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Re: MyInfo 3, Jot+, etc., and the vital need for calendars
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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.
Outliners.com Message ID: 2368
Posted by daly_de_gagne
2004-12-28 12:56:04
Stephen, I wrote in my post: “I think that the distinctions between knowledge and business organizer principles exist more in your mind than reality, and that, in fact, it is not illusionary to suggest these distinctions do not exist in an important way.”
You wrote in reply: “The distinction between a business and knowledge management (and professional) pims was inductive. You have one cluster of programs that lack calendars but are very strong in outlining functionality. Another group has calendars and todos, elaborate formatting and tolerance for all sorts of file types but are backward in outlining. I don’t think you can name a single program that crosses the boundary, that is very strong in outlining but has a calendar or to do list. You have Treepad Business, for instance, that has calendar and to do integration and acceptance of images directly into its notes, but you can’t even select multiple headings, even if they are contiguous. Jot Plus Notes is like this too.
“You haven’t given me a single exception to this generalization about correlated features, yet you say it is all in my head. Steve Zeoli at least provided counter-examples, but the programs he mentioned are all dead. So their significance is equivocal—I would be apt to say they are the exceptions that prove the rule, as much as I hate the phrase ordinarily. In fact this leads to an interesting speculation. People don’t understand what killed Grandview. My hypothesis—the attempt to cross these particular boundaries did not prove feasible. You can’t have it all. If that’s the lesson, it’s one ADM badly needs to learn.”
First, a couple of examples: An exception to your generalization is DoOrganizer, which has combined outline and calendar features. Is it a strong outliner—well it depends on what you want, just as the determination about Treepad depeneds on what you want. It is not as strong as ADM. MicroLogic’s Information Select is another example, but I would be the first to argue its outline capability is weak, and that it’s calendar features are no screaming hell either. InfoHandler has a calendar ability that allows setting of dates, appointments, and alarms. While it is not an outliner, InfoHandler is very much a pure form of knowledge manager.
Programs, as they exist today, may seem to fit the division that you describe. But you seem to be going beyond a mere description to reach a hypothesis and a conclusion, which lead you to place more significance on the division than it warrents, elevating it to the level of some kind of software truth or axom of the obvious, and it is this elevation that I say is in your mind, not what you have observed.
The hypothesis can be read two ways in your quote above. The first way is that it relates to Grandview alone, in which case, I would say simply that neither of us know, and that we both lack the prerequisite familiarity with the program to go very far along this particular road. The second way of reading your quote is that it pertains to previous attempts, in general, to bring outlining and calendar based programs together. Perhaps that is the case, but I submit neither you nor I probably have sufficient historical data to make that case much more than conjecture based on a couple of examples that seem to fit (and which may well fit).
The conclusion I see in what is quoted above seems to be that, therefore, “You can’t have it all. If that’s the lesson, it’s one ADM badly needs to learn.”
First point, I do not believe the data supports this conclusion, or lesson, to use your word. I suspect that such a lesson has been preached to developers of various kinds of tehcnology that we take for granted today, including the automatic transmission, the graphic user interface and, of course, powered flight inteneded pun: “it’s never going to take off”).
Simply because a well integrated program containing calendar features and a strong outliner has yet to emerge, doesn’t mean that it will not in the future.
Secondly, why should ADM be discouraged from following this road to combining time management and information management features? Interestingly, Eric Sommer in an email said last year that ADM would not develop a calendar, but now he has indicated it could be in the offing. However, it is clear that ADM is not allowing that possibility to get in the way of developing/enhancing/refining the metadata features that appeared in ADM3 for the first time. Those features, combined with further development of the outline metaphor, are making ADM an increasingly strong product. The refinements I see in the beta test versions of ADM4 certainly suggest attention to eronomic detail as well, and while ADM may never be the easiest program to learn how to use, it will, in my view, provide an ever-higher degree of ergonomic comfort.
Daly