RightNote Revisited / Review (in lieu of a RN forum)

[peter.s]

Hello, Rael (= the developer), Hello, prospects (and "you" sometimes means the first, sometimes the latter, but that will be evident from respective context),

I'm currently extensively trialling RN. Some first observations:

a) There should be a forum to ask questions in. (It's not mandatory for such a forum to be integrated in your site, so there are solutions which would cost you nothing.)

b) Why have Tree shortcuts different from general standards, i.e. "bold" is "Alt b" here, instead of "control b". The SCOPE of the shortcut will determine its action, so there is no problem to change it to the standard shortcut, and that I did, but there are many such idiosyncrasies in your shortcut assignments, i.e. there is a lot of manual tweaking work to do for a new user. (This Alt b instead of control b just being one example among many.)

b) Tree: I miss "italic" and "underlined" (but there is a color and background color formatting).

c) Tree: If I change shift enter to Ins (by "Special"), for "Add child note", this does not work then. Of course, the change is a matter of taste / personal appreciation, but the assignment should work if it's offered by the "Special" list of possible key assignments.

d) Tree: If you select an entry with the mouse, instead of by kb navigation, it will become underlined, even when you then change the selection to another entry/item. This is visually awful, and distracting. (And if there is any sense behind this, i.e. if "it's a feature, not a bug", please make it available by option only.)

e) "History" and "Recent" are totally awful, since those lists are populated by all those dozens of items you just touched a fraction of a second, by kb tree navigation, so those lists become totally useless since for identifying those "real finds" there to which you would like to navigate, using those lists as a "shortlist", you would have to read dozens of irrelevant "false hits". Solution to this problem is very easy: Just have items entered into those list JUST whenever they did appear for more than one second or such on screen (which is not the case for items "touched" by navigation only, and perhaps better, for more than 2 seconds (= opening of parent items), and even better, make it an option for the user to determine the length of display necessary in order for items to be included in those lists; I would probably choose 3 seconds then.

f) The looks: RN is currently one of the worst-looking outliners/PIM's out there (except for my possible missing possible adjustments?). I really beg you to have a quick look at some competitors, in order to do something about this. Tree, content (with title/tags), history/search panes, you imagined it "purist", but it's just ugly. As a first step (if you want it purist), please consider abolition of all those thin lines / thin frames, and the grey background. Especially, the title and tags frames, above and beneath the content field, are almost unbearable, as are the "lines" made up from the grey background between them and the content frame, and between tree and content frame, and between the latter and the search/history frame. (I'm speaking of its visual appearance in XP here.) Of course, such inferior appearance / visual appeal greatly harms the commercial outlook of any program, so it's important to work about it.

g) RN is MUCH, MUCH better than I had ever thought (except for the fact that a db-driven PIM should offer clones of course), but the help file does not reflect the power of this program (neither do the menu entries), and I invite newcomers/prospects to have a thorough look into the virtually endless "Tools-Customize Shortcuts" list, by which the hidden power of this fine program can be fully appreciated: There are many hidden gems there to be discovered! (It is one thing to just pretend, "RN's rtf editor is much superior to Ultra Recall's", e.g., but it's quite another thing again to discover the virtually endless possibilities in RN's editor(s), incl. not only tables, but extensive, powerful manipulation facilities for tables, too.)

h) The Boolean search problem (and I don't have to tell you how important such functionality, even without NOT or NEAR, is, for not getting endless hit tables). As said, there is a gulf between the power of this fine program, and what the help file tells you about it, and I obviously did not try ANY POSSIBLE variant in my extensive trials with the search function. In fact, from my understanding, and from the help file, it seemed "Fast Search" was something LESSER than "full-featured" search, but in fact, for the time being, it seems to be the only search flavor that correctly processes AND and OR search terms. (And my fault being, I seem to have left out this "Fast Search" in my frenetic search tries, and I'm indebted to PIMlover, from outlinersoftware.com, to have very kindly mentioned this point to me. So, yes, indeed, AND and OR WORK, for the time being, but just in this special variety of search you would have had a tendency to overlook, possibly, from reading the help file. (It goes without saying that I hope for extending this functionality on all three search flavors.)

i) There is no distinction in search between "just tree titles" / "just in the tree" and "overall" / "tree and content". If you remember just some key word(s) in the title, such a distinction would be more than helpful, since it would spare you perhaps dozens of "false hits" within the hit table, through which then you would have to unnecessarily browse in order to find that one item you would like to work on, or you need to access for reading.

j) Import and Export seem both very limited at first sight, but they both present file hierarchies (even of rtf, and possibly html files, not trialled yet) to be built from the tree, and to build the RN tree from, and some other outliners/PIMs offer similar functionality, and those also offer special competiting formats, and that means that for many outliner file formats, you will be able to import your stuff into RN, and even to export your RN stuff into competing offerings, whenever the necessity might arise to do so. (Of course, I'll have to check the quality of html/docx export, which at the end of the day are the most important features in this respect, in order to further process the "product" you produce, from your stuff, in an outliner/PIM.)

k) I do not think (yet) the tagging function(s) is/are quite neat, but that's perhaps (partly) due to my possible misunderstanding of parts of it/them, but even then, the possible fact that I don't intuitively grasp that functionality, even with the help of the help file, should indicate that some work on this feature (group) could not do any harm ;-)

l) Tree: F2 currently opens a full-fledged item properties dialog, whilst in most cases, you would just like to adjust the item title a little bit, e.g. for eliminating a typo; so the regular F2 for "edit title in tree" function would be very welcome, and the current properties dialog could be opened by shift-F2 or whatever.
__________

All this being said, I redirected Rael, the developer, to this thread, in order to comment here, as long as he will not have got a forum on his own, and anyway, I'll post more findings about RN here, and I invite fellow users to do so, too, since from my experience, positive observations should be shared widely, and criticism should be made public, too, in order to sufficiently motivate the respective developer to amend sub-standard functionality.

As for the above, point e) would need immediate attention, since the current absence of a usable history function (or then, the presence of a history function that forces you to navigate by mouse only!!!) makes this otherwise fine program almost unusable... and then, point f), the looks, seems to be primordial to me. ;-)

[superboyac]

Well, you just might be as crazy as I am.  Not quite there yet, but close. 

[Scott_Y]

Why have Tree shortcuts different from general standards, i.e. "bold" is "Alt b" here, instead of "control b".

-peter.s (May 13, 2014, 07:55 AM)

First of all, Peter, I would be glad to see an unofficial RightNotes forum get started. As you say, the program has great power and potential, so it would be good for users to share their experiences, questions, and solutions.

As for the shortcut Alt+B, I agree it is a bit bothersome to remember a non-standard combination. But it has the advantage of toggling the bold state of the tree node while still in the note editor. That is, you don't have to move your focus from the editor to the tree to make the node bold. Now whether that is an advantage or not is another question, but I think it explains why the shortcut is not Ctrl+B.

[donleone]

Hello Peter

Just like you, i also happened to extensively re-tryout RightNote this week,
after some years of "letting it slide by".

And so here are some additional insight-inspections,
both of the good and the still bad of it.

-----------------------------------
THE STILL BAD
-----------------------------------


Problems with MULTIPLE PAGES

- RightNote can do internal Quick-Linking to another note using e.g. the shortcut CRTL+SHIFT+K,
but the quick-link only remembers as long as you refer to an item on the same page/tree.
For when namely a quick-link is made to a note, that then gets dragged over unto another page/tree,
it breaks the quick-link and says "This item has been deleted" (even though it's just on an other tab)
So the ability to sustain note-links across pages, is a missing ability yet or bug.

- Similarly, when a note is placed into a folder that has a "folder tag",
and then that note gets dragged into another page into another folder there,
it still just keeps the older tag, without auto-replacing it with the new automatic folder tag.
But when again the same note moving action is performed within the same page/tree,
it does work perfectly without any issues, auto-updating and replacing the automatic folder tag.

- Likewise, the much helpful quick note back & forth switching using the shortcuts ALT+LEFT / ALT+RIGHT,
works perfectly as long as you stay within the same page, but when trying to switch back & forth
between 2 notes - of which one is on an other page - as soon as you focus select something
in that other's note content, it forgets the "previous note" and if you then try to press ALT+LEFT
it just jumps back to the tree pane, instead of to the previous note, on a whole different page/tree.


Problems with THE SPREADSHEET

- when a paragraph of text is placed into a cell, and one would like to for example bolden just one word of it,
it cannot do it, but boldens the entire contents of the entire cell - same with all the other formatting features.

- there is absolutely no way i could figure out how to jump unto the bottom of a column's content,
that is, to the last row of a column that has data pasted into it - just as you can do it in Excel using CTRL+DOWN.
Instead, you must painfully use the horizontal scroll-bar to manually scroll to the last row,
which scroll-bar in of itself totally is bad when having more than 1000 rows,
as it can suddenly jump to row 30'000, then to 6'000 on even the slightest of dragging.


