Recent Posts
I am becoming heartily sick and tired of Adobe and their blasted Flash utility.Me too; and tired of the constant treadmill of "updates," and assorted sites whining if you don't have the very latest installed.-IainB (February 09, 2013, 04:17 PM)
I've written just such a tool for Windows.Thanks for telling us about this. Does the Options file allow one to enter multiple search-and-replace pairs?-Ross MacGregor (January 23, 2013, 02:32 PM)
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Update Check for: ClipboardHelpAndSpell
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ClipboardHelpAndSpell is up to date (v2.16.02).
Update check complete.
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OK
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I once stumbled upon DT/TextWorks, and would be willing to pay 1,200 bucks for a prog that really "has it all", but I discarded it then because of their "ask us for a trial (instead of just downloading it) and for a quote (instead of giving the price) - so I never even got to a screenshot of it, let alone a trial.I don't think this is suspicious of shady practice. They're a serious software company, with a serious product, but they're probably expecting to deal with medium-sized enterprises needing to run a company-wide library system. In that case, they're probably expecting to face aggressive purchasing departments.-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
Then, it's a db, which means it's not a tree superposed upon such a db, as UR and MI and IQ and others are, and even the later AS got trees-on-the-flyTrue, but for large data sets that doesn't bother me. I was used to searching Dialog, after all.-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
As I today said in my KEdit thread, lately it's MI that seems to leave UR trailing, not because MI was so good suddenly, but because there is steady if slow development, whilst UR don't do much upon their roadmap ("not much" being an euphemism for "nothing" here).I didn't upgrade to the latest version of UR for that very reason, and there are even people in the UR forums saying the same.-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
And there's another thing, many such "basic" desktop pim's do not even allow for searching "just in the tree" / "text only" / both, but invariably search everywhereHorst Schaeffer's MemPad does, but, Horst made it as a tool for keeping one's own thoughts in, with the tree structure as very much the primary way of organising and finding things. I'm still looking for the ideal text database.-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
As for Notefrog, if I understand this prog well (without ever having trialled for more than just 2 or 3 minutes or so), it relies exclusively upon searching, since there is no tree: at the left, it's the hit table!That's more or less right. The list at the left is note titles. That narrows down as you add text into the search box(es); it has a very nice "search as you type" "live search." But, it isn't truly a heavyweight application.-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
even Boolean search isn't good enough, it should include "semantic search", i.d. half-automatic synonym provision.In my limited experience, it isn't a common feature of desktop products. Apart from Inmagic, I've only seem something like it in Dialog's EXPAND command (or the STN equivalent). It was very useful for collecting together all variations of a company name, including the most likely misspellings. In desktop apps, I think I'd like to be able to swith synonymy on and off, maybe even to have multiple synonym sets I could switch between. Pipe dream...-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
I know of a list one very early Dos text db which offered some semantic search (but not in the sophisticated I describe here)Maybe Anyword? I tinkered with it a little, but it indexes existing text and gives you a nice Dialog-like way of searching it. If you changed the text, you had to re-index. I wanted something more integrated. It was a very old program, and I couldn't get it to work under later Windows.-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
Your link is for defunct progs that are much more special and much more interestingDisclaimer, of sorts; I contributed to the Free Software for DOS list-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
And this, 35 years after the intro of personal computing. /rantI feel your pain-helmut85 (January 10, 2013, 03:30 PM)
Most modern Windows software is intended for novices to get something done at all, and to be "easy to use." But that's turned into patronising users as unable to get to grips with anything above the trivial, and bamboozling them with eye-candy.
