Mini review: The Journal

[rgdot]

The Journal to keep a diary, to write, to create reminders

App Name	The Journal
App URL	http://www.davidrm.com/
App Version Reviewed	7.0.0.1099
Test System Specs	Win 10 1803
Supported OSes	Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP
Support Methods	Email recommended
Upgrade Policy	$29.95 to upgrade from v.6 and older
Trial Version Available?	45-Day full version
Pricing Scheme	$64.95 US, a few paid add-ons such as a Devotional Edition and Writers Edition which include presets for keeping a journal of prayers and aid you in writing respectively
Relationship btwn. Reviewer and Product	No relationship, won a copy on the April 2018 giveaway here on DonationCoder

Intro:
The Journal is most of all a record keeper, a diary or journal with added benefits of supporting reminders, images, to do lists and free form "doodles".

Mini review: The Journal

Who is this app designed for:

Many would benefit since this overlaps a personal information manager with writing tools.

The Good

The tree style categories that support both a calendar or daily journal format or writing kept in a "loose leaf" format which as its name suggest is like a white page.
The possibility to display a day calendar to a page adds flexibility in creating reminders and remembering any writing by date.
There is big emphasis on securing the database including entry encryption, password protection, lock up on minimize. Plus 'extended security' to lock the program after X failed logins.
Plenty of formatting options and support for icons, tables, timers and stop watch.
Word counts, spell check and thesaurus included.
Global or filtered (date, title, category, image description based) search add more usefulness. Search queries can be saved.
Bookmark entries, move between entries based on set dates (eg 1 year ago)
Built in back and restore option, auto save as you type.

Why I think you should use this product

The product seems stable enough to keep records and makes it easy to save your database in any location including cloud drives to share across devices as its license allows this.

Conclusions
The extended trial period makes it very easy to decide if price is worth it and it fits into a user's workflow. It is a well rounded information manager.

[mouser]

Thanks for posting this, rgdot 
The more mini-reviews the better!

[cranioscopical]

I have a copy and found the author to be responsive.

[wraith808]

I have a copy and found the author to be responsive.

-cranioscopical (May 14, 2018, 08:43 AM)

I'd echo this.

[rgdot]

Want to publicly thank David, the author, for being generous and allowing a free upgrade to version 8 of The Journal

About the new version, quoting the program site:

The Journal 8’s new features:
Improved searching! Searching your entries from the main UI is faster and easier than ever before–and encompasses all your active categories!
Improved security! Your entries have never been safer! The Journal now uses 128-bit AES (American Encryption Standard) throughout, and uses salted, iterated hashing to secure your passwords.
Improved topics!
Improved drag-and-drop support! Drag-and-drop entries between categories, between users, and even Journal Volumes! Drag-and-drop files directly into the entry tree!
PDF support! Easily print (or save or export) your entries to PDFs!
More word processing power!
New visual themes!

[ital2]

As far as I know, TJ is db-based, but it does not allow for 1 item to be in several "folders" though: no "cloning".

Except perhaps for the journalling function, so any item is (but just once) in some "folder" system of the user's choice, AND to be retrieved by the day of its creation (but NOT also by the day of its "ToDo" = "I must do something about it that day, e.g. with regards to some meeting" or such)?

So there is no second/multiple entry/ies in the main table, neither in the, second, (assumed by me) "items-by-date" table?

Underlying db = SQLite, as usual for PIMs now?

If my assumptions are right, how could anybody tout this program, considering the fact that no db-based should ever dare be marketed without cloning facility in 2018 (ie more than 20 years after cloning items was available in not one but several db-based PIMs even then)?

Of course, if you do your reviews from the users' perspective, you never get free licenses...

[wraith808]

Of course, if you do your reviews from the users' perspective, you never get free licenses...

-ital2 (October 17, 2018, 09:22 AM)

A bit disingenuous, considering that he won it, then trialed it, and only then reviewed it.  I used it for several years, and didn't need that functionality, and recommend this software.  And I paid for it.  YMMV.

[rgdot]

I don't think it is a function of a mainly journal, writing program to be a sort of tagging, cloning one. The todo feature of The Journal doesn't take it all the way there either and I wasn't really expecting it to personally. I would go for full fledged PIMs like RightNote for that kind of flexibility.

As for my very mini review, I just wanted to do a small part for DC and The Journal itself after winning the copy. Definitely room to write a longer review but alas...