Problems with THE TAG PANE

- when a folder gets a "folder tag", and that folder gets deleted,
it does not automatically remove the old folder tag from the tag list.
And which gets especially foolish, when you rename folders multiple times,
since for every single re-name it creates again a new folder tag!
(rather than just auto-updating the same, and on delete, deleting it.)

- furthermore, when one over time assembles to have like 500-1000 items under a single tag,
(which can happen very quickly if you set a top level folder tag)
then pretty quickly the whole tag engine starts to really become slow,
and start to consume a lot of CPU and eventually also to repetitively crash the program.
So this is probably the biggest weakness of RightNote's scalability,
which but on the other hand also forces you to set more specific tags,
and which typically should be a good thing.



-----------------------------------
THE YET GOOD
-----------------------------------


Great Database Foundation

- since RighNote runs on SQLite 3 and loads only one item at a time it is power capable to grow to a huge database size
(of even tens of GBs, not just theoretically but practically, as in the case of when for example having many stored attachments in it)
providing that each attachment is kept systematically ideally below 20 MB as so to retain a fast user & loading experience,
since when files of say 50-100 MB get attached, RightNote will take each time ca. 20s to just load them up,
as soon as that attachment gets clicked, or even just selected upon.

- And even though automatic attachment changes/editing updating & saving, is sadly not supported yet
(so that thus only those attachments which are non-changing/static in nature, are thus useful to be internally stored)
RightNote on the other hand, does have a rather unique ability to not only allow for externally linked files (as many others do),
but with the added RightNote bonus, that even all these externally linked attachments become also automatically
fully indexed and search-able as-well (as if they were internally stored), providing that they are in an index-able file format, such as:

Text (.txt/.rtf), Word (.doc/.docx), Excel (.xls/.xlsx/.csv), HTML (.htm/.html) or PDF (.pdf).

and with any one of them (or all), being remove-able from the indexing at any time, via RightNote’s Options dialog.


Special Tagging Features

while there are of course many programs nowadays that offer tagging, it is very rare to my knowledge
that any one of them is able like RighNote:

- in the tag search results, to also display the item icons (in front of the item’s title)
AND their special tag icons (at the end of the item’s title, as in RightNote even each tag can be assigned an individual icon as-well,
that then of course gets applied unto all the thus tagged items as-well) and thus allowing for an extra level
of classification & instant-recognition when browsing through the tag search results list

- additionally, to have the tag search results also automatically grouped (and individually group collapse-able)
by on what tab/page/tree they are located on, makes it thus that much easier again, to quickly
by a mere glace find and zero-in unto exactly the section of results that you are interested in,
and without getting distracted by any other items that may appear in the tag results as-well,
just because they were once classified under the same general tag as-well.

- the tag search bar not only auto-suggests tags (which in of itself is a great feature)
but it does so suggesting not just in a mere word-completion manner (as many other apps only do),
but from the entire item name’s title - so that you can find a tag you’re looking for quickly,
even if the keyword you typed in is placed in the middle of the title AND WITH also the benefit
of having the auto-suggested type-matches instantly being yellow color highlighted
for an even faster recognition & drilling down to it ability, such as e.g. by simply pressing the down key.

- the alphabetic tag list that contains ALL the tags of your database, can be turned on/off by a simple toggle button,
so that you can at any time switch between seeing your entire list of tags in alphabetic order,
or else just using the tag search field, to thus typingly find your tags.

- also the “automatic folder tags” feature, that allows one to set tags for an entire folder and its sub-items,
is especially useful for the included feature, that one is able later, additionally to add to the folder
and have them additionally also then automatically assigned/changed to all the folder’s child items
AND to also any items that you from there on decide to drag into that folder as-well. Likewise,
if one drags an item out from a tagged folder, into another tagged folder, then of course all the tags
of the dragged items become automatically updated & changed, without any manual efforts at all.

- Similarly, if one simply needs to bulk tag assign/delete or bulk tag change/rename multiple specific item tags at once,
one can do it so in RightNote in at least 3 different ways, of either manually multi-selecting the desired items and tagging,
or more systematically via a searching of them out and then simply the search results re-tagging as desired,
or thirdly just renaming them simply in the alphabetic tag list directly, with again of course all the to that tag belonging items
being instantly bulk updated as-well.

- last but not least, also “tag merging” is possible, should you ever need to fuse 2 tags into 1,
with likewise of course both child’s items being auto-updated unto the new tag as-well.


Great Tree Flexibility

- item titles in the tree can be multi-line, up to as many multi-lines that you want,
by simply enabling that Option in the Tree Properties. (Too bad only that it is not yet possible
to then also retain that multi-line title display in the Search results or in the Tag search results as-well,
but there they get displayed as single-line only again, without of course changing the original multi-line)

- the ability to hoist the tree (and thus to focus-into just one section of the tree) which can also be helpful

- tree items can be of course assigned icons, and when the freely available “Complete Icons Pack”
is downloaded from the RightNote Website, one gets over 1000 icons to choose from for free additionally.

- tree items can have check boxes

- the tree can be alphabetically auto-sorted or just manually ordered

- the tree items can be automatically numbered too, in various simple or detailed styles

- item titles can be full row colored, or just the item name background colored, which also is a rare feature to see

- every tree of every tab/page can be individually configured just for itself, and retains perfectly exactly its last grouped/expanded state
on every program start, giving you thus a uni-form, and yet individual customize-able view

- finally also the ability to have the tree displayed as either in a Left or in a Top position over the Editor,
and be able again, to set that option individually for any of the tab/page’s trees, is also a very nice feature,
as some section of your database may lean itself to be displayed more a vertical tree style (as when having many items)
while another section of your database may lean itself to be better for a more horizontal tree style display
(such as when having very long title names or even phrases/sentences right in the tree’s multi-line titles, as in my case,
and then the horizontal view-ability of the tree becomes extremely useful as a quick scroll-through-glancer
over all your existing items of that section, without having to actually open any one of them)


Useful Spreadsheet Note-type

- the integrated spreadsheet-ability (no matter all its limitations) is still a very handy and rare feature,
that only a handful other info-managers on the market can native-integratingly offer, such as namely only
Memomaster, Swift to do List 9, AM-Notebook, Piwi Suite and Yozo Office.

- also the ability to lock the top row/header row in a spreadsheet so that it stays visible on the top
while one continues to scrolls down, is also of course very useful, and not provided by of the others.


Flexible Security & Backup

- The entire Database, and individual items on a note by note basis, can be AES encrypted & password protected

- Automatic backup and Automatic saving (to the same file) are configure-able at custom defined times

- and finally, the integrated so called “page transfer” AND “floating tree” feature, that both allow one to transfer
in & out items on either a per tab/page basis (page transfer) or an individual per folder notes section basis (floating tree)
from & to another notebook (actually up to & from 3 others open simultaneously) - is also a very helpful feature
when for some reason one should need to do a partial, or even entire database transfer.

- good import / export features with many exporting options, including the ability to merge multiple notes into a single output file.


Other Useful Features

- the ability to assign custom shortcuts to virtually every available command, is of course also a very handy feature

- and finally, not only does each tab (called “page” in RightNote) have its own distinct tree for itself,
that can be fully customized and configured individually without affecting any of the others (as described before)
but the pages feature becomes even more useful, when one selects in Tools/Options to have them displayed on the left side
and selects the text as to be “horizontally shown”, thus thereby creating a kind meta-menu side bar on the left
by which one can quick access the greater sections/pages/trees of one’s database.

- - - - - - - - -

So these are some observations, from a daily user of RightNote, which also thinks it is a pity,
that such a good potential program, that already has a very rich feature-set integrated into it,
is yet so slow of being rid of some of its still existing usability-bugs.

But nevertheless, RightNote remains clearly one of my top 3 most flexible Outliners on Windows,
exactly because of the unique combination of its already existing power-features mix.

Greetings
donleone

[terryowen]

I am a regular user of RN (registered pro) and agree with many of the comments above, especially the need for a user forum of some sort (so thanks!).

The old school appearance doesn't bother me much.  It's so basic it blends into the background. I can't stand how busy AllMyNotes is, for example.

My only other issue with RN is that all the new fixes have been directed at EverNote integration.  I'm not an EverNote fan.

[peter.s]

I

"As for the shortcut Alt+B, I agree it is a bit bothersome to remember a non-standard combination. But it has the advantage of toggling the bold state of the tree node while still in the note editor. That is, you don't have to move your focus from the editor to the tree to make the node bold. Now whether that is an advantage or not is another question, but I think it explains why the shortcut is not Ctrl+B."

Scott, my fault, I perfectly acknowledge the sense now since you explain it to me. In fact, I had often mused about unnecessary scope limitations in programs where it would have been perfectly possible and sensible to trigger a command from everywhere, and where unfortunately the developer simply had not thought of it.

