List of newbie questions regarding software

[city_zen]

Have you tried the Open Source donationware ToDoList?

From their website:

ToDoList is a rare form of task management tool, one that allows you to repeatedly sub-divide your tasks into more manageable pieces whilst still presenting a clean and intuitive user experience.

ToDoList has been in continuous development for the last 4 years and is an ongoing project.

Your tasklists are stored in XML which provides many opportunities for advanced formatting and printing using stylesheets.

I think it fulfills several of your requirements

[Paul Keith]

city_zen, I don't get the program. Where does it allow you to save a session of your to do list?

[city_zen]

Paul, I don't think it lets you save the tasklist as a "session", but you can easily overcome that by first creating a "default" tasklist, and then opening it and saving it with another name to keep the "default" one unchanged and have it available later as a sort of template. You can then work with the newly saved tasklist and save its state whenever you like. The program also gives you the option (in Preferences) to keep a number of backup copies of each tasklist.

[Paul Keith]

Thanks but I don't think that's going to work for me.

See, the thing with basing it around a "session" is organization so that when these things run amok you can easily find them and change/clone them in less time than it takes to copy paste/rewrite/reprint the to do list.

[Armando]

I'm saying the obvious, but here : unless you write your own application or pay someone to write it for you, it's very unlikely (still... ok... slightly possible) that you'll find exactly what you want, with all the mini details. Software and organization is a lot about compromise -- right? Compromise and choices about security, accessibility, flexibility, ease of use, portability, scalability, sexiness, price, etc. etc.

One needs to find something that's close enough and try to work with it, find ingenious solutions (use one's imagination, creativity...) to circumvent limitations. Sometimes it's a combination of different software that'll create the best solution. Sometimes one has to adapt his/her ways of doing things slightly to match the software's design, etc.

There are no perfect software. I don't have one software -- especially the ones that I intensely use everyday -- that's perfect. They're all great, but they always have a little something I wish was different. Isn't this the same with... anything else in life?

I tend to obsess too about these types of things (it's a disease) : trying to find the perfect tool for such and such, the perfect career, the perfect place to live, etc. But in the end, really, it's probably not that important -- unless, of course, one likes the fun of always looking for that "thing" that's "better" than what here and now. Nothing wrong with that, I guess... depends.

[Paul Keith]

Software and organization is a lot about compromise -- right? Compromise and choices about security, accessibility, flexibility, ease of use, portability, scalability, sexiness, price, etc. etc.

I disagree. That to me would be equivalent to saying that one should not need to search for an application because many Windows have come pre-installed with MS Office Suite on it.

I do get what you're saying about creating the app myself though but that is the bane that comes with ignorance. Also, prior to this, I don't know if such apps existed so I had to ask.

One needs to find something that's close enough and try to work with it, find ingenious solutions (use one's imagination, creativity...) to circumvent limitations. Sometimes it's a combination of different software that'll create the best solution. Sometimes one has to adapt his/her ways of doing things slightly to match the software's design, etc.

That's true. I already had one of these so I no longer need to search for tweaked alternatives unless the alternative is better for me.

Currently, I just use Akelpad with Auto-Save and Minimize to Tray plugin, MDI mode in conjunction with Launchy.

For online syncs, on the short term I just use Dropbox.

For templates, I copy the list over to LastPass' secure notes as I don't want it cluttering Google Notebook with all the other snippets.

For long term, I just use my preferred to do list program after a copy paste.

[Paul Keith]

Hi, sorry I've been pre-occupied lately and haven't worked on the thread.

Two new types of software I'm looking out for:

1. Minimalistic Lightweight Tag-based Notetaker

As mentioned in this thread, Incollector isn't stable enough and Evernote is too bloated and search engine-centric to work well. Also Tobu has a flawed interface that could easily be worked on.

It would be even better if you could search/filter by tags from FARR.

2. Minimalistic Tag-based Micro-Journal software

I've tried doing this with Plurk but it's just too unstable and the search is too poor to do any decent filtering. Recently I've been doing this in Google Calendar but it isn't exactly made for re-visiting the dates of old threads. Outlook's interface is too busy and it is too heavy. Notepads are difficult to filter out and using a full fledged diary software is too distracting. Wikis can work but they aren't exactly tag-based easy to view either and again, too busy of an interface.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can suggest a better alternative.

[kartal]

I am trying this at the moment. It is pretty cool and based on go binder, allows stylus input, handwriting etc. The onyl things that bother me are

-Interface is slow
-No real calendar import export
-No Ical support


http://shopping.fran...=0&id=prod510002

[Paul Keith]

Not to sound slow kartal but what is it?

The implementation of Franklin Covey got me interested but the screenshots look even scarier than SQLNotes and my PC doesn't have much juice to handle a slow application. (It already hanged because I have Firefox, Chrome, ThinkingRock and Compendium opened at the same time)

[kartal]

It is a calendar, todo, task, note application. It is nowhere near sqlnotes as far as feature set or complexity. It is great for using with a tablet pc, you can write your notes or tasks rather than typing them if you have a tablet pc or digitizer. You can type as well but I use a tablet pc and this does all.

[Paul Keith]

Thanks for the clarification. I'll have to try it out sometime. Not too high on all-in-one apps so the motivation isn't here right now.

[Paul Keith]

Ok, anyone know any app that cuts the text to the core points?

Seriously, I have WAY too many people not replying in any of my topics as much as I expected them to be. Just a recent example is the Opera topic I made in DC.