Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
General brainstorming for Note-taking software
superboyac:
A quick comment: you and I are on similar pages superboyac. I agree with your primary needs and also your admitting that there are other needs out there. Have you looked at NeoMem (http://www.neomem.org)? I dont use it because it is deficient in some areas but it is an interesting example of an information manager. Like you said before (I think it was you), we want our cake and eat it too. This genre could be so powerful... it's just so hard to fit everything in!
Kevin
-kfitting (March 01, 2006, 05:57 AM)
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Yeah, I tried Neomem. It's deficient in a lot of areas that I am personally used to. To be honest, I haven't spent too much time with it. But it does seem to have a lot of interesting features under the hood, and eventually, I will explore some of these a little more.
But, if a guy like jbiebeler saw Neomem, he would say, "What's the big deal". And he has a point, because it doesn't offer a different approach for organizing notes. At it's base, it is still just a traditional tree-heirarchy text editor, like Keynote and Mybase.
I do like the simple interface, it's efficient and fast, which is my main stumbling point with Surfulater. I kind of wish that we could combine the organization engine of Surfulater, with the interface of Neomem/Keynote/Mybase, and that would be heavenly to me right now.
nevf:
nevf, I tried the patch, and it works! Yes, that is what I was talking about as far as a simple note article.
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One step forward. :)
Re. editing. Besides the pencil you can hold the left mouse button down briefly on any field to commence editing. See the Help. This works the same as in Windows Explorer to rename files. I plan to enable double click on whitespace to also commence editing, asap. If you have any suggestions in this area please let me know.
I am aware of the issue of overshooting a selection and exiting edit mode and intend to try and address this.
These issues have absolutely nothing to do with the language that Surfulater is written in, which is in fact highly optimized C++.
I can't really see why you feel other programs are faster than Surfulater. Maybe the HTML editor gives this impression! I can tell you that I've put a lot of work into making the core engine in Surfulater as fast as possible. Working with very large trees with lots of content is just as fast as working with small knowledge bases. It is this core that enables us to dynamically provide different tree capabilities and views (with more to come), something I think other applications will struggle to do.
From what you've said the bottom line is to improve the editing experience a bit more and we might help get past some of the annoyances that concern you. Again any suggestions in this or other areas are most welcome.
jgiebeler:
Hi superboyac,
Thank you for the reply. I installed MyBase again just to understand where you are coming from. I suppose a lot comes down to subjective "feelings." I just don't feel as connected to my data with MyBase. One feature I think should be included in any editor is the ability to view everything in a hierarchy. By this I mean that if I have 20 files grouped in a folder, I would like to view all of those at once without selecting each one separately. For me this makes my notes more accessible - I can find them visually. I was using General Knowledge Base for this reason, but it had limitations. I could view all of the files in a folder (and their subfolders) but I couldn't preview them all at once. The program also separated each type of article, i.e. WebPages, notes, attachments. What I like about Surfulater is that I can view everything at once if I want to...again it just "feels" easier. I can click on the folder "Code Requirements" and view every article I put in there, along with my comments, attachments, and links to other articles. My main complaint with most programs is that I feel disconnected from my information. Its not intuitive to access it. Perhaps in this area I share your complaint with a tree only interface.
I do agree that Surfulater needs to work on the ability to add article templates and easily edit notes (the pencil icon is a disturbance, and it kicks you out of edit mode from time to time.) However, for the moment I am willing to put up with these disturbances because the other features (mainly accessibility to data) make up for it. I just started using the program and I already have it filled up with information, everything from project requirements, contacts, construction materials, and personal notes. I don't want to use a program, fill it up with information, and then dump it because something better comes along. This is another reason I selected Surfulater. I like the start of the program so much that I am willing to wait for updates. I find this thread interesting because these types of programs could be extremely powerful, even irreplaceable if done right. I hope that there will be a lot of development in the area of simple information management - because we all need it and there isn't anything that completely fits the bill - and I think Surfulater is on the way to become one of top programs in this field.
superboyac:
I didn't realize Surfulater was C++. I know nothing about programming, I'm just talking out of my arse there...
But when I said it felt faster, I don't mean by actual time. If you measured it, I'm sure everything is just as fast as can be. I think your explanation is more accurate...I meant the editing experience is faster on other programs than on Surfulater.
Here's my suggestion: for captured material like html pages, it's good to have an editing mode and a viewing mode like there is now. However, for just plain notes, I'd prefer the editor to just always be in editing mode. As in, you don't have to click in and out whether it's the pencil or double-click or single-click or whatever. For just plain notes, you want to be able to go in and start typing, I don't think you want the user to feel any interruption. Just like this forum's quick reply box--I know if I click inside it, I can just start typing away. That's what I'm talking about.
I can definitely see how Surfulater will have an easier and more successful time with true notetaking in the future. I think these issues are present currently only because notetaking is a more recent feature of the program, which was initially intended for capturing information.
If you really think my suggestions are useful, I'll keep them coming, especially if you think they apply to the general userbase also, and not just myself.
On a completely different note, am I not capturing from the web correctly? I'm using Firefox, and when I highlight text and capture in Surfulater, it's fine. But when I capture pictures, there are a lot of those broken links (with the red "x"). What are the limits to capturing accurately from the source in the program? (I'd post a screenshot, but I've been having a hard time attaching files lately here). And the final question I wanted to ask is how to make everything in the right content pane smaller? I like things much smaller, compact, minimal than most, and everything in Surfulater on that right side is just too big for me.
mouser:
a related issue: http://www.opml.org/spec2
opml is an xml markup standard for exchanging "outliner" (hierarchical notes) data.
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