)

Nothing to do with GAOTD really. Just that the prog (todays download) severely mucked up some computers. As said, AVs get so deep it is easy for them to do damage. I'm always careful which of these I load, and am aware they may give rise to difficulty.

1831

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Find and remove duplicate files

« Last post by Dormouse on April 07, 2008, 10:17 AM »

I (very) vaguely realise that I might benefit from a bit of this sort of cleaning up.

But I'm not sure what to look at when making a choice between Clone Tools and other options. If we take Double Killer Pro, for example, which has been well recommended here, what advantages and disadvantages does Clone Tools have in comparison?

Quite important as the base price of Double Killer Pro is half that of Clone Tools and it has also recently been available here with a 30% discount.

1832

General Software Discussion / Re: Getting rid of "Google Goo"

« Last post by Dormouse on April 06, 2008, 04:30 PM »

Works in Opera too. Tested on 9.5beta

1833

Found Deals and Discounts / TopazMoment on GAOTD

« Last post by Dormouse on April 06, 2008, 05:58 AM »

For anyone interested in taking better quality stills from videos than is usually possible, Topaz Moment is on GAOTD today. 94% thumbs up atm which is massively high for GAOTD.

Topaz Moment is specifically designed to easily and efficiently capture video frames, significantly increase their quality and resolution, and turn unclean video frames into quality mega-pixel prints in seconds. Topaz Moment is the only software of its kind to use advanced super-resolution video enhancement technology to make sure your frame grabs are the best they can possibly be.

http://www.giveawayo...ay.com/topaz-moment/
http://www.topazlabs.com/

1834

General Software Discussion / Re: Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 05, 2008, 10:50 AM »

OK, I didn’t know you didn’t want to use word… But, regarding slowness etc., I wonder what are your computer specs like because on my computers (even on my other more than 6 years old laptop) MS Word 2003 is never really slow... and I have some pretty damn big documents going well over 600 pages, with tables, pictures, etc.

-Armando (April 03, 2008, 08:04 PM)

I'm not against Word; I do use it and will continue to use it (at least until I move to Linux completely in post XP Pro days). But I do find it slow compared to a simple text editor. Slow to load, slow to switch documents and with a lot of stuff on the screen that I don't want when I'm just writing or editing text. I have an Core2Duo, so it should be fast enough. I did think I might end up continuing to use Word for this task until I found TreeDBNotes. Using it means that I will probably close it if I'm not using it whereas I tend to leave Word on to avoid the loading lag.

Of all the word processors available Word 2003 (NOT 2007) is the one that handles huge documents the most gracefully. It’s not perfect, but I found others to be slower. And regarding formatting etc., I don’t care too much if Word has all kinds of options I rarely use; they’re just there and I generally don’t use them, and if I do happen to need them, I’m usually quite happy they’re there -- eg : one feature that I use A LOT in my own papers is the “comments” feature. I can’t imagine that a writer could live without some ways of inserting notes in his/her writing (and I see that this is one of the features you’re looking for).

-Armando (April 03, 2008, 08:04 PM)

I'll certainly continue to use Word as a WP and would expect to put the rearranged text back into Word at the end for formatting, comments etc. I'm going to continue trying 2007. I do find it harder going atm, but that might improve. I prefer the interface generally, though the button choices may not be those I would have made - but then that can be changed (I hope). Still haven't found the Document Map view.

(BTW PageFour is a great software. But the feature set wasn’t enough for me to justify buying it.  There are also software that are better at Outlining IMO.)

-Armando (April 03, 2008, 08:04 PM)

This is pretty much what I thought, though I have found that TreeDBNotes actually seems faster as an editor. atm, I'm not sure what PageFour has over the free version of TreeDBNotes.

Yes. Like I said In MS Word, for other organizing purpose I use notes (comments) abundantly.  And I there’s one thing that I love about the way comment are managed in words and NOT in other word Processors : you can have them in the “reviewing pane” at the bottom of the window (and not in bubbles in the margin…. yuk)

-Armando (April 03, 2008, 08:04 PM)

I'm not so bothered about the position of the comments, though I'd like the option of making them as obvious as a sticky - can really do that with highlighting I suppose.