Especially with 2-pane outliners, creating both a sibling and a child item (or at least for one of them), is often only possible when the tree has got focus beforehand, as well as renaming an item (= a tree entry), and for bolding items, yes, I often had to switch to the tree first, then only was able to apply control-b, so it's definitely a real good thing, and with some other "weird" key assignments in RN, it might be similar.

II

Hello, donleone.

Well, that's an elaborate post, wow, kudos!

"- RightNote can do internal Quick-Linking to another note using e.g. the shortcut CRTL+SHIFT+K,
but the quick-link only remembers as long as you refer to an item on the same page/tree.
For when namely a quick-link is made to a note, that then gets dragged over unto another page/tree,
it breaks the quick-link and says "This item has been deleted" (even though it's just on an other tab)
So the ability to sustain note-links across pages, is a missing ability yet or bug."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but "other tab" is other file (except for hoisting of course), other db, and you describe a problem that currently harms any one of those db-based outliners, whilst the text-based ones are even worse, do NOT allow even for intra-file cross-referencing. OMG, I see I develop this too much here, so I cut it out to a new thread! Hence:

https://www.donation...ndex.php?topic=37993

There, I explain the limits of what we can reasonable expect from today's outliners, and why none of them overcomes those limits in their current state of code architecture.

As for your other info, I'm very thankful for it, and I will thoroughly look into it, and comment, in some days, promised! ;-)

[peter.s]

Developer
On outlinersw, I was censored and threatened to be thrown out, for being too harsh with RN. As we all can see, and in the absence of a RN forum, its developer (who, as said, does not ignore this thread) does not see any necessity to express his views/intentions re his program which e.g. by its more than amateurish history function is almost unusable.

Folder Tags
Without contradicting you (and without having trialled this feature), I think that additionally, the behavior you describe, or at least a similar one, could be of big benefit.
In fact, RN does not have clones, so when you move an item which automatically got the corresponding folder tag when it was created, that item, by this "ancient" folder tag, has got some info of its "origins", or of its original/alternative context; of course, this should be made evident in some way, e.g. by adding a "From " to that original tag.
So what you describe is just by sloppy programming, but something in that line, and better thought-out, would be welcome indeed.

Go previous in same file, not working trans-files
As said, the (intra-file) history is unusable, so I've got some doubts about "Previous/Next" here, too.
History-for-files is easily done by external macro, for RN files, and for every other file.
The intra-file history should work, since for external macros, it's often impossible to replace the missing/unusable internal function.
Of course, it would be even better if there were several histories, one overall, one for each file, for the items visited there... and, most important, some history where your key pressing only would enter item (and which would englobe every file of course), in order to put just those items in which you'll need to visit again soon... and then, that list field should be done in 2 columns (or 3 if you like to indicate the corresponding source file, too): the very first column being for a number: You press 3, and the program shows item 3 in that particular list: THAT's user-centered gui creation...

Selective bolding of PARTS of table entries
The same problem persists with trees in outliners, why? Because almost all tree components do simply not allow for special formatting of just one word of entries there, it's, for any formatting, all or nothing. Similar for spreadsheets, Excel being an exceptions (and I know of one tree component that permits that, too). So I suppose that the table functionality of the rtf field component used in RN does not permit it, and which such limitations of the respective component, both developer and user will then have to live (until the developer throws out the component) - cf. abysmal Ultra Recall's MS rtf component...

Necessary scrolling in tables
As before, but I could imagine the developer could spice it up, i.e. add the functionality missing from the original component as it's delivered. This being said, I more and more believe that big tables should not be done in an outliner, but in Excel or similar, and that PM/project files gathering should be done from a higher level (see my thread on that, derived from this one), than from the ordinary outliner tree. So in my concept, tables in outliners are good for 10 rows x 10 columns, not for anything much more, idem with other add-ins.

Missing tagging scalability
Very interesting, thank you! This is a typical program's fault you'll never get to know just by trialling, and slow-down and crashing even in the 3-digit range is more than a pity!
I'm not sure if I should follow your try to see it from the bright side: I always whined (even here) about the unmanagability of endless tag lists, but then, the user should have the freedom to apply several tags to any item, even if that means a 6-digit number of tags; that's why I complained about the weirdness of the tagging function in RN to begin with, in my outlinersw post on that matter and here, e.g. not grasping how I'm deemed to quickly and easily do a) tag combinations and b) manage multiple tag sub-categories. Of course if even some hundred tags make this program unreliable, well, no need to discuss better tag M for thousands of tags...

Nomenclature
From your "page" I see that RN, just like MyInfo, thinks it advisable to introduce weird non-standard denominations. Of course, a tree with its contents should be called a file if that's its technical organization (as it is, in both programs), and an item should be called an item; to call a tree/file a "page" is outright ridiculous (of course, I'm not criticising you who just wanted to be faithful to the particular vocabulary), but objectively, it's nuts to call it this. (And in South Africa, they speak English, which is not the case for Bulgaria, so here it's not a possible case of bad translation to which then the developer stuck for reminiscence reasons.)

So much for the "Still bad"; I'll look again into your incredibly rich and informative post in some days; if more posts where like yours here, this forum's usefulness would be multiplied.

[peter.s]

Great db Foundation
Indexing of various file formats for linked files: Your list is quite impressive, and over at outlinersw pdf linking/indexing was mentioned a lot as for RN being really good in.
So not the slightest criticism of mine here, just two reminders:
- This excellent linked-files M of RN should be another (good) reason to not import external files, thus blowing up the db
- Linking a max of external files into an outliner invariably produces de-synch very quickly, since you do part of your file M within the file manager (in which you have available all files and their structure "live"), and part in your outliner (where you have a subset of which you never really know how much it is in synch, or not in synch anymore, with the corresponding set in the file system, re renames, moves (and perhaps even copies), and then also and first of all, completeness of sub set; for me, that's the principal reason for which my concepts have shifted to "integration of an outliner into file-system-based PM/file M", instead of desparately trying to do PM within any outliner, only to never get by re numerous "file system replication faults" within the outliner. In other words, a combination of both, db-based outliner, and file manager, is overdue, but any such combination should preserve the life character of its file system representation.

Tagging
As said, I did not grasp how to search for tag combinations, but the special tagging features you list are quite impressive (tag icons, plus item icons? well, that's too much fuss for me, I like it neat, but then, automatic grouping according to their respective source tree/subtree(?), this should be of high value indeed; type-matches I didn't understand; tag list vs. tag-search, and by tree: if ever I understand how it's done, I'd probably very warmly recommend RN for this reason alone)

Folder tags
Above in weaknesses you describe that folder tags are NOT automatically updated when items are moved, here you seem to say the contrary, or then I simply misunderstood what you said above I suppose? Again, the help file is a nightmare, and especially for these (brilliant?) tag features, it would have helped for the developer to explain in a way that more people easily grasped how to apply them.

Multi-line entries in the tree
I have to admit I did not discover this feature before, and it's very rare, and should be extremely useful; I missed it a lot in ANY of my outliners I ever used, so it's a good thing to tell people it's there. (As above: Most tree components do not allow for multiple-lines entries, so when this feature isn't there, don't count on it to get it ever; Rael seems to have made a good choice in choosing his components!)

Hoisting
Is there, as you say, and it's a very important feature for anybody who puts lots of items in one tree (Which, as explained, I don't do anymore.) Btw, nowadays, most db-driven outliners have got hoisting now, by peer pressure: It's considered more or less considered standard=mandatory nowadays. (Sideline: It's ironic that 2 panes (which are also available here (in Prof.)), and which are much more easy to implement, are much rarer than hoisting, whilst asked for almost even more!)

ABC-sorting of tree?
Wait a moment here? If it really was non-destructive sorting, this would be sensational, but I didn't find that feature anywhere: In every which outliner you try (and many of them offer this feature), automatic sorting of the tree, or of subtrees (sibling sort), is destructive, and I just rechecked RN: sort is destructive, as usual, i.e. there is NO alternative view in which the items would be sorted, and from which then you could revert back to the original tree/subtree. (The "real thing" would be easy to implement, though, but no outliner developer ever did it, from what I know.)

Coloring/formatting of items in the tree
In fact, that is standard (and it's very annoying to encounter an outliner that doesn't allow for it, e.g. Maple, or then Ultra Recall (but which offers a trick to do that at least... but which I never got aware of but after my having left UR, and by Paul's blog), but you say, it's rare (and available in RN) that the title can be formatted, whilst other columns in the tree will be left out of formatting. In fact, I don't know? I should open MyInfo with several columns, then try... In fact, I don't believe in tree columns in outliners anymore, it makes your data (as a whole at least, more or less) un-export (same problem with extensive use of clones), and if you really need columns, you will quickly discover (I cannot speak for RN here, but for several competitors) that the outliner's functionality with regards to its tree columns is very sub-standard (compared to db's, to Excel...), so column use in outliners might become a very frustrating experience, and most of the time, you'll be much better served with tags, or then with simili-tags, i.e. £a:500, £e:1,3, etc., i.e. encoded, simulated "fields" in the text of your items. Of course, if those columns permit numeric fields, and then search for field xyz < 500, and field abc > 15, THAT indeed would be of real use. (As said, I didn't trial RN for such functionality.)

