Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
General brainstorming for Note-taking software
rgdot:
Another added to the list to try, thanks Mahesh
J-Mac:
+3 Addict too. And Editors. Actually spent $250 on SlickEdit because of my addiction- even though I love it, that's a lot of scratch.
-wraith808 (July 27, 2012, 06:22 PM)
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Wow - you are truly a dedicated addict, wraith!
Jim
IainB:
I have copied some notes that seemed relevant to this discussion, extracted from a discussion thread in another forum - outlinersoftware.com that I contributed to.
The discussion extracts:
* primarily cover aspects of InfoSelect v5 and v8 ("IS5 and IS8") and OneNote;
* make mention of ClipGuru-->NoteFrog; Outlook, and Jello;
Discussion: Can we talk about Info Select?
(Opening Post)
Posted by razorboy - Aug 25, 2012 at 06:40 AM
I have two concerns: the software, and the forum. The forum - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/InfoSelect/ - was last posted to on 23 July, 2012. Many discussions were about leaving for Evernote. I applied/registered, as one must do so in order to be accepted by the list owner. However, it has been several days, and I have heard nothing. So: is there another Info Select group, preferably one with living members?
I had IS 3, a long time ago, and loved it. (I still have the disk.) I now need IS again for organizational purposes. I will probably only need the basic features, with which to create, save, and organize, zillions of pieces of information and data. IS 10 has bad reviews from users, so no thanks. This brings question #2: what is the oldest version of IS which can be run on Windows 7 64-bit? Officially, IS 2007 – which I take it is version 9 – can run on it, but “full functionality is not guaranteed.” OK, I’m sure I could live with that. So, is there anything earlier which will run on that OS?
And finally, if there is any competing software which has a tree structure and search structure exactly (or nearly) the same as IS? I know there are all kinds of organizers, outliners, and PIMs, but I don’t know them. If IS’s tree and search features are duplicated by another software, I will take a look. Otherwise, I will probably live with the oldest version of IS which will run on my laptop OS.
Thanks very much to anyone who can address any of my questions.
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Posted by Slartibartfarst - Aug 26, 2012 at 01:58 PM
@razorboy: Just some hasty notes. Not sure whether this might help, but here it is in case there is something useful to you from my experience - some of which may be common with yours.
I was a Lotus Agenda user since 1990. I have been an InfoSelect user since 1997.
I still very occasionally use Agenda(!), and I regularly use InfoSelect 8, and the latter runs just fine on a Win 7-64 laptop (Home Premium).
I also subscribe to the Yahoo IS User Group you mention, and have noticed that it has started to look pretty moribund. The IS developer (who took over the Admin/Manager role for it) seemed to have a Cavalier approach and scant regard for users’ needs, and this has apparently upset some users, who were saying they were looking to emigrate to Evernote. I don’t know how many may have made the switch. I had already been investigating Evernote by then anyway.
A query in a discussion in that group, about IS5, led me to reinstall my old copy of IS5 as an experiment, to prove that it too works just fine on a Win 7-64 laptop (Home Premium). I reported on that to the User Group.
Though it feels like I have trialled (and still trial) almost every PIM out there, I have not yet come across any other hierarchical 2-pane PIM (Personal Information Manager) that is quite as well-designed, consistently stable and useful as IS8. It is very good at what it does. Later versions that I tried looked pretty hopeless by comparison, and I did not consider them worth the investment - so I have stayed with IS8.
I also use NoteFrog (and before that, its predecessor Clip Guru), and have been a ß tester for it. It is an excellent Clipboard Information Manager, but it is not designed to be a PIM like IS8. It is NOT hierarchical, by the way.
A couple of years back, I started to use and compare Evernote and Microsoft OneNote. I have since settled for OneNote, since the OneNote database allows me to store ALL my data - including image data with any text in it, and the spoken/sung audio data (Yes!) - and index/search through it all (OCR for the image data), with the database being on a local hard drive. This all suits my peculiar needs, though it might not suit other peoples’ needs.