START ["title"] [/D path] [/I] [/MIN] [/MAX] [/SEPARATE | /SHARED]
[/LOW | /NORMAL | /HIGH | /REALTIME | /ABOVENORMAL | /BELOWNORMAL]
[/AFFINITY <hex affinity>] [/WAIT] [/B] [command/program]
[parameters]
"title" Title to display in window title bar.
start "c:\NoInst\ClipboardHelpAndSpell\ClipboardHelpAndSpell.exe"
HanDBase. I don't recommend it.Worrying, because I'd begun to ponder it again. I still use a Palm, and HanDBase is one of the few apps that have Windows, Palm, Android and other mobile platforms. It also begs the question: what actually is a good, usable, affordable database app for Windows, if you don't have/don't want to use Microsoft Access?-robinsiebler (January 10, 2013, 02:13 PM)
I really need the hit table AND Boolean search, if I want to avoid having tenfold "hits" I then have to discard.I hear you
[...]
nowhere in all these, you'll get "semantic search", i.e. automatic inclusion of "dog" in your search when you'll search for "spaniel" or "retriever"
[...]
the real prob is, you'll (hopefully) use all sorts of synonyms all over the place
[...] and how to find something then, without Boolean search?-helmut85 (January 06, 2013, 08:06 PM)
I used to use the mighty Dialog online information system with its large collection of huge patent, scientific and technical databases, with literally millions of records. I was used to building complex Boolean searches. I don't think there is anything like what you're asking for as a desktop application with an affordable price. The closest would be DB/TextWorks by Inmagic Corp., but this is meant for powering corporate libraries and the like, with price to match. It's true that they made the DOS version of Inmagic (which used to cost $1,200) free: see the Information, Reference, Research page of the Free Software for DOS Web site. That's good, but obviously DOS software is getting harder to use on later versions of Windows. Even then, Inmagic has (if I remember correctly) only a limited number of synonyms, but it does have serious Boolean searching power.I regret the demise of askSam - AS, as it was, but being stable and without all these hellish bugs making people lose data, would have been preferable to them all.Do you mean that the most recent version of askSam isn't reliable?-helmut85 (January 06, 2013, 08:06 PM)
So much for little outliners. ;-)They do have their uses-helmut85 (January 06, 2013, 08:06 PM)
But IMHO they aren't ideal for really big jobs.Oops, I mixed up my accounts I'd been really angry about my contributions being called spam and myself being thrown outYou mean, clean and helmut85 are the same person?-helmut85 (January 06, 2013, 08:06 PM)
I had very well understood there's some smart and affable folks around here.I'm glad you felt able to come back. You'd have to ask the moderators about why you were spammed out; it's usually because a post looks like some kind of advertising.-helmut85 (January 06, 2013, 08:06 PM)
i always go to check the serif products website but i'm in shock when i see their apps weight are sized in hundreds of megabytes.What kunkel321 said. I'd assumed, though, that that's why they could offer such low prices, downloads remove the need for burning disks, packaging and mailing.-flamerz (January 02, 2013, 01:05 PM)
I vaguely recognise the name BHO from the (very) dim and distant past, but I'm note sure if I have ever used it. I might have another look.I don't think you'd like it in its present form. It's unusual if not unique in being three-pane, and having a drop target "basket," but it needs considerable updating. E.g., Web clips and RTF clips both transfer as plain text, despite BHO having RTF editing; entering internal note-to-note links is a pain, and so on. I've lodged some comments with the new developer, who says his list is growing...-Dormouse (December 31, 2012, 06:44 AM)
While I have been messing about looking at these programs again, I decided to install the latest version of Zoot (which I don't think I have ever tried before). Seems seriously weird/different and its not obvious exactly how to manage itIf you look hard enough on DC, maybe even in this very thread, you'll find superboyAC saying much the same thing about an older version of Zoot, and taking quite a while to "get" it.-Dormouse (December 31, 2012, 06:44 AM)
I can understand why the trial period lasts 90 days, and I'm not sure that will be quite enough. No idea if there is any sense in the perception, but it felt as if it might be more like IQ than the other progs I have used - I've never been able to get into IQ, but always had a lot of respect for what it seems capable of doing.Pierre kindly sent me a free personal license for IQ, but it has a reputation for being hard to get to grips with.-Dormouse (December 31, 2012, 06:44 AM)