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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on December 05, 2007, 07:11 PM »

Yeah, I have to agree about Evernote still being very useful for dumping notes into.  you just can't beat it's search and speed for finding.  Of course, Evernote's weakness is SQLNotes' strength: organization.  It's difficult to organize (but very easy to find) content with Evernote and vice-versa for SQL.  But, at the rate Pierre is developing SQL, who knows what's in store there.

I just love how easy it is to search inside evernote, so fast!  And it actively highlights and has search-as-you-type (see my blog).  That's awesome.

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on December 05, 2007, 03:58 PM »

I've been playing with SQLNotes a little more seriously the past two weeks.  I think this is going to be a very revolutionary program.  I was never an Ecco user, so maybe that's why it feels so new and fresh to me, but even so, this program is going to be very powerful.  As a notetaker, it's not really what you expect (at least I didn't), but once I understood how the program works, it really can function perfectly well as a notetaker.  Furthermore, it could do tons of other things, but not in a Ultra Recall or Info Select sort of way where they just bundle a whole bunch of different features into one program.  In SQLNotes, everything is essentially one database, and the user controls how the information is displayed.  In other words, it allows you to create your own notetaking program just the way you want it.  It's very powerful, very flexible, and unique (based on Ecco).

I'm excited about the program and it's official release (it's beta right now).  Another great thing about it is the author is very nice, very active with it's development, and there's no danger of losing your data in the future because of a proprietary format, because all of the data can be exported to a general format (I don't know exactly what, but it's true).

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Found Deals and Discounts / Re: on sale: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

« Last post by superboyac on December 05, 2007, 03:20 PM »

I have this set, completely worth it.  Best comic ever.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 04, 2007, 11:11 AM »

1. You're not too far. In your filter, you must say which field to filter:
 MusicItem="Gene harris". You can also use the Alpha toolbar: MusicItem and click the G or type Gene in the associated text box
2. You can use the Check field (or another). Simply check the items you want and set the source (or filter) to Check

-PPLandry (December 04, 2007, 10:33 AM)

1)  It still doesn't work for me.  There are 3 places to type in the bar, and none of them worked.  I opened up the alpha toolbar and type "gene", but you see how my top-level item is "Gene Harris"?  It only filtered the sub items and only the albums that had the words "gene harris" in the album title, which is only a few of them.  How come it doesn't show everything under Gene Harris since the top level matches the filter?
2)  Here's the problem with the check.  The check box would just be another field right?  What if I have thousands of artists and I want to have several grids showing a different collection of artists.  Do I have to make a separate check box field for each grid?  Because, if I understand correctly, the check box field (and it's state of checked/unchecked) will be stored with the item itself.  So, for one grid, it will be checked, and for another it needs to be unchecked.

Is there any plans to have a more "manual" way of showing what appears in the grid?  I mean, it's very powerful to have the filters there for situations where your selection can be defined by logical means (all albums which this artist appears on, all albums made after 1995, etc.).  But what if you want to make some grids based on purely arbitrary and random choices?  I understand that all the items are stored in the database and the grids only display what you want to see from that database.  Is there a way (now or planned for the future) to be able to pick and choose individual, random items from the database pool and stick it inside a grid?

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 04, 2007, 10:13 AM »

I made a new grid for another artist "Gene Harris" using the same fields as before "MusicItem".  I imported all the items and organized them.  Then I tried to have the new grid show only the Gene Harris items, but I can't seem to get that top bar filter to do anything for me.  Whenever I try, i get the big red error bar on the bottom.  How can i only show the Gene Harris items?  (see attached screenshot)


Also, let's say I have a bunch of items using the MusicItem field, but I in the grid, i only want to show certain specific albums that have no real logic to it.  Say, some of this artist, some of that artist, but nothing I can put a "rule" or filter for.  How can I pick and choose what is displayed?  It seems to me like you can't manually pick and choose, everything has to be formally defined by fields and filters.  Am I right?