The reason I want to see the bodytext alone while I am working is that is what the final copy will look like. I will just be confused by having headings appear inside paragraphs. And really this is a task I want to be able to focus my concentration on without distractions on the screen.

-Dormouse (April 03, 2008, 01:02 PM)

That’s a good point. I confess that I’ve just “learned” to live with the “should be invisible” headings in my texts! But it would certainly be more convenient to be able to make them disappear when they’re not necessary.

-Armando (April 03, 2008, 08:04 PM)

TreeDBNotes does this fine.

I’ve tried using OneNote and I still wonder what “everybody” loves so much about it.  True : its interface is very pleasing, it works well with tablet PCs, it can be used for many other things other than just writing documents, etc.
I’ve really tried using and liking it, but I dislike the way it stores the data, and I find it way more complicated to use than Word for big document structures — all these sections, section groups, pages, etc. wow : flat view, anybody ? where’s that feature? How do you get that “unified view” of all the data in a notebook? I also find it much less powerful than other solutions for storing, structuring and filtering all kinds of data. A lot of people that I respect tremendously here in DC swear by it though… so it must be VERY good for certain people. I probably didn’t try to use it for the right stuff.

-Armando (April 03, 2008, 08:04 PM)

I just like the interface, the connectivity with the Office Suite (though it does not seem to share the same understanding of outline levels as Word - at least they don't transfer correctly), and using it for gathering and structuring info for a project. I find Evernote much better for gathering unorganised snippets and info. You can get a plugin that gives you the flat, treeview you want, though only 3 levels of a hierarchy (notebooks, sections, pages).

When I tested Ultra Recall a while ago, I was interested in that feature too (Show Combined Text for Multiple Selections) and it was a big deception. Not too sexy formatting wise, and I hated the whole process of importing my documents in Ultra recall.  Also, exporting the unified view, if I recall correctly (ahem) was also not an easy task. I think I never succeeded! Other Ultra Recall longtime users could probably say more though…

-Armando (April 03, 2008, 08:04 PM)

I was just going to cut and paste info in and out, and did not seem to have a problem with using the Combined Text for Multiple Selection feature. Didn't like the interface that much, though. And too big a program just for this task really. And I think I've found a better solution now anyway.

I’ll end by saying that SQLNotes will probably be what I’ll be using for the kind of task you’re describing — it could potentially do everything that Word does, but with much better Outlining, great tagging, and the possibility to indefinitely reorganize, clone, split, etc. information. I’m just waiting for the coming MS word integration

 Of course, only after trying to use SQLnotes to structure long documents in real life situations will I be able to say for sure whether it’s my preferred solution… (I already use SQLnotes for very different tasks… But for a long document, I’d currently miss the “unified view feature” — yes it’d probably be possible to export as html, but… I sometimes need that view as I work and play with the structure.

(PS … And there’s one thing that I find hard to find in any Outliner but that’s sooooo convenient when I write in Word : zoom Out/zoom in.)

-Armando (April 03, 2008, 08:04 PM)

I do agree about the Zoom, but mostly I just want it at one level - usually quite big - and select all and change font size isn't too bad a workaround.

I do see the attraction of SQLnotes and see that if you use it for a lot of things that it will be easier to use and you amy use it for nearly everything. I will certainly go into it in more detail at some stage. My preferred programs though are very simple and very fast and designed for the job in hand and this is important for something like a text editor.

1835

General Software Discussion / Re: Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 05, 2008, 09:57 AM »

Armando - I did write a detailed response, but it disappeared when I carelessly brushed against a key that closed the browser. I determined then to decide on a text editor (with autosave & outlining) that I'd use for most letters, posts, reports etc before I started on it again.

Went back through those I'd already looked at and also some I hadn't tried before. I discovered that TreeDBNotes (free version) is nicely configurable as an editor AND has the facility to do what I wanted in the first place - a two pane outliner/text editor with a hierarchical outline tree on the left and a text pane on the right. With the ability to see all the text from selected nodes together - either in the text pane or another. And the ability to re-order the tree using drag and drop.

Also noticed that the Pro version had been on GAOTD last year 

I'll get back to the response soon.