Incidentally, for a while now, I have been trialling Jello - which Integrates with Outlook, which integrates with OneNote. The possibilities seem endless, but I am just exploring.
--- End quote ---
Posted by Slartibartfarst - Aug 26, 2012 at 11:51 PM
@razorboy:
1. So, you tried IS 9 (2007) and 10, and found them inferior to IS 8? IS 10 has really bad user reviews, I see.
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Yes, I couldn’t see that IS9 was necessarily any better than IS8 - at least, not from my perspective. I don’t have any notes written up about it, but I recall that I thought IS9 seemed a bit of a regressive step. I very briefly played about with an earlier prototype version (I think it was) of IS10, when the IS/Yahoo forum was active (but again, no notes, sorry, though I did put my thoughts into the forum thread and you presumably can still read that material).
I couldn’t see the need for half the changes that were made/proposed for IS10, a good many of which seemed to be removal of previously otherwise stable functionality. Then there was the introduction of the feature of the “ribbon” interface.
The developer (and the forum users/members) seemed to be fixated on features (e.g., “ribbon” interface) rather than whether the functionality met their needs. Neglecting NEEDS is usually a classic error in software design/development, so if IS10 got any bad reviews (and it definitely did), then it’s arguably because of that rather than that IS10 is a “bad product” per se.
The needs never were defined (to my knowledge) and the classic step of prioritising them into A, B, C (A=mandatory, B=highly desirable, C= nice-to-have) seemed to have been omitted throughout. The whole exercise thus seemed appallingly confused and almost purposeless, and it was apparently being driven this way by the developer (go figure). Sadly, in restrospect, it seemed to have been an exercise in missed opportunity to improve the design in line with users’ needs.
I don’t think the IS10 developer produces “bad product” per se - at least, not from my experience. Even an egregiously bad design can be made operational, but that won’t necessarily make the design any better - e.g., the Maginot Line.
______________________________
2. …led me to reinstall my old copy of IS5 as an experiment, to prove that it too works just fine on a Win 7-64 laptop (Home Premium).~~~~ How did you do that? Did the installer do its job, or did you have to resort to hackery?
--- End quote ---
It was no problem at all - piece of cake. As with all my trial or old software, I deliberately install the software into a special directory of my own choosing and thus avoid installing the software into the Windows “Program Files” or “Program Files (x86)” directories - thus bypassing the need for extra system privileges that the OS puts on proggies using those directories. The only difficulty I recall was in ensuring I had the appropriate InfoSelect v5 (and later) English spelling and thesaurus files. I also have the IS database in a specially defined data area (for targetting of backups).
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3. Do IS 9 and 10 not save audio (note) files? Does Evernote?
--- End quote ---
I don’t know of any other PIM that handles words spoken/sung in audio files as text data AND that handles text embedded in images as text data. Furthermore, the smooth and uncluttered way in which OneNote does this is amazing. I only discovered a few days ago that if you put an mp3 song in OneNote, and paste the text of the lyrics below it, then when you play the mp3 in OneNote, it automatically tries to step down through and highlight the lines of the lyrics as they are being sung. That’s pretty smart. Of course, being able to search through the words in an audio file when you have no transcript is also pretty damn smart, and arguably just what you’d need in a note-taking PIM tool.
I think that in this regard OneNote leaves Evernote in the dust. Evernote would not be so far behind OneNote if they hadn’t crippled their client application so that you couldn’t have an OCR store of your text images - you are locked-in to being dependent on the cloud-based store for this. I detest such archaic business models that use lock-in in any shape or form.
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4. I confess that I don’t know what It is meant by “hierarchical” in the context of describing these softwares. Please explain. (..blush..)
--- End quote ---
A flexible hierarchical categorisation tree is an immensely powerful tool for organising information into categories and for marshalling and communicating your thoughts on a complex subject - e.g., in writing a book or a report in sections and subsections, on a particular subject.
