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Ideamason on special
Armando:
@Grorgy : thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and reactions.
@Darwin and others : you are probably aware of that but there are a lot of different views expressed about IdeaMason at www.outlinersoftware.com.
One comment in particular, posted by dan7000 (May 10, 2007 at 03:45 PM), confirmed that IdeaMason would probably be a bit hard for me to work with :
I’ve been using IdeaMason heavily for 2 months now, and I’m pretty disappointed.
It won’t work for what you want to do, because as far as I can tell, it doesn’t really handle external documents well at all. There is a special “documents” tab that holds external documents, but those are not integrated into the rest of the program at all. In other words, that tab is nothing more than a link list. You can’t associate any comments or even a citation with the external doc.
And, most disappointingly for your purposes, those documents can’t be searched.
One work-around is that you can create a “library” item, which has a “source on the web” tab, and view your external document there—it allows you to enter a local file:: url. Library items can have comments and citations associated with them, so that solves that problem. But you can’t easily view your document outside of their viewer, and, again, IM search does not search within the external document.
IM has a lot of other flaws for what it’s supposed to do. I used it to research and write a major paper for my final year of law school, which is due tomorrow. I was really excited about it, and thought that it would help structure my writing process. But it just slowed me down, and continues to do so, because of all the work-arounds I have to use—and because it is so painfully slow. However, I do think it’s a nice concept, and someday I’ll write the IM folks with my wish-list and see if they’re responsive.
--- End quote ---
Of course, this is just one person's opinion. But what caught my attention, is what seems like and awkward management system of external documents... In my case this would be a HUGE issue. I’ll be watching for IM’s development, but it seems like I’ll just skip that version.
PS. By the way, grorgy... I hope you won't be put off by the comment I posted! I'm not trying to make IdeaMason sound like a bad app! It actually looks like a great app and I've mostly seen very positive reviews... but I'm trying to see its potential shortcomings to make a more informed decision...
Darwin:
Thanks Armando - I WASN"T aware of the website that you linked to - this is really interesting. The comment that you quote confirms my experience running a demo in May (or whenever it was offered on Bits du Jour) - I found it very confusing, very slow, and enticing all the same!
Darwin:
So, Grorgy - this is going on sale again tomorrow for about $33USD for the student edition. Any updates as to how you've found life with it over the past 5 1/2 months? Enquiring minds want to know. I want to know.
Actually, I've once again been allowed to run the demo (maybe there's a four to six month period that must pass between demos?) and I like what I'm seeing, but would appreciate any insights you might have with using it for a longer period, particularly to help you write, which is what I'm primarily interested in.
Cheers!
Grorgy:
I mainly used it this last semester to link to documents and some brief notes, i was always being so efficient that to try and use something I was not 100% familiar with to write an essay when it was already overdue just wasnt going to work :-[ But i found it very useful for that, and at that price I'd buy it, well i did lol but i needed dual licenses as it only is licenced for 1 computer. So not a lot has changed since my last comments on it really, i need to practice more with it as it isnt an easy thing for me to learn, but that may just be me.
Armando:
The price is now right for a... long term trial? ... I guess. :-\
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