J-Mac, I'm aghast !
In fact, I always assumed UR was rock-solid since for me, it was, but I only put lots of data into it, never having been fond of importing web sites into anything: If you must web sites for legal reasons, you must do it differently anyway, and for collecting data, I've got plenty of macros (explained in the UR forum and formerly in outlinerswcom) to preserve just the text clippings I'm interested in, together with the url's and any picture I need with the text: Thus, my reference system is outstandingly neat, clean (pun intended, no, my avatar isn't about ex-alcoolism or such) and standardized: hence, I never found anything attractive in Surfulator, e.g.
This explains why I simply never encountered any of these problems of importing raw data into UR, myself only having imported cleaned data into it; btw, in my time (AS forum, MI forum, outlinerswcom, UR forum), I made a lot of advertizing for this style (which implies, directly after importing or afterwards, clip any left clutter out and bold passages important for you), but had to realize that nobody followed me here: They all want the original data preserved to a max, with all the clutter it brings to your system.
My system also included links to folders, i.e. from my PIM to my file system, but in most cases, as said, to folders, not to individual files: Instead of having to maintain 5,000 links or more, I maintain some 120 or 200 of them (plus, ok, some 150 links to individual files I use for referencing, again and again) - and they are simili-links, i.e. coded entried in the tree and processed by my macros, so they're perfectly exportable from one PIM to any other. (I will not replicate detailed descriptions here, but of course, beginning tree entries with dots, commata, semicoli or other special chars with which otherwise entries would not begin, can "mean" lots of different things for your system, especially when your macros then also analyze the further "architectecture" of your entry: e.g. which suffix, or even which special chars within the "comment", the "comment" part of such referential, "link" entries being everything after the first space within such lines; even my "enter" and other keys do completely different things according to this analysis, and on top, there are key combinations, e.g. show a folder within a specific pane of a specific file manager, open a file in its original prog, and so on - as soon as you begin scripting in AHK, you'll never stop - and you don't rely as much on the inherent functionality of your respective PIM anymore, which will by that factor alone become much more "expendable", "interchangeable" - only prob here: there isn't one really decent such PIM out there, any one of them is ridden with big probs.
Sideline: Susi on outlinerswcom wasn't even dissuaded from importing tons of ("stolen"?) pictures into MI, which will make her system more than just unstable (she says she has an art history blog, but let's assume she's smart enough to NOT re-publish all these downloaded pictures but just stores them for her own reference purposes, then all is legal and safe, from a non-technical pov), and nobody told her that her fear that links (instead of importing all this stuff) would be of too much fuss, was unfounded: There are relative links, you know (= YOU know, she didn't), and in case, there's also the subst command if ever really necessary. The same goes for any such db: Don't import, just link, but in the smartest way possible of course, and that implies even cloned links, links to links, etc. - there are lots of possibitilies, no need for blowing up your db up to unmanageability!
So I had just "normal things" in my MI db(s), and it was buggy like hell, and it's getting worse, for every bug exterminated, there seems to be a new one, or several new ones, here and there (this lone developer obviously does without sw engineering, and it shows) - whilst in my - limited, as I must admit - use of UR 4.2b (= latest 4 version), even with much, much bigger files, UR was rock-solid (but not as fast as I would have it liked to be).
In the UR forum, I'm the most poignant critic of UR, so if you want my advice on UR, read my criticism there, and I'm rather angry that kinook doesn't do anything valid about UR's not being as outstanding as it should have been for a very long time now.
And then, extensively explained by me in the MI and the UR forum respectively, neither of these progs have real PM, when UR in fact isn't far from it but simply doesn't invest those 3 weeks of hard programming labour in order to create something unparalleled: They simply don't see it, when technically, they are so near such functionality. (Ample backing of my assertion in their forum.)
So :
You're right, J-Mac, I cannot continue to praise UR everywhere for its rock-solidity when in fact, by "normal" use (my limited use not being representative of what most PIM users want from their PIM), UR shows its real flaws - that's even worse than the current PIM market as I saw it before reading you (we all know development on the "big players" has been more or less stalled).
If it were only for web pages, I'd preach, do them my way, and thus avoid any such problem that internal processing of web pages, in any such PIM, is necessarily sub-standard compared with dedicated browsers, but even if you do it my way, thus avoiding these additional problems, not a single PIM today is a little bit satisfying: All of them are really, really bad in many ways, and most of which you could amend by doing one afternoon of programming, meaning 20 or 30 such afternoons invested by a programmer (of a current heavyweight, that is), and he'd get an outstanding, brilliant piece of sw that would sell much better than what he's offering today.
