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Working with (display+format+restructure) big amount of data (text+graphics)?

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f0dder:
Perhaps http://www.lyx.org/ - it's probably going to be very different from anything else you ever did before, though. Never personally made too good friends with TeX based stuff, it's hard to find something that's better for mathy stuff, but I still can't help think it sucks a bit.

Armando:
Well... 10 years ago (I was 23), my computer science roommate tried to convince me LaTeX was the best thing ever. I must say that MS Word or Word Perfect weren't too hard to beat back then...  ;D
Anyway. I do find that LaTeX and its cousins are pretty neat, but… maybe a bit abstract if you're trying to do what I'm trying to do, and especially if text formatting is not really about prettiness but more about  displaying info in the most readable way.
LyX is a  bit of a different story though. I remember trying it in my *n*x ( ;) )days, but that's about it.
I'll try it again and report.
Thanks f0dder.

Armando:
Hello there,

I’ve tested MS Word 2007 today for about 4 hours at some friends place and, for what I want, I'm not too impressed. I was hoping that the experience with “huge documents” would have been encouraging… but it really hasn't been the case.

Not only did I find the 2007 version sluggish compared to Word 2003 (on my  computer, Word 2003 fires up almost instantaneously; on my friends laptop — an 8 months old HP with an Intel Core duo, which compares favorably against my inspiron 6400 — Word 2007 took at least 15-20 seconds for… a blank page,) but it refused to open several of my biggest documents (I admit that they contained a lot of text boxes and frames — they were mainly precious OCRed material — but still…).

Isn't that amazing? (At some point, one of these documents opened after 10 minutes!). Maybe not actually…

So, I'm still finding it hard to find an application which would allow me to manipulate big amounts of mostly textual data (but ALSO containing some images and tables — some kind of visually attractive structured database, I guess…) with formatting and all that, AND which also provides a flexible outliner.

I haven't tried LyX yet (I will, in 5 minutes…), but, from what I read, I doubt that it will provide any good solution. I might just go back to my old strategies. [Edit : Nope. LyX won't do it... Way too much tinkering and it's more a "write it, edit it, format it, and publish it solution" where format comes in third or even fourth place. i.e. :To much of a "styles, formatting and WYSIWYG is for prettiness" mentality. I might use it to format articles though... But, for that task, Endnotes + Word seems already more than enough...]

But — sorry if that seems like a dumb question — what are the writers, researchers and Ph.Ders in the DC community using when structuring and restructuring big amounts of mostly “textual” data (ALSO containing images and tables — almost inevitable in my field)?  Softwares like myBase or Ultra Recall? Despite the format restrictions they impose? Just wondering…

(Of course, some clues have already been provided... :

suleika and Jimdoria --> tiddlywiki or other wiki solutions
urlwolf  --> OneNote
steeladept  --> HTML editor
f0dder --> LyX (with some... reservations?) )

Mandork:
what are the writers, researchers and Ph.Ders in the DC community using when structuring and restructuring big amounts of mostly “textual” data (ALSO containing images and tables — almost inevitable in my field)?  Softwares like myBase or Ultra Recall? Despite the format restrictions they impose?
--- End quote ---

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm spending a lot of time fiddling around with various programs, too!    :-\

The beta version of LyX (1.5) has an outline view now, much like Word, but I think that it is kind of a steep learning curve and it doesn't quite do what you want, I don't think.  I'm learning to use it because after spending a solid month trying to get my MA thesis formatted correctly in Word, I'm favorably impressed with how LaTeX effortlessly formats things.  However, for day-to-day writing it's kind of a pain.  I've been using Word to write in and exporting it on occasion (using a Word to LaTeX macro http://kebrt.webz.cz/programs/word-to-latex/index.html) and it works okay with a little fiddling.  Not really what you're after, though.

The Wiki route sounds promising to me, although it also has a bit of a learning curve for me.  I've found some potentially useful info here, including an add-in for OpenOffice that will convert a document to a Wiki, although I haven't had the time to mess with any of it yet:

http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/WikiToBook
http://nothickmanuals.info/doku.php/writertools
http://www.jhorman.org/wikidPad/
http://www.bellz.org/treeline/index.html
http://www.dklevine.com/general/software/tc1000/jarnal-basics.htm

Post it here if you come up with anything good!

Jimdoria:
There's also a commercial product you may want to lookinto: askSam

It's a database system designed to handle free-form text. It has a lot of capabilities, and I would imagine a fairly steep learning curve, but this is often the case with truly useful applications.

From the website:
askSam is a different kind of database - a free-form database designed for users rather than programmers. askSam makes it easy to turn anything into a searchable database: email messages, word processing documents, text files, spreadsheets, addresses, Web pages, and more.
--- End quote ---

askSam can import existing word documents and turn them into "reports." You'd have to dig a little to see if it can handle the output you're looking for. There are two quick tours, one for researches, and one for general users.

The company (and the product) have been around for a very long time, so it is definitely a mature and robust application. There's a free trial version available. The "standard" version is $150, but the version you really want is $395, so it's not cheap. But it might be a worthwhile investment of time and money if it makes your life simpler for years to come.

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