For IS8, imagine a diagram of a structured set of categories and sub-categories - e.g., an organisational hierarchy diagram - then turn it on its side, and what you have is a linear view of that in the LH pane of IS8 (the categories can be anything you want, and there is a way of mapping unstructured cross-categories too, which can be rather handy). The RH pane contains the relevant content material for each point in the hierarchy.
EXAMPLE:
1.0 Parent (e.g. CEO)
1.1 Child of the above parent. (e.g., Vice President #1)
1.2 Child that is a parent (e.g., Vice President #2)
1.2.1 Child of 1.2 (e.g., 1st Deputy Vice President to #2)
1.2.2 Child of 1.2 (e.g., 2nd Deputy Vice President to #2)
1.2.2.1 Child of 1.2.2
2.0 Another parent - etc.
______________________________
--- End quote ---
IainB:
More on the InfoSelect PIM:
As regards installing is8, is9 (called “2007“), and is10, you can install them either in the default directory or wherever else you might want them to go.
As with all my trial or old software, I deliberately install the software into a special directory of my own choosing and thus avoid installing the software into the Windows “Program Files” or “Program Files (x86)” directories - thus bypassing the need for extra system privileges that the OS puts on proggies using those directories. The only difficulty I recall was in ensuring I had the appropriate InfoSelect v5 (and later) English spelling and thesaurus files. I also have the IS database in a specially defined data area (for targetting of backups).
--- End quote ---
As a result of responding to the discussion thread Can we talk about Info Select?, I have reinstalled and tested is9 (called “2007“), and is10 (the latest version is v10.00.87).
I put them both into my trial directory, running concurrently with is8 (which was already installed).
I am currently putting is10 through its hoops, and so far it is looking quite good, though it kept crashing when I tried to install it with my old .wd2 is8 database files, so I figured out how to install it first and THEN convert the .wd2 files to .wd3 format. It’s a bit tedious that way, but as a workaround it seems to be OK.
I had not trialled this version of is10 before, and I must say it looks quite good! If it enables me to easily save my browser .html pages (I currently have these in a Scrapbook library), then I might consider using it for that, though it seems expensive so I am hoping I shall find more benefits than just that. Otherwise I will not be able to easily justify the outlay. I am already doing what data management/manipulation I want with OneNote and separate tools and FREE Firefox browser add-ons. At worst, is10 may not offer much extra, but at best, it could offer a degree of increased consolidation of functionality - which is always a good thing IMHO.
If anyone is interested, I would recommend they download is10 free of charge as a trial, and that will apparently give you 60 runs (that is what it states) before the trial licence expires. You should be able to get some idea of how useful it is from that.
WARNING: Though the is8 and is9 Help files were self-contained and very well-documented, there is apparently only an online Help facility for is10. I have tried using it and it unfortunately seems like rubbish. I presume that they are still writing a proper one! It badly needs one anyway - and especially for the price they are asking.
You can download the various versions of InfoSelect from here: http://www.miclog.com/download/index.htm
Paul Keith:
Copy pasted from my OutlinerSoftware.com reply: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4354
It's sad that no one mentioned the multi-bar in this thread and you had to actually click on the demo. It's actually an exclusive feature of the software.
There's only like one or two notetaking services that do that and only this software and Remember the Milk comes to mind at the moment.
RTM can auto-format to-do lists and this one can create date logs, titles and csv from the bar.
For the price though, I would have at least wanted a direct Dropbox support/direct portable installation and native cross-platform software but the fact that I'm talking about price at all when I'm not usually a buyer shows how excited I was of hearing this.
Where are the people who make this threads? I bet they would be more excited:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1633/0/good-inexpensive-table-editor-or-bare-bones-spread-sheet
It also has a basic right click filter view which puts this thing in the category of a barebone file explorer albeit with the caveat that it only filters through a limited set of folders and only have 3 bookmark buttons. (Which for this kind of software is a good thing.)
If there's one criticism for this program, it's that it uses slow double click to rename instead of the F2 button which doesn't work really well and the focus keyboard shortcuts are too far apart. You need to click Ctrl+Alt+N/R/F/D/M. These shortcuts also don't appear to work in Virtualbox.
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