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 05:27 PM »

Is there a match properties command for items?  For example, if I've formatted one item (background color, font size, font color, etc.) can I copy just the formatting of it to another item?  Sort of like a "paste special" command?

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 05:11 PM »

I think the importing has a small bug in it.  I was on step 3, and I went back to click off the 1st line is header box, and when I came back to step 3, all the items in the second column were the same (whereas before, it was supposed all the different song titles, now it was all the same song title, the 1st one in the list).

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 04:48 PM »

PPL, is the grid name limited to 20 characters?
Thanks for the suggestions for how to sort, I'll use them.  But please add the save state to the feature list.  I use Autocad (I know, completely different program!) but it has a really useful saving states feature, that's where I got the idea.

PS, I still can't get the ItemParent field to work for me.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 01:05 PM »

Let's say I take a grid, sort it just the way i want (not logically, but manually).  Is there a way to save that "state"?  Because what if I do some automatic sorting later and lose what I had arranged earlier?

-superboyac (December 03, 2007, 12:40 PM)

Currently Top Level Items (TLI) order is determined by the sort criteria. Sub-items order can be manually set

It is planned to allow for manual positioning of TLIs when sort criteria is empty.

-PPLandry (December 03, 2007, 12:44 PM)

No, that wasn't exactly my question.  What I meant was that when a grid display is set up, is there a way to save that "look"?  Things that would be saved are which nodes are expanded/collapsed, the manually set order, the position of the cursor...stuff like that.  Like right now, I have all of my albums expanded, and the album tracks have been manually set in the order they appear on the album.  but what if I collapse some album nodes, and sort the tracks alphabetically?  It would be nice to be able to quickly get back to the previous state.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 12:40 PM »

Let's say I take a grid, sort it just the way i want (not logically, but manually).  Is there a way to save that "state"?  Because what if I do some automatic sorting later and lose what I had arranged earlier?

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 12:15 PM »

ok, i got it back thanks.  Yeah, I forgot that I was trying to use that top bar with the filter/sort fields.  So, what's the deal with that top bar?  Whenever I try to use it, I get that bright red status bar on the bottom with some error dialog in it.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 11:47 AM »

OK, I hate to say it, but I just lost all my data again.  I get an error saying "error opening grid. check grid source criteria".  All the backups say the same thing, so it looks like I lost everything.  This is a concern for me.  I love the program, but I'm going to be putting a lot of time into my grids, and I can't really afford to lose that information.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 11:38 AM »

Well, now that I'm going to commit to SQLNotes, I'm going to have lots of suggestions for it.  Here's my first one.

Searching should be an essential feature of the program.  Other notetaking software like EverNote and Zoot have awesome searching capabilities.  If SQLNotes is used like I'm thinking it's going to be used, it's going to have a ton of information, and it should be easy to find what you're looking for, especially if you don't remember where you put it.  RIght now, SQLNote's search doesn't work at all for me, but I think it's because I deleted the Search grid that came default.  For some reason, it doesn't work in the default database for me, I don't know why.  Anyway, I'm sure PPL will beef up the search, it's pretty important.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 11:29 AM »

Well, PPL, I think I'm pretty much sold on your program.  I think SQLNotes is pretty revolutionary.  I don't know if you're aware, but a while back, I wrote the big notetaking review here:
https://www.donation...oteTakers1/index.php

SQLNotes definitely belongs on top of that list.  It offers features and flexibility that are truly unique as far as I can tell.  I will say one thing; it's not for everyone.  I'm not saying it's difficult to use, but it's not what you expect from a notetaker.  I don't even think I would call it a notetaker.  It's more of an outliner than a notetaker, but it does notetaking as well as any notetaker.  Furthermore, it's Access for normal people.

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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« Last post by superboyac on December 03, 2007, 10:42 AM »

Hi All,

This may have been mentioned before to sorry if it has. Have a look here http://www.mind-mapping.org/ and feast your eyes on a massive list of note-taking software, knowledge management and information organising software. Some of it is free and some commercial. I hope this helps.