On the other hand, this web site problem, well, even doing abstraction from my very different way of doing this: Is it reasonable, sensible to block such amounts of programming efforts of the respective developers, by asking them to follow the newest - endless - developments in site programming, when even long-standing browsers like IE, FF, etc. have got more and more probs to follow here, and to get by?
In my experience, even stored .mht's don't work necessarily without fault; saving as a webpage (.html) seems best, and as soon as users accepted that even very serious PIM's do NOT offer internal processing of web pages anymore, but just technically store the respective elements to be processed again then by their respective browser, lots of "man months" each year, on the developers' side, would be freed up for more constructive, real development work.
Of course, we're in a situation where in fact most developers (MI, UR, many more) try to get their components for free, instead of paying, for a good tree component, 2,000 dollars, or for a good editor component, 800 dollars, hence our never-ending discontentment with what they deliver.
Thus, I'm personally more and more interested in specialised sw, case M sw and such, where you often pay 500 if not 800 dollars a year, but where there is much more "intelligence", i.e. smart help with your work, built into the prog, than in today's PIM's.
Of course, you can try to implement such additional intelligence / smoothness by external scripting (and that's what I try to do with my stuff and with the help of AHK), but this is only possible to a degree.
A perfect example, both for the possible degree of sophistication, AND for the limits of such external efforts, is ResultsManager for MindManager (now "MindJet") - I discussed the possibilities here in length in my thread "UR and MM" or something in the UR forum (it's easily to be found under the "Suggestions" rubrum there and only gets really instructive towards the end) - the executive summary here: Yes, you can add lots of functionality to such progs, BUT: instead of having instant, real time results, - and no, this is NOT a joke! -, settle for stacks, that will be worked off early in the morning, before work begins, and then again during lunch (calculate 45 minutes).
And all this, more than 30 years after the intro of personal computing - and with progs that get multi-million dollar results every year. Btw., the developer of that program (RM) recently told me that his add-on doesn't even function with the latest MM / MJ versions anymore, i.e. instead of introducing trans-map clones (they don't even have clones within a given map, when FreeMind has got these at least, lately), they change their program in a way that even a highly elaborate add-on that provided much enhancement to their core product in a corporate environement (and hence big return for MM / MJ in such environments: by making MM/MJ useful not just for 3 strategists but perhaps for a workgroup of 25 people, making it 25 MM/MJ licenses instead of 3), will not work anymore.
The prob behind all this, as I see it, is simply that most developers out there don't strive enough for ultimate programming excellence, but just see the "numbers", the dollar number, that is, and even here their vision is short-termed.
EDIT : And I think the definite word on TB has been uttered some weeks ago by Superboyac here:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=32928.0Re: thebrain
Reply #3 on: November 21, 2012, 06:18:51 PM
I've tried this one out 3 times over the years, the most intensive workout I gave it was a few months ago. It's a unique product with a fantastic interface and pretty productive. I don't know what to say about it, though. It's like...in the end, it doesn't matter. I've spent a decade trying to wrangle in my own personal information management system. I'd put it this way, if your JOB requires you to know a lot of random bits of information and you are required to keep track of it, etc...then it's a good thing to get. It would also be good for professional collaboration in information collection and analysis is the goal.
But for personal use and if you think it's going to help you keep track of things, i think you will quickly find yourself using it less and less. But this is not unique to the Brain. This has been my experience with all PIMs. Also, no matter how nifty things get, I can't ever break myself away from the old school tree structured PIMs. I use RightNote now almost exclusively, not because it's amazing...just because.
40hz, my recommendation is to continue using whatever hodge pdoge of information is currently working for you. I use rightnote for serious notetaking. I use everything to search my files. Archivarius to search inside files. And for organization, I use file naming and folder structuring techniques. This is all I need. I keep trying to add niftier tools like the Brain into the mix, but they don't stick. If you were to use the brain seriously, it would interfere with your file/folder organization because I think you'd feel the need to duplicate that effort inside the brain. And then you will get tired of it. And then you will find out that it's not as good/flexible/easy as file/folder organization. I have never been able to sustain "virtual" organization such as tagging systems and fancy PIM interfaces nearly as long and comfortably as file/folder organization. Too much work and too virtual.
