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Someone MUST make a new PowerMarks program.
Steven Avery:
Hi m9833,
It takes a smidgen of effort to make Linkman more Powermarks like, and then you have to push yourself a bit, however it is worth it. You will find that the advantages will balance any disadvantages and that you are moving forward, especially in having new features as the latest updates show. Now to your 3 concerns.
1. No Automatic Suggestions while entering Tags. Here PowerMarks always used to suggest previously entered Tags, as one typed.
Not sure how that works for you. I always pick up the metadata anyway, with both programs, and then add keywords particular to the moment. Rarely do I add exactly the same as the previous entry so there may be a Powermarks feature I never used. On the cases when I do want to dup the previous entry I use the clipboard. (Usually that is in the name fields for alphabetizing, since I use Linkman as a PIM, as I did Powermarks, in the future I plan to do similar alphabetizing-sorting with the user-defined fields that are Linkman-specific as well.)
Note: They have been enhancing the printing as well, which is a very big plus over Powermarks, where my print function was usually the screen capture program. In this function alphabetizing is helpful, since the sorts match the query sorts (new feature).
2. Folder structure.
Here your comparison is not with Powermarks but with a program I will have to look at, so I will pass on commenting much. The ability to have a folder structure in Linkman may have some advantages, and perhaps that can be changed structurally as you suggest for pizazz. However the Powermarks "no-folder-at-all" structure can be reasonably emulated in Linkman, the key issue in comparison. We can't fault Linkman for both having folders and letting us hide and unuse the folders ! Especially if we are trying to enhance the folder concepts.
3. Duplicate deletion
Your points about dups are well-taken. However Linkman just made the major enhancement on this, which I discuss above. They still don't radically prevent dups on the data-manipulation level, (they can still be made in imports, their deliberate design decision, understandable yet worthy of more discussion) however they definitely now properly move you into edit mode when you go to "add" (update) an existing URL, as long as you have the no dups configuration option checked. This was the major Linkman lack, now fixed. The only awkwardness is that they did not "Replace" the word "Replace" with "Edit" or "Update" :) -- however once you understand how it works, that is more cosmetically semantical than a problem. Oh, yeah, Linkman may have one more click involved. We can ask them to make eliminating that click a configuration option "Always bring up existing URL" as a sub-configuration under the no-dups checkmark.
The big difference I see is that I frequently had to dup-text (cut-and-paste) on Powermarks the name line to see the entry, the same words in the keyword-tag section. To be sure it showed up in search. With Linkman you can specify that the name field is part of the keyword search anyway, no dup necessary. Now granted I was using the "Keyword Search" on Powermarks, not the "Exact String Search" and Linkman just added the "word search" function as a default configuration option, so I may have to check this a bit if the goal is accurate comparison. Linkman is more flexible with wildcard-style characters and boolean, how much this is used will vary a lot.
Why would anyone deliberately want to allow dups ? Well, you would have to ask around. If you want to use Linkman as a PIM, I can give an example. While in googlebooks every page can easily be a new link, this is not the case on archive.org. So if you wanted to make a bunch of easily-read notes (in the name field) for a book, ("p. 20 about Messianic expectations, p. 75 about the Johannnine Comma") you could have the same link 5 times. Not the most elegant, and I don't do that, but one possibility. There are probably others. I agree with the no-dup philosophy for me personally, however Linkman may have a number of customers who like the dup-option.
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It might be good to list the 5 or more significant advantages, and the differences between, Powermarks and Linkman. It is no knock on Powermarks that Linkman is able to be competitive, Powermarks has been truly fantastic for years. If the fellow from Kaylon had kept at it it would have been neat. He never really gave us much visibility and moved in other directions.
Understand I am no slouch when it comes to using programs others consider dated. Eudora is my email of choice, and I have looked at Thunderbird, the Bat! and the kitchen sink. If it wasn't for Linkman I would be using Powermarks and would have tried hard to have gotten those AutoHotkey kludges working !
Shalom,
Steven
Outertech Support:
[The only awkwardness is that they did not "Replace" the word "Replace" with "Edit" or "Update"]
We have replaced "replace" with "edit" 2 days ago (from 7.8.0.3 on).
m9833:
Dear Steven,
Thank you very much for your detailed replies to my post. I apologize if my post came up sounding like a complaint. This was not my motive in posting it, and I sincerely am thankful that efforts are being made in developing an application like LinkMan, which are making bookmarking an effecient and easy process, even after PowerMarks gave up the ghost. I was just detailing my frustrations as a PowerMark user in using the software. There are of course a lot of plus points, as well.