1836

General Software Discussion / Re: Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 05, 2008, 09:49 AM »

create a new grid and start entering your outline. Whenever you want to add body text, simply enter it (or drag/drop) in the HTML pane.

-PPLandry (April 03, 2008, 05:50 PM)

Yes, this worked fine.

You can get a combined view by doing an HTML Export (settings mode). You can export the bodies with the outline or without (i.e. just the combined bodies). You can add a tag column to the grid to easily tag outline items (or use the properties pane to do the same thing). You can then search/filter on tags (or date for a toilet paper like view)

-PPLandry (April 03, 2008, 05:50 PM)

I didn't manage this. Didn't work out the HTML Export (settings mode); I'm sure it will be easy enough when I get into the available info/forums etc.

I promise I have every intention of giving some serious time to getting into SQLnotes at some point. It still feels a bit big for this task, and I'd also want to change the grid positions, colours etc. I might wait for developments on the Word front. It certainly feels as if SQLnotes will be very useful once I understand it (and even better once it is fully developed).

All the extra suggested features seemed good.

1837

General Software Discussion / Re: Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 03, 2008, 04:55 PM »

Ultra Recall will allow for the first - Show Combined Text for Multiple Selections - but may not meet your second criteria.

-ashwken (April 03, 2008, 11:19 AM)

Right on both counts. And the price for the Professional version is a bit stiff for what is a tiny part of the program's functionality.

Ideally, I'd be able to add little yellow stickies too that would stick to the bit of the document I put them on.

-Dormouse (April 03, 2008, 01:02 PM)

And it effectively does this with its note function.

It doesn't seem the cleanest designed or most elegant program, and has an older MSOffice type interface, and has FAR more functions than I want out of it (I can't see me giving up OneNote OR Evernote), but it does do this job when none of the programs I expected to do it have been able to.

And $99 does seem a lot of money. 
But, I notice that it has been on Bitsdujour a few times with a 62% discount. 
I'd certainly buy it at that price - and will probably wait for it to happen again. 

Thanks a lot.

1838

General Software Discussion / Re: Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 03, 2008, 01:20 PM »

Try giving each section a different style.  The styles can be the same but use a different name.  Then, with a little macro, you can select all text with the given style.  Once selected, you can cut, paste, move it around, or change it without affecting the rest of the document.

-steeladept (April 03, 2008, 12:07 PM)

Intriguing idea, though I'm not a great user of macros and I'm not quite sure how to go about selecting for styles in a document. I can have a look for it though.

1839

General Software Discussion / Re: Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 03, 2008, 01:06 PM »

Ultra Recall will allow for the first - Show Combined Text for Multiple Selections - but may not meet your second criteria.

-ashwken (April 03, 2008, 11:19 AM)

I didn't realise Ultra Recall would do this. I'd just assumed it was just an info store. I'll d/l and have a look. Thanks.

PS I see that Show Combined Text for Multiple Selections requires the Pro version 

1840

General Software Discussion / Re: Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 03, 2008, 01:02 PM »

Thanks for the response and info Armando. I hadn't seen your earlier thread and it is interesting that you have travelled a similar path. Maybe it looks as if there is a niche market waiting for a reasonable product. Ideally, I'd be able to add little yellow stickies too that would stick to the bit of the document I put them on. And tagging (and the ability to select and cut and paste by tag would be good - something I've not yet managed in OneNote) + the usual highlighting and comments options. But just the fast simple bit would do.

Why do I not want to use Word? Well, it is just too slow and big and cumbersome for something that is fundamentally simple. I don't need all the formatting and collaborating etc etc functions for this task. I've given up actually typing in Word for the same reason. It's like going out to play tennis in an overcoat and waterproof. That's the first reason.

The second is that I've never got it to do the job as easily as I think the job could be done. I assume that was the reason for your own  search for alternatives. I'm not sure that I'll not end up back with using Word for the lack of better alternative ways of doing it. I think the basic problem is that Word confounds the use of headings with the idea of outlining. Headings will be wanted in many documents to make the presentation easier to read, and they may or may not map on to outlines. An outline is simply a way of breaking the whole into smaller and smaller parts and then being able to use those parts to redesign the whole. If the document is like a building, the outlines can be like bricks at the lowest level, then sections of wall in ever greater sizes and finally whole walls. They don't necessarily need to be headings but they do need a sufficiently detailed description of what they are so that you know what you are doing when you redesign the document just using the outlines. Programs like most of the outliners, Keynote etc etc etc all have proper outliners which don't affect the use of headings and text.

