kfitting, I strongly agree that when a program (like Keynote) goes to the next version, that it should never really reduce the number of features. Always add more, but never reduce. Because, like you said, people get familiar with the way a program works (for whatever reason) and taking that away can be extremely frustrating. If new features conflict with older features, the best thing to do is make it an option for the user.
nevf, yeah, it looks like InfoSelect is dead (for many reasons). Zoot also "seems" to be dead, but there is still talk about it moving to the 32-bit version sometime soon. I still strongly believe that once Zoot can use the typical rtf stuff (outlines, bullets, changing fonts, font sizes, colored text, etc) it will immediately become a strong competitor in the notetaking market. I'm desperately trying to make it work now, but I'm having such a hard time moving all of my notes (which have a lot of rtf stuff in it) into Zoot. I don't understand why it takes so many years to convert a program into 32-bit, but I'm not a programmer.
Rover, you bring up some good points about UI. I'll bet we can start another long thread on just that topic! Go for it.
We've been discussing these notetaking software for a while now, and this thread has become quite lengthy. If I may do so, I'd like to point out the 3 softwares that I feel have the most promise for the future. I know I've repeated this many times already but here they are:
--Surfulater
--EverNote
--Zoot
Fortunately, the developers of Surfulater and EverNote have actively participated in this discussion (which I thank them for), and we know that these are young programs that are still being actively developed and promise to add a lot of new, desired features. Zoot has been around longer, but unfortunately, has also stagnated recently with users wanting many more modern features. But I add it to the list because its raw power is unparalleled so far.
Also, there are tons of other note-taking softwares out there that, while they are good, I have decided to not include them in the top tier because they only offer the traditional tree-heirarchy system. I think that it's very important that we break out of that, as the three softwares above are doing. Also, that makes this analysis much easier because there are tons of programs out there that do offer this tree-heirarchy like Keynote, Mybase (which, if you read the beginning of this thread, I was very big on), MyInfo, NeoMem, and just about every other PIM available. The tree-heirarchy just won't cut it once you amass a large number of notes.
I really have nothing more to say about this topic. I will keep discussing it if I think of something or responding to other people's thoughts, but I'm pretty sure I've said what I wanted to say. In the meantime, I will eagerly watch and analyze the development of the above 3 programs, and hopefully I will one day be comfortable enough to be ready to transfer all of my notes to and be committed to it.