Tree position not only to the left, and individual setting for any tree
Well, I have never been tempted to put the tree anywhere else, but "be able again, to set that option individually for any of the tab/page’s trees" intrigues me!
So a tab/file is a "page"; as said, such very particular vocabulary doesn't make any sense, but one file/tab/page with several trees? What are we speaking about here? Or do you simply mean hoisting, several hoisted sub-trees in different panes, anywhere on the screen? But that again would have been "tabs", so contradiction with your "tab/file/page" vs. "several trees". (Or did you want to say "each tab/tree/page/file" (and not: "each tab/page's trees") can have its individual setting for where the tree pane is to be positioned"?)
I'm not criticising a possible minute fuzziness in expression in a very long (and excellent) text, I just want to grasp a possible, sensational detail you seem to describe and which I might have overlooked?

"without having to actually open any one of them"
I'm perfectly d'accord with you that real info in the file name very much helps in browsing which item(s) you should finally look into (instead of having so many of them opened in vain).

Spreadsheet
As you say, it's a rare and useful feature, and locking the top row is even rarer and so useful! And I have a correction to make: Above, I had spoken of a spreadheet feature within regular content panes, i.e. embedded in rtf text, like in text processors. Whilst RN comes with a special, additional pane format which is especially for spreadsheets (and only for spreadheets), and where your expectations re inbuilt functionality are of course much more developed as with the above described minimal table of just 10x10 cells.
Of course, the question remains if it's really useful to have such an alternative, more or less "full-grown" spreadsheet application, within your outliner, instead of Excel/standard spreadsheets integrated into your outliner; most outliners don't offer such integration at all, indeed, and as for Ultra Recall, many users are very unhappy with Excel integration, via the MS internet browser it seems?, in that competitor.
But that would just be another argument for my concept, described here and in the other thread, re live integration of external files into your projects, instead of doing some "half-baken" additional spreadsheet within an outliner, "half-baken" meaning "lesser than Excel, so that if Excel had been better integrated into your outliner, you would have preferred the latter".
Sideline: You mention even Memomaster here; very few people know that program which unfortunately does not offer clones, and some other important features, but which is, in the field of "network integration", or, "as groupware", far more developed as any other outliner I ever encountered, and which for this reason is currently the only outliner that has made its entry into the corporate market.


Security/Backup
Some weeks ago, on bitsdujour, re The Journal, I said,
"Mike, +1!

Of course, the real question is if you rely on various encryptions built into different applications, or if you buy one encryption program, e.g. "Steganos Safe", and which will encrypt some folder/drive, and in which you then store various folders with multiple files from multiple sources, which is the approach I adopted.

Both approaches have their respective advantages: It's handy to be able to encrypt some parts of a bigger outliner structure, working in the outliner, but then, the problem with this approach is that anyway, you will need some encrypted container, too, for all those files that ain't handled by a specific encryption-able application, so the container is there, anyway, and then, why not use it for everything you want to be encrypted?

Once it's opened, everything work smoothly, once you put your ordinary files into your regular folder, your files-to-be-encrypted into the container... and then, .lnk files pointing to those... into your regular folder!

That way, your applications "think" you've got all your stuff together, and access all files in the regular way, without disturbing your "user experience", but in fact, sensitive files are hidden from your wife, or your boss, or perhaps even your Government.

This "replacing the actual files, in the regular folder (structure), by .lnk files pointing to some encrypted container", is a very good means of encrypting everything you want, from all programs, AND avoiding multiple encryption engines, multiple passwords, etc.

Of course, you need quick means to create (and correctly name) the .lnk file, but with a macro, you can even replace the original file, in the original (unencrypted) folder by the .lnk file, and move the original file into the encrypted container. All this works fine in everyday life once it's set up.

And then, the question remains what backdoors might be implemented in such containers, for the Government... ;-) (but neither for spouse nor for the boss)"

So much for "full encryption of the whole db", but I acknowledge that a manager "on the road" would very much like to have the full db encrypted, and without thinking about it.

But here again, I'm intrigued by your mentioning special RN terms, by saying "and finally, the integrated so called “page transfer” AND “floating tree” feature, that both allow one to transfer
in & out items on either a per tab/page basis (page transfer) or an individual per folder notes section basis (floating tree)
from & to another notebook (actually up to & from 3 others open simultaneously)" -
So now we've got "notebooks" here, different from files/db's, different from "pages"... - well, that's not a really neat concept I dare say, and of course, I don't understand what this "page transfer" here would mean:
Are we really speaking of several independent trees in one db, and a "notebook" would be a db? And how differe "pages" and "trees"? Above, "pages" were different from items, though...
I'm lost! (Ok, you say it further down, "pages" are trees, as I had suspected, but then, this paragraph here gets even more impenetrable.)

"ability to merge multiple notes into a single output file"
No criticism here, just let me say that any outliner which does not permit this, would be totally unacceptable.
Sideline: As described in my coding thread, you need this feature to bring your code (i.e. split up into multiple items of various "indentation" (in fact hierarchical) levels) into compiler-readable format; hence the need (but no problem) to "outcomment" your tree entries (the entries, not the respective contents). Now, Ultra Recall offers a very special thing where all your item contents, i.e. without the titles, are shuffled into one target item (from which you can export of course), so this would mean, in theory, an even more elegant tree, since you don't have to outcomments its entries in UR. Now the irony: As said elsewhere, UR is one of those rare outliners which are totally unsuited for programming, since it lacks "global replace" (and even "replace everywhere in this sub-tree"), with a developer who's unwilling to implement that almost ubiquitous feature. (Nothing to do with RN, hence "sideline", but it's noteworthy. As for RN, as you say here, it produces a single output file with which then you can feed your compiler!)

Custom shortcuts for every command you'll ever need
Very handy, and as we've seen above, thanks to Scott, Rael even did the "extra mile" here, thinking about tricks his competitors didn't think of (and which even I, snooping around for such "extras" though, didn't grasp).
Just let me repeat what I said above: It's by thoroughly checking the virtually endless key assignment table that you will discover multiple strengths and unknown features of RN, and which you will not become acquainted with just by browsing the menu.

"is yet so slow of being rid of some of its still existing usability-bugs"
Nothing to add here, it's WEIRD that a program that good in many respects does such ugly things like filling up its history with endless lists of unwanted transit items, and more, and is riddled by a help file which literally hides its multiple strengths (sophisticated tagging details; let's abstract from the obviously substandard internal tag M by which with 1,000 tags, you can bring down this program).

As you see, I didn't want to lessen the importance of your fine review, I just wanted to put those features into a more general perspective, in order to value them by competition and what's possible in general. And it's evident Rael should do some long-overdue homework, and his offering could quickly become number one among current offerings.

[donleone]

Hello Peter

thank you likewise for your elaborate writing & additions.

Since i saw some questions (whether rhetoric or actual),
and since no one else seems to value RightNote as much,
to write any fancy reviews on it here :-),
i thought the least what i could do was
to respond to some of the questions in the hope,
to be of benefit to at least somebody out there :-)

___________________________

Clarifying Folder Tags
___________________________

Above in weaknesses you describe that
folder tags are NOT automatically updated
when items are moved,
here you seem to say the contrary,
or then I simply misunderstood
what you said above I suppose?

-peter.s (May 26, 2014, 04:28 PM)

The folder tags feature, can do the following:

- any note can be transformed into a "folder" (by e.g. right-clicking -> Folder)

- from there on all the sub-items of that folder, automatically receive the folder entire name/title as a tag

- any new item created right in that folder, automatically receives the folder name as a tag

- any new item (or hundreds of items at once) dragged into that folder, automatically receives the folder name as a tag

- any item (or hundreds of items at once) that get dragged out of that folder, unto somewhere outside of a folder, gets their former folder tag automatically deleted

- any item (or hundreds of items at once) that is dragged or moved, from this folder into another folder tags folder, will automatically get their previous folder tag deleted, and replace with the new folder tag, where it is in.

- and what's especially nice, is that you can ADD as many as you want ADDITIONAL tags to the folder, and make them to be "folder tags" as-well, which then get automatically applied to ALL the folder's sub-items as-well,
and you can later of course remove or rename any of the folder tags of the top folder, and have all the changes instantly reflected in all the sub-items as-well.


So far so good, because all the above mentioned tag operations were done
within the same tree of that same one page/tab.