For my purposes, there are two things for me to do using an outliner before rearranging the document. The first is to create an outline for the new document(s). The second is to go through the original material and select the components I need for each document and then to break them down into the bits I will rearrange. Some will need to be broken into bricks, sometimes whole sections of wall can be kept as they are - but I will need a description of each so I can work out what I am doing just with the outline.Then I would want to use the outliner to arrange the material.

Word does not make it easy to break the text into bricks; if a brick is a single sentence, a heading isn't what I want. And it does not make it easy to tag or otherwise identify the sections I want for the new document. But I agree it can be done. Maybe I can use the clipboard as a brick container; do it by sections, then break a section into as many bricks as necessary and insert as needed from the clipboard; 24 isn't too bad a number for that.

I don't find the document map especially helpful because you can't do anything with it except look and navigate around the document. This feature seems to have been removed in 2007, though no doubt I will rediscover it when I least expect it. I agree that the outlining in Word was always very strong compared to other WPs. I'd never come across Textmaker before, but the manual didn't seem to make much of its outlining capacity. I do use OO - and maybe I ought to try how well it does outlining, but somehow I doubt if it will be better.

The reason I want to see the bodytext alone while I am working is that is what the final copy will look like. I will just be confused by having headings appear inside paragraphs. And really this is a task I want to be able to focus my concentration on without distractions on the screen.

I'm not convinced that OneNote will be better for this than Word. Possibly just different advantages and disadvantages. I do see its value in original document creation though. I also see how it might be the best way of analysing and splitting the document into components. Then I could do the new outline in Word for the bits where headings are OK (maybe a more detailed outline in something else that I can overlay and use as a guide) and carry bricks from OneNote 24 at a time. I can see that might work.

1841

General Software Discussion / Re: Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 03, 2008, 09:20 AM »

I use PageFour and love its simplicity. The licensing is very fair and the author seems a genuine nice guy judging by his attitude.

-MikeMcLoughlin (April 03, 2008, 02:04 AM)

It was one of those I downloaded and didn't uninstall. I agree it is nice and simple and seems pretty fast. The problem is that for this sort of function it doesn't add much to what Keynote can offer, though it is a much nicer environment for actually writing in.

1842

General Software Discussion / Text outliner/organiser/editor

« Last post by Dormouse on April 02, 2008, 01:29 PM »

The plain text editor for writers thread really got me looking at this software.

I have two similar needs.
One, as a writer, to outline, organise and write text (& some images)
Two, as an editor/re-organiser, to take someone else's text and remake it. One example of this would be taking a thesis and making a number of papers out of it.

There's quite a lot of ways of doing the first, but I hadn't found a good way of doing the second.

My idea was a two pane outliner/text editor with a hierarchical outline tree on the left and a text pane on the right. With the ability to see all the text from selected nodes together - either in the text pane or another. And the ability to re-order the tree using drag and drop. I was sure that there would be many programs that could do this - and maybe there are, but I haven't found them.

Ideally, the program would be no more complicated than this; other features aren't needed.

As far as I could see, the two pane outliners/editors all kept the notes separate and it is not possible to see bigger sections or the whole text document. Programs like Word and OneNote keep it all in one pane. I assume that it will be possible to make SQLnotes do this (but attempting that feels beyond me atm). I could make a prog like Liquid Story Blender do it - but it is a bit complex just for that (and I'm not familiar enough with it yet), and critically it does not do drag and drop.

It may well be my own ignorance of my software (let alone stuff I just downloaded to try) that has stopped me. I just installed Word2007 to go with OneNote2007, and I can see it is going to take quite a while to find my way around it; I still have 2003 on my machine, but it takes an age to load since I had 2007 too.