Regards

Othalian 

-Othalian (December 02, 2007, 06:12 AM)

Awesome list!  Wow, look at all the options, that's ridiculous.  Maybe there's something better than MindManager out there for Mind Maps.  Sometimes, I feel like MindManager is lacking certain things, but the only other one I was aware of was Freemind, which is worse (although free).

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on December 01, 2007, 02:06 AM »

OK, I understand how the program works now.  I still have questions:

1) Is there a way to remove an item from the grid without removing it from the database?
2) Is it possible to copy an item in a grid and place it in another point of the grid (duplicated), without creating 2 separate items (they are the same, they just appear in two different places)?  If so, how would I know if an item that has been duplicated is a duplicate and not a stand-alone item?  Ideally, when you edit an item and that item appears in other places, you want to know that you are going to be changing it in all those places.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 06:01 PM »

OK more questions...

So, I think I understand the Grid->Hierarchy option.  If it's checked, the items appear in the proper hierarchies.  If not, the items appear in the hierarchies AND as individual items in one long list.

Also, the ItemParent fields you made are not working.  I dragged them into my column, but they don't display the parent in the field, and unlike yours, mine is not read-only...I can click inside it and type stuff.

Also, for the MusicItemType, I made that a pop-up-list, with the options "Artist, Album, Song".  The pop-ups appear fine, but I can also type something else in there.  I want to lock it to just the 3 items in the list so nothing else accidentally appears there.  I tried checking the "read-only" "entry must be in the list" options but nothing worked.  Either way, I was still able to type something in the field.  How can I lock it?
[edit] Ah!  I see what's happening.  THe changes don't appear until I close the file and reopen it.  You might want to look into this.  It can be confusing to the user.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 05:43 PM »

the "make backups" was unchecked in the options.

I'm still not understanding the intricacies of deleting, removing, copying, duplicating.  I'm a little afraid to go on until I understand it completely because I don't want to screw up again.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 03:45 PM »

it's gone in the backup also.  Damn.

OK, I have to firmly understand the difference between removing and deleting.  If I see an item in a grid and I don't want it there anymore, but that item also appears in other grids or even in the same grid somewhere else, how do I just remove that one item line?  If I use the big red "X" button, I'm assuming that will delete it permanently from all the entire database.  So what will remove just the item, but still keep it in the database?

Can you explain how duplicates work?  I noticed that when i did the =songtitle thing, the items appeared as duplicates, and if I deleted them from one grid, it got deleted everywhere.  What if I just want to copy it without having them be linked?

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 03:36 PM »

Oh sh--!  I just screwed everything up.  I was deleting items in one grid and apparently it's linked to the original items in my first grid.  Now all my titles are gone!  What's the rules for deleting stuff?  How do I know if I'm deleting something from the grid only or from the entire database?  Also, how do I control duplicate items?  As in, how can I have duplicates (I change one they all change) or copies (each one is separate, but my have the same content)?

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 03:29 PM »

Thanks for the history, that's good to know, it's a very ambitious project and it's very promising.  I would think the ecco people at yahoo would more than welcome your software seeing how rabid they are about ecco.  I would have expected them to be extremely grateful that you've attempted to successfully build on ecco.  Weird, maybe they still like the old version.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 01:51 PM »

very cool.  This program is very well thought out.  What inspired you to make this program?  How long did it take, and how much help did you have?

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 01:32 PM »

OK, that's cool.  Now that the item values are populated, if I remove the =songtitle from the field equation, will the data still remain there?  I want to do this so I can add other items that are not songtitles into the same grid.

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 12:55 PM »

OK, here is a screenshot.  I set up the field "MusicItem" with the =SongTitle equation.  I dragged the musicitem field to the grid, now how do I get the song titles to appear there?

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General Software Discussion / Re: SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

« Last post by superboyac on November 30, 2007, 12:28 PM »

OK, i did that, and I saw the status bar go through the items and update everything, but the column in the grid is still blank.  How do I fill in the column with the values that are now stored in the field?