But RightNote can have as many "pages" or "tabs" as you want,
and which is not a hoisting, but every new created "page" aka. tab,
gets to have its very own, fully, from the scratch up new & empty created tree,
that can be fully customized independently of any of the others.
(unlike many other Outliners, which merely offer a "tabs" feature,
that only allows you to quickly switch between 2 or more open notes back & forth,
with but the tree pane always staying fixed and the same (such as e.g. in MemoMaster),
because these Outliners only are able to have 1 single tree per 1 file, whereas but RightNote
can have as many separate & distinct trees as you like, of always 1 tree per 1 page,
being fully independent of each other - and yet still all within the same single RightNote file.


But that which sadly does not work yet, is:

- when you got 2 (or of course many more) pages/tabs created,
and you now want to drag/move an item (or group of items)
that lie within a tags folder on one page (on Tree 1),
to a tags folder that lies on another page (on Tree 2),
and you begin by dragging them unto that desired page/tab header,
which auto-switches you to that other page/other tree,
and you then (while still holding the left mouse) then release the items
DIRECTLY unto that other tags folder of that other page,
while it will move the items, it will sadly not replace
neither the old tag of the former folder that it is in no more,
neither add the new folder tag of the new folder it is new in now,
- but just stay "unchanged", with the old folder tag remaining, in but the new tag folder inside,
and thus starting to slowly mess up your tagging & search/finding accuracy.


But i nevertheless praised the automatic folder tags feature,
because it does work perfectly as claimed, as long as you just stay within the same page/same tree.
and because this is a bug, that Rael has been informed of and said would be fixed in a coming update.

And in the meantime, one can use the following workaround to solve the problem,
and achieve the same effect in just a 2 step process, as follows:

1. drag the items unto the new page/tree,
and release it anywhere on the new tree,
but not yet into the final target tags folder,
and which upon release will automatically delete
all the previous folder tags - so that half of the job is thus accomplished.

2. And then from there just select & drag the items again,
now into that desired tag folder that is located within that same page,
and you'll see all the items being perfectly assigned with the new tag folder tags
- so that thus the whole job is accomplished, and which again works here perfectly,
because again this 2nd action is just another operation staying within the same page/tree.

______________________

Clarifying Pages
______________________

So a tab/file is a "page"; as said, such very particular vocabulary doesn't make any sense,
but one file/tab/page with several trees? What are we speaking about here?
Or do you simply mean hoisting, several hoisted sub-trees in different panes, anywhere on the screen?

-peter.s (May 26, 2014, 04:28 PM)

RightNote offers Hoisting within the same page/same tree,
via e.g. simply selecting a folder and right-clicking "Hoist" to it,
which can be useful to focus in say a very large tree,
especially when many or all of its folders are set to be expanded.

but there is a MUCH BETTER way to organize your information,
and that is using "pages" as i shall now describe again, but a bit differently:

"Pages" are not hoisting (which is limited to only within the same page/tree),
and "Pages" is also MUCH more than just merely adding tabs, as again, each new added page,
receives a new, fully distinct & independently customizable full tree just for itself,
so that again unlike many other Outliners, where it is only possible to have 1 tree per 1 file (i.e. 1 database),
RightNote can have 100+ separate trees all within the same one single RightNote file,
and with each tree of each page, staying perfectly 100% exactly just as you left it the last time (which is very nice)
so that you can perfectly sub-divide your database, into sections, and make each section of your database a page,
and then use that page's new created empty tree, for your basic organization of your items,
and then the tagging - which is global over everything - as thus your custom designed precise & instant search engine,
and with the EXTRA BENEFIT that in the tag search results, all the result items are automatically grouped and divided
according to what page they are located on (and since pages too can be assigned custom names / colors / icons,
it allows you thus to extremely quickly find & drill down to your desired items).

And yes, each page/tab can be individually configured as to WHERE you like that page's tree to be placed in,
whether either in a left position, or in a top position above the editor, so to get the full benefit for extra long titles
(as originally described in the still good section).

_______________________________________________

Clarifying Page-Transfer & Floating Tree
_______________________________________________

But here again, I'm intrigued by your mentioning special RN terms,
by saying "and finally, the integrated so called “page transfer” AND “floating tree” feature,
that both allow one to transfer in & out items on either a per tab/page basis (page transfer)
or an individual per folder notes section basis (floating tree) from & to another notebook
(actually up to & from 3 others open simultaneously)" -
. . . I don't understand what this "page transfer" here would mean:
Are we really speaking of several independent trees in one db, and a "notebook" would be a db?

-peter.s (May 26, 2014, 04:28 PM)

1 RightNote file (*.rnt) = 1 Database

1 Page/Tab within that .rnt file = 1 Tree in that Database

and so called "Page Transfer" feature (which is indeed very useful)
allows one to move 1 page at a time from one .rnt file, into another .rnt file,
or in other words, from one database, to another database.

And which is especially useful when wanting, say only to migrate one section, into another database,
or when your file (for some reason may sluggish, or over-bloated by many attachments deleted,
and then instead of doing the database "compact" feature which can take like 30min or longer,
it is often quicker to just "page transfer" into a brand new empty database created .rnt file,
and thus benefit from getting instantly the minimum possible file size AND the maximum possible stability
(since it is of course a brand new file) and with only the dis-advantage to having the search index
to be re-created again, to allow for fast searches again in the new moved into database,
but honestly i stopped using searches all together, and do 99% of my searching only via
the even more quicker and much more flexible tags search only)

And in the "page transfer" window, RightNote allows you up to 4 different .rnt files to be opened simultaneously
and to criss-cross transfer thus between them as you like.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

But the "floating tree" feature, is different, in that here you can even more precisely
drag not pages, but individual files or folders (with of course all their sub-items at once)
into another database aka. another .rnt file

__________________________________

Clarifying Tagging Maximum
__________________________________

...with 1,000 tags, you can bring down this program.

-peter.s (May 26, 2014, 04:28 PM)

To clarify this a bit more, i actually use RightNote with 12'000+ total tags and it works perfectly quick,
(only the initial importing of them took much time, as it only could handle about 300-500er sets each)
but the actual limitation of the program comes, when you got a single tag assigned to more than 1000 items,
so that when you click then on that single tag in the Tag List, Righnote has to instantly pull-up 1000 items
and put them into the tag search results preview, and which 90% of the time crashes the program
(even if you have plenty of memory left).

So RightNote can indeed be scaled up to about 10-15K tags, but only as long as you keep the items
under each single tag to about a 500 items max., since if you push one tag too much up to like 700 or more,
then the crashes will begin :-)) (and which again is not that crazy as it may sound at all, for if you for example,
set a top level tags folder, and put under it various sub tag-folders, then over time the top level folder tag,
can quickly start to accumulate items and go beyond 700, and from there start to "crash" eventually
that is, if you ever need to search for it, but what would be the benefit of tagging, if you never search for it ;-)


Greetings,
donleone

[peter.s]

Greetings, donleone.

Wow! If ever some application had some ace ambassador, that was RN getting you as its spokesman! Of course, I'm musing about how you got together all this info, with no forum and a very low-key helpfile (to say the least); if by chance you're the developer himself, well, kudos, you defend your program brilliantly, and, very obviously, you are right to do so, since from your explanations, it's much, much better than it appears.

Thank you so much for your multiple (and obviously very needed) clarifications, and I fully acknowledge, from what you say, that the tagging limitations do not appear to be of relevance anymore, since more than 500 identical tabs would to be cut into several "siblings tags" anyway. I uphold my observation that the tag gui is catastrophic, though, not only visually, but from the "how to search for tag combos" pov, too; I deduct from what you explain that the tag feature does NOT have some specific search in-built, but that, if several items are tagged "tag_a" and "tag_b", you simply do a regular quick search for "tag_a tag_b", like for would do for every search term present in the text.

Thank you so much for your explanations on the "pages" concept, so "pages" is simply a synonym for "tree", several such trees, each with its specific tree format, being possible in ONE db file; in fact, that reminds me not only my developments of "several trees in one db" in the outlinerswforum over there, some months ago (and the big difference of RN trees vs. the concept I explained there, see below), but especially, several both UR and MI users asking for different sub-tree FORMATS within the same db = very big tree, in their respective outlining applic; doing several trees within the same db instead obviously is a viable and much more elegant solution to this appearantly rather common prob.

Now I understand better why RN, which (as I see now) belongs to the "big shots" in its category, has no clones yet, since in the db structure you describe, clones would be more difficult to implement than in the traditional "1 tree - 1 db" setup, and that seems to be the difference between RN today and my developments over there:

If I understand well what you say, one item, in RN of today, can be in one tree, but not in several trees (yet), no more than it can be placed in different sub-trees of the same tree (of course, since that would be cloning), and thus, whilst several trees are possible, in RN, within the same db, it is not possible (yet) to create "contextual variants" (or whatever you might call those structures), i.e. to have items in more than one context, and by this building independent data repositories but accessing (and then SELECTING and REGROUPING) already-available "raw" data.