Your points, are all well taken.However, kinly allow me to try and explain some of the points I made, which might not have been very clear.
1. No Automatic Suggestions while entering Tags. Here PowerMarks always used to suggest previously entered Tags, as one typed.
Here, I refer to the auto-complete as you type feature in PowerMarks. This is especially useful, to speed up the process, and also for the times, when you end of tagging related URLs differently, as you did not remember which Tags did you earlier use (Eg, from my usage. Academics & Academy). PowerMarks just made the suggestions, it did not force one to use any tag. I found out that it helped me a lot, personally. Such a feature can be kept as an "autocomplete option", to give users the choice of using or not using it. Your method of using the clipboard is a nice one, but seems to be more effective for people who are certainly more organized than bird brained ones like me :-).
2. Folder structure
This was a minor frustration arising out of me not knowing, earlier. how to turn the folder pane off. :-) I was not faulting LinkMan for it, and my apologies to you as well as the Outertech Support people, if it appeared that I was doing so. The WikidPad like Folders would definitely be nice, for navigating via tags (another method is using Tag Clouds), but that is something I have come to like while using WikidPad. I do not necessarily miss it in a bookmarking applications.
3. Duplicates
You have provided a very good example of situations where one might need duplicates, and your suggestion of using an Edit button on the dialog box (which it seems have now been implemented) is an even better solution than simply opening the edit box, without providing any other option.
I wish, and am sure that LinkMan is a great step in the right direction, and am thankful for them listening to us users. I am trying my best to adjust since the loss of PowerMarks by trying out different ways like Delicious.com, Linkstash etc., but found that there have some features which PowerMarks provided that I simply cannot do without, and ended up not using bookmarking at all. LinkMan does give me a hope for the best :-)
Thanks again, Steven, and Outertech.
Steven Avery:
Hi Folks,
Completely understood.
Even today .. (shhh.. don't let Thomas from Linkman hear :) ) there are times I am almost tempted to do something in Powermarks. It took about a week of having them both loaded to get fully comfortable.
And we had some semi-vigorous discussions about response time questions (e.g. which were sometimes unacceptable when restarting in Powermarks until I put it on high in ProcessTamer .. it seems that when a program falls asleep, Powermarks or Linkman or whatever, swapped out to disk, new keystroke recognition can be quite slow .. one reason I have memory on order. There are a lot of variables so imho benchmarks don't mean very much which is what I was discussing with Linkman) . Suffice to say that both Powermarks and Linkman are fully fine in general on response time, Linkman says they assembler optimized on searches, Powermarks gives that feel as well even if in C+ or some other language (I dunno). And some, or most, of the competition is not excellent on speed when talking about the large databases.
Once you get use to Linkman though, with the new changes and the extras and the responsiveness, you really simply bid a fond adieu to Powermarks .. they paved the way, it was a uniquely well-designed and implemented software .. little appreciated -- except here (an example of the practicle savvy of the Donationcoder crew). And Linkman has very fully taken up the challenge of moving on.
In my case I only dabbled with alternatives .. I didn't want to spend time unless I heard that a program had excellent keyword implementation and fine handling of large databases, and of course I wanted an import. The issue came to a head with the desire to really use Firefox 3.0 and not wanting to kludge along with script alternatives (apologies if that is a little harsh on Autohotkey implementations). At first I wanted to like Power Favorites (which might be ok for some) but hit some snags, and then focused on Linkman. They surprised me very nicely, once I gave the program a full chance.
On auto-complete, I think Linkman has recently added versatility as well, responding to the diverse ideas here. I am not so familiar with the ins and outs. Note that Linkman has a buffer pop-up with the last 10 or so entries and I use that quite a bit.
Shalom,
Steven
TucknDar:
Will Linkman free be available in a regular installation program anytime soon? The stuff it's packaged in now is pretty annoying, IMO. Doesn't let me install anywhere and the download affiliate is blocked in my routers ad-blocker (can be worked around, of course).
I've tried it on a couple of occasions but never really seriously partly because I was too annoyed with the installation routine to give it a fair run.
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