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quant, forums thruout the web are full of people doing all sort of cloud things to have instant access to their data anywhere ; any software developer in the information management sector MUST make available such instant access, any which way he can ; your lenovo x61 is a very fine thing, and you've realized the best intermediate solution to data access on the road but it does NOT give instant access everywhere to your data, its handling isn't just simple enough, and there's always the Win starting phase, before anything can be accessed, and not speaking of its NOT being handy 24 hours a day, whilst the iPad, if we like it or abhorr it, IS at your fingertips around the clock.
There is of course not a single serious outlining software available for Win and for any real leightweight tablet, or any "same data format" solution, and, unfortunately, be sure that it won't be UR that'll be present in this market soon - perhaps it never will be.
It had been you, quant, who asked, sort of, "why backing you since you're leaving anyway ?", when in fact, up to your statement I'd leave, it had never ever occured to me that leaving'd be in my interest.
But I've come, after considering your remark, to the conclusion that here with UR and zero backing for my ideas, UR's basic philosophy of doing it all in one big file would never be of real excellent putting into work, all those cloning / favorites / tabs / hoisting / whatever substitute elements notwithstanding :
If you've got some 80,000 items like me (and a 1,000 or so new items to be integrated each month), any system putting it all into one big bag isn't a solution - and thus, in any corporate environment, that idea is doomed also -, since your management efforts within that big bag just'll become much too heavy... and helpless, in the end.
Yes, you can optimize by heavy cloning of various parts, but to put it simply, normal brains, like mine, won't follow ! I.e., you'll stay with your organizational chaos within your head, even if you've tried to flatten out somewhat within your data base : Your memory and imagination simply cannot realize your multiple intervowen clustering efforts within the prog - which is to say, normal minds do NOT function in such a narrowly clustering way if effective / let alone. (And that heavy spider web producing within monster Personal Brain databases, well...)
The solution as I see it, as much for thinking enhancement / organizational backing of your decision making as for corporate environmental needs, lies within fractionizing your data as much as possible (i.e. self-contained outlines, might they have 50 or 3,000 items in every given case, self-containment being the key word here), and then dumping those parts into clusters being managed within a super level, as much for project management as for reference and archiving needs.
In my information management system back in 1998 which I realized then with the (inferior and buggy, then specializing elsewhere) ToolBook scripting language, I had such a zero level management system, as "just another list", prominently displayed within the upper left corner of my screen, above the first of multiple possible trees / subtrees - today, 13 years later, not only nobody in the whole industry has realized such a super tree, but also, any developer to whom I try to explain my ideas, is so much lacking any interest in them (the "not developed here" phenomenon) that I don't even get into any discussion of them which would've been the bare minimum for me.
Thus, the most basic (but very intuitive and utmost stable) program of its kind, ActionOutline, does very fine for me, as soon as I get that necessary super tree on top of it ; okay, I won't have the expanding function like here in UR, but when I make some remarks how to optimize that UR-inbuilt function, kinook doesn't even answer me, and if I want to fiddle with external macros to replace the expanding sets from one language to the other, from one data environment to another, I can do that in that (free) German text expander.
So, all those external progs like PB, ListPro, etc., they all do simple hyperlinking at best, whilst not one of them, to my knowledge, does MULTIPLE hyperlinking : one click, and loading a group of files into memory at the same time.
Of course, with scripting, you can do such a thing, as said in my other post some days ago, you just format the link list in the form "a.suffix" "b.suffix".... by macro, pour that (short or lengthy) line into the "open..." dialog, Enter, and you're done.
Doing such a system internally would be much more elegant, not only esthetics-wise, but especially since any renaming, deleting, splitting up or even physical moving of files would be checked and processed automatically, without bothering the user / the multiple users within a corporate environment.
But no, developers just don't see it, and from kinook, I didn't get the slightest (positive or other) reaction to all this either.
But that's why on outlinersoftware.com there's so much crimping : Why choose sophisticated software if even the most basic things are absent in them, and won't perhaps ever implemented into them ?
Since there isn't any zero level but within the main tree, in UR, if you realize it there, artificially, by this getting a very inferior sub- main tree (and do it by tabs / hoisting or by the related items pane as "main" pane, no big difference), why consider UR (or any other competitor with the same missing basics) as "superior", when, on the other hand, with just a little bit macro works, you can build your own really superior information management system, even with a poor sibling like AO ?
Or, to put it simply, why cope with an elaborate system intended to be self-contained but being highly insufficient, when, in order to do serious work, you'll have to put your own programming efforts upon it anyway ? As soon as you have to do combinations, it's important for the parts to be integrated to stay simple, isn't it ?
And let's be honest : I didn't get some kind of "well done" for my "UR as 3-pane outliner" but by one single person, whilst in several weeks now, there have been THREE THOUSAND accesses to my thread, which proves how deeply the need for a zero level on top of any information management system is felt by lots of people. But as said, if you do the main tree a surrogate zero level tree, you're up with the related items pane as your main tree, and that's awful working in the end - trying to do serious work in this way held me back for some weeks, but it's to no avail.
This is not to say UR doesn't have its advantages, for those files where you need several looks upon your data indeed : your customers by region, by importance, by name, whatever... but then, doing multiple clones for that ? This is to say wherever you need the three-dimensional look into SEPARATE items, tagging systems should be considered superior to clones.
And then, there's always askSam for that : You can built up different, virtual trees on the spot by taking field contents in different order, e.g. your customers by region, then by importance, or by turnover, then by turnover of a special goods category, whatever - (It's just the building up of such trees that, even by macro, is weird, and no storage of different such tree designs up to now, perhaps never.) - it's evident that no such flexibility can be realized with multiple cloning.
So much for the three-dimensional look into separate items, as said. But, and herein lies the secret of the superiority of my system design for information management in general : Most needs for a three-dimensional look upon your material (except, as said, for customer / prospects databases, spare parts databases, and other naturally fractionized but similarly constructed material) are NOT on the item level,
but on a yet-aggregated cluster level : hence the need of a "project management" / "different working environments" zero level above your main tree.
Yes, do it within your main tree, as UR does, and you'll get an almost unintelligeable, impenetrable jungle. But as kinook notified me here, months ago, "we've got too many panes already as it is". (I'm citing from memory.)
I'm not willing to think my ways within such a jungle, and my ideas are scaleable, whereas the all-in-one-dump idea's not.
And, to come back to the original topic, having a super tree with just references to one / some / many outliner's trees (of which you'll have perhaps stored 500 in total) on your 800 g slate'll come easy, no heavy processing involved, thus immediate availability of all your stuff everywhere, 24 hours a days, even w/o ac/dc - now compare with a big UR system where on every slight change, might it be the suppression or addition of a comma, heavy processing'll take place.
My purist system isn't but scaleable up to the needs of a 100,000 employees' company (and they certainly have got systems alike already), but it's also downgradeable up to the slightest slates available soon, be it with AO or any other similar and acceptable outliner.
It's the architecture, stup**. (I'm citing from memory.)
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