( cf. my thread https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=37993.0 here )

So what we have got, is:

- UR and MI (and others) which offer clones (i.e. multiple instances of (= internally references to) an identical item, and which is a "big step in the right direction"

- RN which offers multiple trees within the same db,

and it hits everyone in the eye that the perfect outliner would combine these two features (and it is evident that you need complete cloning first to realize this, i.e. any clone must "update" any possible children/grandchildren which may be added either anywhere, or, even more elaborate but perfect = the ultimate solution, which might have been added in some "source", some "primal" tree, but not, or just by way of dialogs popping up (= not by general option once and for all!), within trees that should be considered not as "partial descendants" from the original ones, but as "partial siblings"; here again, my example of legal dispositions, in some "source", and then different "cases" where you will need diffent subsets of these dispositions only; technically, such subsets could be realized the following way, even "cross-wise", replicating from one such "sibling tree" to another one:

Any cloning does a "complete cloning", i.e. sets a value in the respective dataset to any new descendants being replicated "here" (i.e. any clone would have its own settings), but then, those specific clone settings, individual for every one clone, would maintain additional "deletion" info, causing that any "add-on", elsewhere, of that replicated sub-structure, to an item here in THIS instance of that sub-structure, will NOT be added here, IF the sub-parent item in question has been deleted here OR has been "marked as sterile" (while having been left there to contain alternative descendants): Thus, "updating" of any clone wherever would be automatic, but would encounter individual barriers in each replication, and this "infertile items" would not only not be updated for new descendants added elsewhere, but their own descendants would not be replicated in the "sibling" replicating structures:

Thus, an ideal cloning concept would clone "over" different trees, AND allow for these clones becoming perfectly individualized over time (as would do primitive copies), AND get "allowed updates" (= context changes, item add-ons, item deletes), but just within the limits individually set: Just imagine "identical" twin siblings which are then heavily changed, "individualized" by their respective lifes and in different towns, even countries, and new family contexts, but which often attend the same familiy meetings (and get identical new info there, often replacing old info instead), but which often one sibling wants to incorporate into his knowledge, whilst the other sibling refuses such "new info", be them add-ons, be them corrections, and having "voids", "blank spaces" in his mind instead, or having new info of his own (instead, or additionally), but which he won't share with his sibling, and even if they grow very much apart, there is always the possibility that one day, they both get their respective share of the inheritance of their parents when those die - ok, in my IM concept they wouldn't die, in normal circumstances, but up to then, the above allegory is quite faithful, and even for the "death"/deletion of "original parents", some "taking over" proceedings should be implemented (and processed from within dialog windows, individually).

Sorry for diverting, but as we see, RN is just short of becoming something really great, at the condition that further development will be based upon its current strengths, so some guidance could not do any harm. ;-)

As for the multiple tagging features in RN, as said I don't grasp them yet at this moment, and some better help file descriptions, AND some remodeling of the taggingrelated part of the gui would both be more than welcome. ;-)

[donleone]

:-)

sadly i am not the developer, for if i were (and could program) i would certainly turn RightNote into an even greater Power House Maximus ;-)

but of course, you are right in noting, that RightNote does not offer a Tree Item Cloning Feature - as of today yet.

And while i have considered the benefits of cloning in my once Ultra Recall days,
i have not come to use it, for the reason that i found that one can accomplish,
all the benefits of cloning and much more - by just using excellently tags.

For what is the use of cloning, if not to be able:

        -  to have a single tree item, in multiple places (without but creating duplicate records) = think just same item assigned to multiple tags / and the tags as-like folders for them

        -  to auto-update/rename the original item, and have it all then changed also to all the clones as-well = works perfectly in tags, if the "tags as folders" paragdigm is adopted

        -  and then if possible also, to see all the relations, either from one item to all of its clones, or else from all the clones to e.g. all their folders (contexts) in which they are in,
           (without of course having to pop through a gazillion of tree & sub-tree folder expand/closing sessions - but rather have them all together auto-pulled into a single pane,
           where all these relations are seen unified together)

= and which is EXACTLY what the so called RightNote's "Tag Tree panel" does (which is the one in the top right corner of the Tag Sidebar that has 3 sections to it),
by namely THERE automatically pulling out & showing together, not just the selected tag, but with it also automatically all the tags that are found WITH your tag,
either as a tag unto the left, or as a tag unto the right - in all the items across your entire database.
(and in that sense "related tags", since these are found occurring WITH your selected tag together,
and even just in one single item used together, is enough to make them show up as "related" in that top right corner pane)

and PS: i know of no other software, that actually does this (or that even has multiple tag sections at all),
so that the initial confusion to it (as i was of course too), is really only because of its hidden powerfulness :-)


_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _


Moreover, in all the tree item cloning apps that i have seen, the clones always have to be somehow "manually" created
and/or then dragged into some other position - which limits thus their usefulness to a mostly one-by-one basis only.

But RightNote is so handy, that you really have to only ONCE set-up your tags, ideally as i favor it, only once in the beginning
with all the possible categorizations right from the start on pre-defined - so that from then on, you actually never have to ever
type another tag manually again, but can instead just spend all of your minds focused attention unto the classifying only
(instead of on the remembering/pondering unto what now possibly "fitting" tag, you think it best to assign this item on)

(and for this initial creation of ALL your "categorization possibilities" aka. all possible "contexts" or "keywords",
i especially recommend using Microsoft Excel, and there with words in column's combining quickly variations,
that from there you just then mass-paste right on into the RightNote Tags (at 300-500er sets a time best).


_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _


So that from there then, the so simple magic begins, in that once the tags are in, you can then just "double click" directly onto any tag
without any need thus for any typing / searching and/or dragging over of that tag unto the desired item, but thus again, by a mere simple double clicking
right on the desired tag in the alphabetic tag-list (the left pane in the Tag Sidebar), that contains ALL your tags of your entire database
- and which alphabetic tag list panel by the way, scrolls so extremely nice & fluid, up and down fast with for e.g. a nice 2 finger multi-touch scrolling gesture,
that if you have your tags well organized by a number, special symbol and/or alphabetic system, that then i find myself quicker
finding the right tags desired in this fluid SCROLLING WAY, rather than any searching anymore for tags whatsoever,
ESPECIALLY BECAUSE of having thus the super extra benefit when going for tags this "scrolling way",
of being constantly inspired with so MANY cross-tagging options as the all the possibilities keep scrolling before my eyes,
that i would never have thought of to be fitting, and would have thus never ended up assigning that tag to,
if i had gone the traditional "tag searching way" - no matter how good RightNote's, or any other tag search is)

And from thus again, a simple double-clicking on whatever tag "fits", and continuing to double clicking on as many as needed,
over times thus turns this simple double click assigning action, into a giant high quality relational database,
without really any much manual effort taken, neither to create nor to classify it together at all.

So that once again, as soon as you double-clicked upon your tag, all the items that are selected in the tree
- whether only one is selected, or many items selected, instantly thus get assigned that tag.
(you can of course multi-select more items manually in the Tree using CRTL+Click)

But here RightNote becomes even MORE powerful, if instead of even manually selecting the to be tagged items,
(and to thus remove this manual step here out too), you don't select anything to tag at all, but rather just "search them out"
via the search panel (and/or via the "tag search results" panel too) and then you can so handy-ily just "right-click" the search results
to thus ALL in one hit at once "make ALL of them selected" (from where ever location, in whatever folder/sub-folder/tree they are in)

and then, after this pulled out search & right click "make all selected" completed, THEN the simple double clicking action,
makes thus ALL YOUR SPECIFIC ITEMS instantly "Contextualized".

And specifically because the search allows you to narrow down into & bring together "many similar items", by either e.g:

          -   limiting the search scope to either only a single page/tree, or all the trees of your entire database,

          -   or using combo Boolean AND/OR searches too (which but only works in the Fast Search Mode of the Pro Version)

          -   and/or searching only in the titles (called captions in RightNote), or else within the Content as-well (i.e. indexed attachments contents as-well)


_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _


and thus be able as a final result, not only to discover & pull out your desired items, precisely and without much effort,
but have them then also immediately by a simple right-clicking action ALL at once multi-selected and made ready thus
to be tagged / contextualized / categorized, with once again simply a double clicking - and thus effectively eliminating
the need to manually look for (and also to find), then collapse open and item select traditional classifying process,
with in this way, not having to open even a single folder or sub-folder anymore, and yet find + select + tag
effectively all your items, using basically nothing else, but the tag & search panels only.


Greetings,
donleone

[peter.s]

Greetings, donleone.

