Not-Standardized Project Management : IQTELL, Directory Opus, etc.

Posted by Fredy
Nov 1, 2011 at 11:48 PM

I forgot : The possibility of file group launching - which, again, is NOWHERE realized at this time to my knowledge - would be the foundation of people’s willingness to split up things into self-contained (but rather tiny) chunks… that then would be much more able to be re-grouped in many various ways. So, the current necessity to open files one by one HINDERS people to make their stuff re-arrangeable, the most obvious excesses being monster files in UR that won’t make it into a corporate environment, asking - if you stay within that concept - even more monstruous files even UR cannot deliver.

And : People need to BREATHE for better thinking : Why do you think so many people / corporations (!) pay so much money for that leading mind mapping prog, MindWhatever : it’s real, big business now, they state 7-digit (paying) customers figures. That program allows to simplify, yes, but it also, and in the very first place, it allows for breathing while thinking on adding branches here and items there.

And that’s exactly why all this hoisting, etc. in monster databases do not work for many a user : While working in your hoisted part of your tree, you KNOW that there’s 50k of items behind, and that knowing comes into your way - whilst real segregation of your stuff into different subjects means, all the other stuff, not needed, is NOT there : you’re temporarily FREED from it. But again, such a fractionizing wouldn’t really be possible but by group launching progs.

And then, why do you think seemingly 99 p.c. of people do NOT use outliners, but MS Word files, etc. ? Because of that same phenomenon, the need for “breathing space”, which they instinctively know will get lost when they’d build up (relatively) monstruous outliner files -

of course, they do NOT have all the relevant information at hand, since their fractionizing (without the necessary re-grouping) makes room to breathe, but doesn’t supply all that information that could help treating the particular core subject.

The solution I’ve found (but not yet thoroughly realized), is multiple outlines of often only 50 items, but in groups that make available any needed info for my respective work… and not more.

But as we see, I couldn’t do that without my macro system doing the group launchings for me.

BTW, I also tried “all” - a dozen of - those mind mapping progs (and not only PB/TN) as front-ends to my file collections, and, “of course”, they all allow for links, and none allows for links launching grouped files… (and not speaking of ubiquitous impossibility to manage deletes / renames / moves of such files resp. their links within those mind mapping progs.)

No, one of the most needed softwares that’d revolutionize computer usage of many people, is simply and thoroughly absent from the market. But then, of unnecessary progs, you can buy or download for free in hundreds of variants.

A last precision : The above-mentioned encoded naming of files is in emulation of a corporate filing system, except for doing each “digit” as a char (= up to 26 possibilities at each position, with mnemonic possibilities - do the mnemonics for all positions, before the first point, then give an additional (but short) “real name”, before the suffix (as stated above). Of course, it would be possible to do longer filenames, but perhaps also at fourth position only, since too individualistic file naming necessitates too heavy sub-foldering to put all those chaotically-names files in, which evidently increases the file management difficulties when renaming / moving files.

And there is screen space : If you’ve got 20 tabs, with 20 file names… In AO, this isn’t possible but with very short names ; in other progs, you’d need several rows of tabs then - but much more important :

Your launching prog MUST be on the screen, at every moment, since if it’s not, you’ll think twice before doing the inevitable alt-tab (or a direct launch, which is possible alternatively), thus renouncing on information for not leaving your comfort zone but for “really important” additional information. If, on the other hand, your file list is always prominent, it’ll be just a click to get even “minor” information contained in those listed files, and so you’ll take much more advantage of your file groups in your work, and that’s an important aspect of the system.

And, finally, such a system should allow for those little additional information bubbles, in case you heavily use encoded / short file names, in order to give the written-out partial names of your file when hovering with the mouse over any given name ; this also could be automatted, i.e. allowed abbreviations for those file names (= before the first point after which individualization would be allowed) would be entered into the system upon request, by a (human) file manager, the system would propose such abbreviations (1-“digit” chars) for subjects, and since only “allowed” chars would constitute the first part of any given file name, those bubbles would automatically give the “written-out” denominations of those file encodings, e.g. file name “ce.whatever.xyz”, bubble “Computer - Editors - whatever”.

And any corporate search system would search within such file groups, or within groups of files having common denominators : eg. “search within all files ce?.xyz” or “search within all files c*.*.xyz” or even within all files c[dhmo]?.*.* (regex within name and all file types, or another regex within the suffix) - please note that such a system allows for / imposes a COMMON denomination system for ALL type of files and integrates MS Excel tables and .pdf files like a charm.

So there’ll be a lot of room for improvements for making such a system a perfect corporate environment, even for 100k staff corps, but for the time being, there isn’t any applic on the market, to my knowledge at least, that provides us with the barest minimum of all this.

And for the IQ lies : Mozart in the cowshed’s a lie, too.