For the editing task, the simplest approach I have found is to open the text in something like Wordpad (Word if necessary), and then to cut and paste it into Keynote, creating the outline nodes & descriptors as necessary. Do the editing in Keynote, and use the export function to look at the whole document in Wordpad or whatever as often as I need to. Clunky, but it does seem capable of working and it is using software I know.

OneNote does give the capacity to select body text, which gives the ability to export just the text as I described above and the extra tag functionality etc might be useful. Harder to add separate node names/descriptors though because it is all within the same pane. OTOH, the body text can just be cut and pasted to another note, so no need to open a new document in another app. I may try this method first because I can see OneNote being particularly useful in document creation. Not as fast as Keynote though, but a lot more versatile; although the nodes and text are not so well linked. There is an extra 3 layer hierarchy available (notebook, section, page) which can be seen as a treeview with the plugin, but it is not much use in this context because selecting all the bodytext would be difficult.

Word (at least in its 2007 incarnation and with my limited knowledge of it) appears not to have the ability to select body text alone (would probably have to select all headings and delete them to see the text alone and then undo a bit to go back to status quo). I must admit that I am beginning to question the value of a word processor for a lot of everyday work. And I've never found them very effective for this type of task however much you use versions and subdocuments.

If anyone has better ideas of how to do this, or better software, I'd be glad to hear them.

1843

General Software Discussion / Re: Plain text editor for writers

« Last post by Dormouse on April 02, 2008, 08:34 AM »

No, there was only one folder - 2.3

1844

General Software Discussion / Re: Plain text editor for writers

« Last post by Dormouse on April 01, 2008, 12:33 PM »

You can reposition your items in Keynote, but not see all the text continuously.

1845

General Software Discussion / Re: Plain text editor for writers

« Last post by Dormouse on April 01, 2008, 11:53 AM »

SLang won't install on my machine (XP Pro). Invalid registry entry.

1846

General Software Discussion / Re: Plain text editor for writers

« Last post by Dormouse on April 01, 2008, 11:45 AM »

PageFour treeview can be dragged and dropped, but the hierarchy seems only to have 2 levels and I could not see an option to see the whole of the text in the notebook.

I have Liquid Story Blender, but there is no drag and drop in the treeview and I'd really like to have something simpler just to write and organise with for a lot of stuff.

1847

General Software Discussion / Re: Plain text editor for writers

« Last post by Dormouse on April 01, 2008, 11:13 AM »

StorYBook seems to be just what it says. A database for characters, locations and chapter summaries for fiction/biography writers. No real text editing capacity.

I could not find a way to move around the text in Wikipad by moving the treeview. Keynote can do this.

What I really want, though, is the ability to move things around by using the treeview and options to look at text just in a single node, a set of nodes or the whole document. And neither Wikipad nor Keynote do this.

1848

General Software Discussion / Re: Plain text editor for writers

« Last post by Dormouse on April 01, 2008, 08:00 AM »

As someone who currently mostly uses Windows, but also has Linux, and expects to move mostly to Linux post WindowsXP, I've become aware that software that runs on both Windows and Linux will help with that transition.

So, very good to see that StorYBook and Wikipad do both. This does seem to be a fast increasing trend.

1849

General Software Discussion / Re: Directory Opus 9

« Last post by Dormouse on April 01, 2008, 06:41 AM »

I would be annoyed yes, but posting to a forum which has nothing to do with zaine's comments it inappropriate. Surely you would be annoyed if you saw someone post a personal grievance against another user in a way that is unnecessary and draws unneeded attention to something that can be handled privately?

-Josh (April 01, 2008, 06:34 AM)

I think the point is that it is in public and not private. The issues about Zaine's comments on Dopus and XYplorer and the loss of comments made to his blog have been raised previously in this topic.

tbh, I'm not sure that Zaine is doing much for XYplorer by carping on about his views on Dopus.

1850

General Software Discussion / Re: Creative Labs

« Last post by Dormouse on April 01, 2008, 05:52 AM »

Warning. It's a monster thread.

-PhilB66 (March 31, 2008, 09:40 PM)

Currently 2274 posts. Viewed 275,504 times.
And I bet they are all saying the same thing.
Certainly makes my decisions about soundcards and speakers easier.