Software for creating writing project dashboard with links to files

Posted by Garland Coulson
Jul 3, 2013 at 05:20 AM

Dr Andus wrote:
It’s been an old dream of mine to find a software that could be used as
>a dashboard for everything, or if not for everything, then at least for
>the most important writing projects. Mainly I want to be able to
>organise and re-organise links to files on my drive that pertain to
>specific projects.
> >The problem with everything I tried is that a) after a while a single
>page gets too crowded or b) it is too convoluted to link to files and
>rearrange items, or c) it is visually difficult to consume.
> >So far I tried WhizFolders, Planz, “hubs” in SmartDraw 2012,
>ConnectedText, VUE, and CmapTools.
> >The main criteria would be:
>- light enough for it to start quickly (I’d want to have it open
>automatically at Windows start-up and keep it open);
>- drag and drop of any file from file explorer creates a link to the
>file (ideally with an icon of the app and the file name);
>- easy to rearrange, collapse, zoom in and out of branches.
>- easy to duplicate branches.
>- alternative visualisations (e.g. outline, mind map).
>- internal linking between items;
>- ability to add additional icons, colour-coding, highlighting.
> >I’ve just started using Freeplane for this today, and it seems to tick a
>lot of the boxes above. It’s a bit slow to start, doesn’t add the file
>icons, and you can’t zoom (hoist), but can do all the others. Besides
>the drag and drop of file links it can also link directly to internal
>ConnectedText (and other) documents, which is great. But it’s early
>days, as I don’t know how easy it will be to navigate once it has over a
>hundred links.
> >Any other suggestions for such a dashboard software?

A weird possibility occurred to me since I was testing it for managing my projects but ToDoList from Abstract Spoon will do some of this.

It is not as visual of an interface, but you can create tasks and nested tasks that link to files and web sites and you can customize which columns show up. Very easy to view by a certain category and it works very fast for me.

1. Light: Yes
2. Drag and Drop: Yes
3. Rearrange, collapse and zoom: Yes
4. Easy to duplicate branches: Not really branches, but yes they can be copied
5. Alternate visualizations: No, just a minimalist table interface
6. Link between items: Yes, with dependencies
7. Additional icons, colour coding, highlighting: Not really - Can set different font colours

Other things that might be useful to filter:
1. tags
2. categories
3. status
4. other columns like allocated to, versoin, external ID could all be used as extra controls