"by namely THERE automatically pulling out & showing together, not just the selected tag, but with it also automatically all the tags that are found WITH your tag, either as a tag unto the left, or as a tag unto the right - in all the items across your entire database.
(and in that sense "related tags", since these are found occurring WITH your selected tag together,
and even just in one single item used together, is enough to make them show up as "related" in that top right corner pane)"

I think this is a tremendously and-powerful, and-helpful feature, and I'm also very interested of the current developments of Surfulater since the developer will abolish traditional tree building altogether, replacing it by smart tag trees; of course, this is a quite different concept from RN's "related tags" (in a way, it's related to amazon's "customers also bought...""), but it's obvious that these two developers, at this moment, are those who are deep into conceptual work re on the tagging front, and I greatly appreciate this.

I make big reservations about (current/traditional!) tagging, and I explained my stance in depth here:

http://www.outliners...revgen-on-bits-again ("prevgen" = mocking of "nextgen" of course),

and if you allow for a very brief summary of what I think about tree structures vs. tagging, it's,

1) with traditional tagging, you will miss both "context in several indendation level shapes" and "context in order/formatting", meaning it makes a big difference if you just get "relevant" items as a list, or if you will have pre-arranged those items (or do this arrangement/grouping work now, that you will work on your items, gathered in disorder beforehand), will have created micro-relationships, micro-hierarchies, by creating "indentations", groupings (= by sub-parenting and putting items as siblings together, and also by creating "divider lines"

- I developed on this here (in point 2): http://www.outliners...messages/viewm/19697 ), in aforementioned "prevgen" thread, and especially here:

http://www.outliners...messages/viewm/19768

where I wrongly assumed there was no sw like RN which did already have multiple trees in one db, as we see now, from your explanations, but in which I exposed my ideas of "live trees" into which subsets of the whole set of material would be put together, creating a new concept of truly independent items, just gathered and ordered in various trees, whilst even RN's multi-tree concept which we know now, clings to the traditional idea of items "belonging" to some specific tree, and then PERHAPS being cloned to another one, or rather, in RN, creating tagging as an expediant, an overlayed structure, in order to replace that missing inter-trees cloning (this is not a criticism, it's just some second concept, overlayed onto the primary concept, the tree structure, in order to give it "complete" functionality, in some way, but not within the bounds of the original mainfraime, which is the tree concept, in outliners -

and even by sheer order within those micro-lists, and then, and THAT's why I so much insist upon tree formatting, by weighting, not only by putting some important item up one level, but also by bolding it, for instance.

All this "contextual info" (which, as explained, is NOT only about "what items are tagged identically or similarly", but both about relative order, and relative importance/weight within that items cluster) is missing from traditional tagging.

2. As explained in one of those linked threads, I do not see this prob in the context of items which are traditionally worked upon without "matter context", i.e. for "subjects", tree systems (but with advanced cloning as I have developed over there, and here, these last weeks/days) are best, whilst for customers, real estate objects, supplies, applications and such, (advanced) tagging (and yes, as in RN, which seems to be more than promising from what you say) should be the tool of choice: Here, you consider distinct records, even when comparing them with other distinct records; it's quite different from "compound files" where you work, over hours, days, or even months, within a frame of "disparate but interrelated case/matter info", and try to create new info from it, or in a some words:

textbook writing is conceptually different from application appraisal, and for the former, you'd need the perfect outliner, whilst for the latter task, some tagging system (that's why I so much touted almost-defunct askSam over there) would be best.

In the light of these considerations, tagging concepts are of the highest interest, but let's bear in mind my reservations either should be given the right "answers", so as to overcome tagging's shortcomings, or then, the tree concept should be further developed, along the lines I have explained in depth, and to which I even made a significant contribution here and today since my today's add-on is one possible answer to the relevant question how to realize "live variants" (i.e. cloned structures that then partially and in a controlled, monitored way come to a life of their own - well, at the end of the day, it's nothing less than the introduction of the "object model" into outlining, together with controlled inheritance) on the technical level.

I'm not trying to devaluate RN's tagging mastership, I'm just saying that my concept is trying to remain within the confines of the tree paradigm, whilst tagging in outliners (and of which RN's seems to be the very sophisticated) are melt into outlining, instead of striving to lead the tree concept itself, into perfection (which is possible, as my writings clearly show); of course, we're discussing conceptual coherence, conceptual purity here; wherever a perfectly "working" hybrid solution to that age-old "items in multiple contexts" arises, it will be more than welcome; "working" also meaning "minimizing complexity in the user experience, while allowing for as much technical complexity as is needed" (- now compare with Evernote...).

It is obvious that RN's "this tag comes with these other tags, which in their turn come with those other tags yet" feature tries to enable this "multiple contexts problem", but I'm not sure yet that it succeeds at it in an ideal way, just browse all threads over there, on "RightNote", and you'll see that most users praising RN do not praise it for this feature, so there's grounds for suspicion they did not yet grasp this elaborate feature, both in its way of functioning and its possible positive implications for their work: In a word, its realization is not easy enough yet in order to be really useful.


"(and for this initial creation of ALL your "categorization possibilities" aka. all possible "contexts" or "keywords",
i especially recommend using Microsoft Excel" - no, really, I INSIST on the fact that I don't want to devaluate/attack RN (anymore; in fact I created this thread in order to dismiss that former attitude of mine), but we must agree that any tagging program should have some integrated "tagging taxonomy maintenance" gui, and that the hint to fall back on some spreadsheet tool, in parallel, will neither convince prospects, nor will it be followed by that many current users; this being said, RN is under continuous development (even for non-EN-integration-related features I hope!), and I'm just saying relying upon external tools cannot be the definite answer to the need of tagging taxonomy; let's see what the developer will bring about re this part of his program!

Btw, you (duly) speak of "classification", and that's exactly my point (developed in the above links) in emphasizing perfect tree M over tagging, for such "compound work" like forging strategies, finding new insight, writing books: tagging is perfect for (even multiple!) classification, but not for bringing perfect order into and perfect relevance onto your material (both raw, input, and created, possible output): traditional tagging creates unordered, unweighted lists, and for "compound work", that's not enough.


I read your description of RN's tagging with delight, and when I read further (and remembering your former UR experience), I discover you're joyfully describing an almost-ideal realization of exactly that tagging feature numerous people had been begging for, for years, for many years, over there in the UR forum, the developer just lending them his hardest possible ear, and you know what?

I'm sure this thread, and all the good things you have to say about RN and its tagging feature (which appeals, as i'm perfectly aware of, to lots of people, all of them negating my fundamental criticism of tagging), will motivate LOTS of prospects to buy RN, both this forum and the title "review" (which I chose on purpose) getting lots of coverage by google, and it's a very good thing UR, with its blatant unwillingness to take even minimal advice from their (formerly) loyal customers, gets some more heavyweight competition.

(And of course, my theory being that so many outliner users long for good tagging since day in day out they feel, and suffer the shortcomings of today's tree realizations, with them not feeling the need for tags anymore within some tree(s)-wise perfected outliner...)


I also get your point in criticising (even UR's otherwise brilliant) cloning, and you're entirely right in claiming quicker, handier target selection, btw from BOTH sides: "Put this item as clone THERE", and "Put THAT item right here as a clone": Both ways of cloning should be "immediate", "instantaneous", at least when subject or target belong to some history (!), to some "favorites", and especially to some "ToDo's", and not speaking of the fact that currently, only the first variant is possible, not the second one also, which means there's some unnecessary switching forth and back involved, too.

But you see here what I said in the links above: Much of our current criticism, of one, or the other paradigm, just addresses current realisations of those competing concepts, and not necessarily ideal realisations of them. As for real life, when I asked for additional panes in UR, the developer told us that UR even had many a pane as it was and is, and almost too many of them to his liking:

Unfortunately, we're speaking of developers with not enough conceptual imagination (and that's why I wrote the Maple review, in order to acknowledge the things they do really well over there!), and of course, some "pane M" is to be recommanded in all those cases, and it's evident that in the very moment you're choosing your subject-for-cloning, you will NOT need the tree pane for the entire tree, but for "intelligent proposals" being made there, and the moment you will have made your choice there, that very pane should show your (proposed) target position(s): It's certainly not about multiplication of panes, but of multiplication of possible USES of the those panes you've got anyway (and as said re Maple: Why waste screen real estate for a search hit list (or worse, hide, or even delete it whenever the user choses some hit from there), when you can perfectly toggle it with the tree?).


"And specifically because the search allows you to narrow down into & bring together "many similar items"" - again, my argument that those search results will bring "unordered" lists (i.e. ordered by tree position or alphabetically, but not in your "man-made context order", in any case. Btw, that's my argument against the "just search" paradigm, where search is perfected to a point that the developers say you don't need any tree structure anymore (e.g. original askSam (which then added some live tree structure though), and advocates of the combo of desktop search engines like X1, and then just myriads of single files (instead of outlines): All these concepts make you lose ordering/weighting within the clusters they deliver ("relevance sorting" weighting frequencies or even combos of search terms, but cannot order in some "manual-processing-relevant" sequence, just outliners (with clones, and may they show trees or cascading lists, so-called Miller Columns) can do that).


