Re: External RTF editors

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2434

Posted by stephenz
2005-01-05 09:54:26

I want two things in my information manager’s editor:

1. The ability to compose text with a minimum of thought about the editor itself. This means being able to do swift block edits as I restructure my writing as my thoughts gel through the process of composing. This is why extended selection is important to me.

2. The ability to visually emphasize portions of text that are of particular importance.

I will gladly export my finished composition to a word processor or desktop publishing application for the formatting that allows the world to experience my brilliance! Or not.

Alex, if I understand your point, it sounds as if you are suggesting that I should be able to do the composing I mention under #1 in a dedicated word processor, then port the notes/ideas into my information manager. That would be a nice feature to have. As currently available, however, it requires too much extra effort. You have to open your text processor, do your writing, save the file (just in case the export to the PIM doesn’t go as hoped), do the export, then delete the original RTF file so you don’t end up with redundant information clogging your hard drive. If this process were as seamless as the way in which Outlook uses Word to edit e-mails, then, as you say, it would be quite handy.

Currently, the only PIM I’m aware of with this feature is Literary Machine, which allows you to choose a dedicated text editor which can open automatically when you want to edit a note and then ports the text back into your LM note. It works pretty well, but you lose any formatting you may have used, as LM only works with plain text. And its other quirks make LM fairly useless for my PIM needs.

By the way, there’s a nifty free RTF editor called Jarte (http://www.jarte.com), that you might want to check out. Its interface may be a little too cute for some of you, but it actually is fairly innovative in allowing alternative access to its functions. I like it because of its mult-document ability, accessible through tabs. It also resides nicely in your system task bar, just waiting to be used, and has a crude clip manager.

Steve Z.

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