IDEA: Create a modern version of Lotus Agenda

[IainB]

Reading the post about deviantopian's To-Do Tree (I didn't try it, but it looked nifty) made me think of something else.
What started me thinking was the screenshot with that "sidewise tree" hierarchy view - it was redolent of the Lotus Agenda "Category" tree, and made me realise (again) that when someone has an idea they will generally be surprised to find that it has already been invented.   

Lotus Agenda (currently available as DOS freeware from IBM) - now THAT would be an application worth emulating by Donation Coder. It was a super-sophisticated free-form PIM + text database, that just happened to be useful for To-Do lists, amidst lots of other things.   

Anyone in Donation Coder up to the challenge of recreating Lotus Agenda? (Don't say "Chandler" - that's nowhere near like it, and never will be, given the rate and direction it is proceeding in.)

I reckon that if you can come up with a find-and-run like FARR (which, imho is nothing short of a brilliant piece of work), then you might have the capability to do a leapfrog over Lotus Agenda and bring it to Windows if you so wanted. What to use? XML, or SQL, or maybe...hmmm - so many choices! If you do decide to take up the challenge, then please feel free to use me as a ß tester. I used to be a Lotus Agenda uber-power user, so was familiar with most of its features, constraints and limitations.

[AgendaRediviva]

I'm trying.

[Dormouse]

Chandler .... is proceeding 

-IainB (November 22, 2008, 11:32 PM)

[Dormouse]

I'm trying.

-AgendaRediviva (November 28, 2008, 03:43 PM)

But only for Mac ?

[AgendaRediviva]

Dormouse, yes, only for the Mac. It's what I know best, and, IMHO, some of the technologies in OS X (Spotlight, Core Data, and Cocoa bindings, to name a few) are more easily leveraged for this kind of effort.

[tomos]

I dont know the origin of InfoQube (IQ), but believe it's inspired by Ecco Pro.
Pierre Landry, the developer, (PPLandry here on dc) has recently 'discovered' Lotus Agenda, and is looking to add some of it's features to IQ.

I'll post a link to this thread in the IQ one, so I'm sure he'll checkin here to see if you have any suggestions.

I never owned a license of Agenda, but as it is now public domain (download link here), I installed it on an XP machine.
 
Apart from a antique DOS UI, and as with Ecco Pro and InfoQube, it is build on the following 3 principles :

    Information is stored in items
    Items can be assigned user-defined field values (categories in Agenda)
    Views show a sub-set of all items in the database. Users can customize / create views. Views can have a few columns which show field values

In my spare time (!), I plan to play with it, read about it, and add some of its features to InfoQube.
If there are Agenda users out there, please feel free to share with us what Agenda killer features you'd like to see implemented in InfoQube.

http://www.sqlnotes....ndex.php?q=node/2921

[40hz]

I used to use Agenda when it first came out. But I soon switched over to GrandView, and then (reluctantly) Ecco when GrandView was discontinued.

To this day, I still prefer a single-panel outline paradigm. And nothing ever worked quite so well for me (YMMV) as GrandView did. Closest ever was MaxThink - although that, by itself, had nowhere near the capabilities that GrandView offered.

Forget Agenda. Bring back GrandView! The 700+ page User Guide can be found here. Give it a skim and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Shades]

Not that long ago I was asked to take a look at the whole Lotus suite including the Domino server. Man, that was an exercise in frustration (in a virtual machine based on Windows 2008). To get it installed is one thing, using it is a whole different ballgame. And the fact that all of their software is build on the Eclipse interface doesn't improve usability.

Eclipse is a good development environment, but it should stay there. Eclipse is not the proverbial hammer in search of nails. It actually made me appreciate Exchange more. Lotus is undoubtedly capable, but the "specialness" of the interface rubbed me wrong in so many ways. I find it amazing that this software keeps getting so much "love" from companies and persons, to be honest.

Then again, until I was asked to try the software, I only had heard of Lotus, but never felt even a inkling of a desire to consider starting to install or work with it...for more than 20 years.

[IainB]

@tomos: Thanks for posting that about PPLandry and his interest in Lotus Agenda - and that it may relative to IQ.
I shall follow the link you give: http://www.sqlnotes....ndex.php?q=node/2921

By the way, regarding:

I'm trying.

-AgendaRediviva (November 28, 2008, 03:43 PM)

- I kept monitoring progress on that front:

The site will soon host a blog to record progress and observations, and will serve as the gateway to a private project site for contributors (including test users) to the effort.
If you’d like to follow the progress of this project, you are invited to subscribe to the blog and comment on our observations.
__________________________

- but there was no apparent development after that. Then the guy posted that there had been a serious illness in the family, or something, and that he was going to have to put everything on hold and deal with that.
Nothing further happened after that (I had subscribed to the blog in my feed-reader), and the link to site, and all its links, appear to be dead.

My own feeling is that, with the best will in the world, understanding some of this arguably brilliant software  - such as (say) Lotus Agenda or GrandView - so that you can see how it ticks and then try to replicate that functionality, is likely to end up in the "too hard" basket, and people might just opt or prefer to take an easier path and invent a new mousetrap, rather than seek to build on one that is already pretty good.

I mentioned in the post DiviFile from Qnomad - Mini-review how DiviFile had Faceted Classification, which is what Lotus Agenda had, but with some rather clever (and useful) twists.
The DiviFile developer emailed me later to say that he was busy focussed on some other project, so I got the impression that DiviFile will probably be unlikely to undergo much change in the short term. I'd be interested to know what he's working on now.

[IainB]

Post by @Mikeinnc - cross-posted here for reference:

I see someone else has beaten me to it  , but I firmly believe that Lotus Agenda was a milestone program. I think I've still got a copy on 5.5inch floppies somewhere! A good introduction to its power (and demise!) is here. A similar program that was more graphical was NetManage Ecco Pro. It still runs under Windows 10!

Mike

-Mikeinnc (March 25, 2020, 12:06 AM)

[IainB]

Subject: Does anyone have english PDF handbooks for Lotus Agenda?
Posted by Beck
Feb 17, 2019 at 10:52 PM

I tried this and it works.

From http://www.bobnewell...ewell.php?itemid=186

> An Agenda benefactor has made all six Agenda manuals available.
> These include Quick Start, Setting Up Agenda, Starter Applications,
> User's Guide, Working With Definition Files and Working With Macros.
> You can obtain them as follows.
>
> Browse to www.mydrive.ch.
> Login as 'guest@agendadudester' with password 'guestdude'.
> Download the manuals from the main file folder.
> The Beyond 2.0 manual can now also be found in the same place.
 - Posted at OutlinerSoftware.com

[IainB]

Design Patent:
[Lotus Agenda] patent US5115504 - Information management system.pdf