"a giant high quality relational database" - well, you ain't wrong altogether, but let's say that SQLite's big advantage resides in its "incroporability", i.e. it will become part of your application on the pc of your customer, whilst a real high-quality db like PostgreSQL, which offers many more possibilities to the "interface developer", will appear as some distinct body on your customer's hdd; you can appreciate the difference when comparing UR or RN with TheBrain (which does not use PostgreSQL, but another db spreading its data over the place.

Thus, whenever I miss some functionality in some SQLite-based outliner, I ask myself, is it due to SQLite, or could the interface developer have done better?! ( Ok, it's the latter alternative in almost every case... ;-) )


"and to thus remove this manual step here out too" - again, I'm just "putting into perspective", I'm not denigrating RN: the application of a common command to a bunch of search results is thanks to the db, and also available in UR, for some such commands, but of course, it's a VERY good thing that RN's developer has made them available; I said this before, re UR: The interface hides a lot of db functionality from the user, and even erects barriers between what the db theoretically could use for the user, and what will finally get thru to him; I also said, over there, don't be too much impressed by the presumed brilliance of the interface when simply it translates db functionality for you, instead of barring it out from you... but I acknowlege that such a remark might appear a little bit nasty. ;-)


"to be tagged / contextualized / categorized" - It all reverts to the truth that (current) tagging doesn't allow for "fine-tuning" of your material within those "micro-compounds", within those lists  of 15, 20, 60 items you will have to work on/with concurrently. I know (and infer from your kind explanations, which are truly "over-constructive" in the best sense I can imagine this term to have, that it will even be very easy to do so in RN) that from then, by "micro-tagging", you could create sub-groups, and sub-groups again, but this would be quite artificial, since you would have to fractionize again and again, by "taxonomie-going-bonkers" (or to be more precise, from a certain level downwards, it's not sensible anymore to give "titles" to sub-groups (since within themselves, they become both too disparate and mixed-up content-wise: atomization-by-content just being sensible down to SOME level), hence tagging those would become "unnatural"), AND, even with multiple, artificially-created sub-groups (where I would simply do manually-sorted lists, with separator lines, cf. in the above links), you would not get to YOUR order, within those sub-groups:

You'll get some ranking, multiple tables of 12 within your reception hall, but you won't get seating: those 12 persons on those tables will not sit together well, or just by rare chance.

This being said, I certainly would not like to put off any RN prospect coming here from google, from buying RN, by my observations on the limits of tagging in general: That RN is among the heavy-weights in outlining, and perhaps even within the top group of three (consider MyInfo and Zoot, too, before buying!), has undeniably been PROVEN by the very kind efforts of donleone, here and today!



2 EDITS:

- There is a difference in atomizing external content, and self-created content. If you're really good, and if your subject lends to it, you can atomize your own FINAL writings to a very fine degree. (But for them, order would be of even more importance than for external material, so you can do with an outliner, without tagging, but not just with tagging... and even MS Word heavily outlines, e.g. by its paragraph formatting hierarchy.) Whilst for imported content, further atomization is only sensible up to a point, below which you have to live with "mixed content": Writings ain't butterflies or beetles in boxes, hence outlining more natural than tagging=categorising; the multiplicity of categorization in tagging just mitigating this conceptual limitation.

- My RN copy is the free one, i.e. has reverted to the free version a long time ago, and during the presumed 4 weeks it was "Prof.", I didn't "get into" the intricacies of this application, and much of my "not getting from given explanation to the program's features" may just be due to those features in my version not being available anymore. That's the risk of most trials: If you don't profit from your short trial period, for further trialling, you'll have to buy. That's why rare exceptions, like Scapple and Beyond Compare, to name just two in quite different sw categories, and which count your 30 or so trial days not consecutively, without mercy, but just when you open the applic, are so much better suited to be trialled in depth. ;-)

[Scott_Y]

e) "History" and "Recent" are totally awful, since those lists are populated by all those dozens of items you just touched a fraction of a second, by kb tree navigation, so those lists become totally useless since for identifying those "real finds" there to which you would like to navigate, using those lists as a "shortlist", you would have to read dozens of irrelevant "false hits". Solution to this problem is very easy: Just have items entered into those list JUST whenever they did appear for more than one second or such on screen (which is not the case for items "touched" by navigation only, and perhaps better, for more than 2 seconds (= opening of parent items), and even better, make it an option for the user to determine the length of display necessary in order for items to be included in those lists; I would probably choose 3 seconds then.

-peter.s (May 13, 2014, 07:55 AM)

Peter S. -- RN 3.1.0 includes a fix for "Note history tracking did not work properly". I'm wondering if that took care of the problem you described.

[donleone]

The recent update to 3.1 also introduced a nice "Tree filter",

that can be activated by selecting anywhere in the tree, and then pressing CTRL+F.

All in all, making RightNote even more useful & capable,

since it is super-instant even with thousands of items in the tree,

and fully retains the tree hierarchy display in the filtering process.

:-)

greetings
donleone

[Scott_Y]

I agree, the new Tree Filter (Ctrl + F when the tree is focused) is very helpful.

But a very basic improvement is still needed: Automatically scroll the tree so that the focused (open) node is always visible in the tree.

Problem: When the focus moves above the top or below the bottom of the notebook tree, the tree does not automatically scroll to follow it; the focused node is then out of view. This happens, for example,
  - When navigating the tree with the PgUp/PgDn, Up/Down, or Alt+Up/Down keys (only the Home/End keys scroll the tree to show the new focused node).
  - After adding a new note and naming it, if the name auto-sorts out of the visible area of the tree.
  - After renaming an existing note, if the new name auto-sorts out of the visible area of the tree.

When this happens, users have to manually scroll the tree to bring the focused node into view.

[nkormanik]

Question:  I'm really curious why RightNote is free.

One generally thinks, "free", must not be so good.

However, RightNote seems to be a great outlining program.

Yes, there are the two charged-for versions, standard and pro.  But the free version is super as is.

Please explain.

Thanks,
Nicholas Kormanik

[TaoPhoenix]

Question:  I'm really curious why RightNote is free.

One generally thinks, "free", must not be so good.

However, RightNote seems to be a great outlining program.

Yes, there are the two charged-for versions, standard and pro.  But the free version is super as is.

Please explain.

Thanks,
Nicholas Kormanik

-nkormanik (January 22, 2015, 01:28 AM)

Well, I think half of the reason is that if I borrow your own phrasing a little, this is the right way to do "freemium".

If the free version is "super as is", then you can use it, and get comfortable with the basic and even whatever intermediate features are in the free version. You don't feel the pressure of "crippleware" to evaluate-or-die with a clock ticking at 30 days, or "oh look, you can customize a profile but you can't save it".

Then later on a relaxing day you look at the "upsell premium" features, and decide if there are any somewhat obscure but powerful features that are worth the upgrade price. That's how TreeDB became one of the only programs I ever spent money on - because it didn't feel like a pressure sell.

[Steven Avery]

Hi,

This is quite a thread.  The type where Donationcoder really shines.

A lot of this could use pictures, and or youtube, to see how the program is used.

And if Rightnote had more vibrant discussion, I think it would have many more customers.

Some of the security software people allow Wilders to host their forums, with decent moderation.  It would be nice if programs like Rightnote, MyBase, Personal Backup, Treepad, Free Commander, Revo Uninstaller, Teamviewer and others had such a home, preferably with the authors involved.

(Consider this an idea for someone who has or wants to set up an Xenforo or vBulletin type of forum.)

Steven 

[nkormanik]

I'm a RightNote huge fan.  All around excellent snippets-capture program.  And the standout capture mechanism -- for me, the tilda key on the keyboard.  While researching, highlight section, then tilda key.  Saved.

Two concerns, however.  Hopefully these will be remedied:

1) As I am collecting and saving, via RightNote, a lot of info that I want to later have access to, the content MUST be readily accessible, even indexable.

2) Would be nice to use some bolding (formatting) on various text sections I've saved.  Don't think that's there presently.

[RobC]

RightNote should have a forum. I am happy to use this one.
Anyone tried storing (AND USING) the databases on OneDrive OR Google drive ?
So as to use from multiple PCs (W8.1 and now W11)
I have RightNote Pro, W8.1 Pro, W11 Pro

[migla9]

I use the portable version of RightNote in a Dropbox folder with the databases in the same folder.  It's been working fine.  One is on a laptop and the other on a desktop, both Win10.  I just make sure only one instance is open at a time. 

[kneetzstopz]

Very interesting, thank you! This is a typical program's fault you'll never get to know just by trialling, and slow-down and crashing even in the 3-digit range is more than a pity!