askSam vs. Zoot? and vs. others

Posted by 22111
Oct 2, 2013 at 09:01 PM

Steven Zeoli just buried highly interesting information about Zoot within the AS listserv:

“The application I have always thought is the best replacement for askSam is Zoot, which you can find here: http://zootsoftware.com/
You’ll find the smart folders which askSam started incorporating a few years ago (Zoot was among the first to make use of smart folders). And, in fact, Zoot’s folders are even smarter because you can tell them to do something with the records they find—i.e. make all Urgent records red for instance.
More importantly, you can create fields in a similar manner as askSam, by inserting a string into the editor like so:
Date:
Status:
Or whatever, which you can set up to also appear in the grid pane.
Zoot is so flexible that in many ways that is one of the things that scares people off; trying to figure out how best to use it. Another current issue is that the new version is still under development, and the producer of Zoot has not yet finished the documentation, so it will be a little difficult to figure out how to use
I have not tested this, but Zoot will import a CSV file, which I believe can be exported from askSam, so I would expect that data should be relatively easy to exchange.
Anyway, just another option to consider if you are looking to jump ship from askSam.
Steve”

I only discovered this by accident, looking out there for a possible version 8, once a month.

Now this should be more widely know, I think, but I also have some questions.

AS fields. One record/item can contain several fields with the same name, e.g. Manager: Smith, John, and another field Manager: Edwards, Peter. Now if you search for “Manager: Edwards” in your records, the record will be shown. This is a very good thing for categories that most of the time just have one entry, but sometimes have two or three. Of course, regular databases cannot contain multiple fields with identical names.

Zoot: ?

Fields again. Big disadvantage in AS, such fields cannot be added/standardized in any automatted way, since they are just “text”. This means if you want to add an additional field to existing records, you have to go into lengths for inserting them with the “replace all” function, as I have explained here some weeks ago. This is a very bad thing, and could even become almost impossible if you try to change position of fields: You would have to insert a new field between fields 6 and 7 (7 becoming 8), then copy everything between field 2 and 4, but without the field name, into field 7, then delete ancient field 3. Of course, there is lots of chances something goes wrong in such proceedings.

Zoot: Same problem, since fields are “just text”, or can you re-arrrange and add fields to existing records in a better way?

Fields again. Rather good, AS allows several entries within the same field, e.g. Tel: firstnumber, secondnumber, and they will be found.

Zoot: Here, possible, too?

Those same fields with multiple entries again, together with the smart tree. Let me briefly explain, a smart tree is built up in AS from such field contents, meaning 1 field “town”, 1 field “size of corporation”, 1 field “name of corporation”, in any order, and you can build up your tree as “towns, then names, then size”, or “different sizes, then towns, then names”, or whatever pleases (up to 3 fields) - very handy!

So Zoot can do this, too? Up to how many fields?

Combination of those, meaning, AS is NOT able to fetch a second or third entry of such a multiple-entry field described in 3, in order to build up the smart tree, but here, only the very first entry of such fields (or the very first field and its content of multiple, equally-named fields within a record) is taken into consideration for building up the tree, and no way for a record to appear in different parts of the smart tree, once for first entry, and a second time for the second term of that same field, or once for the first “abc” field, and a second time for the any second occurence of that same “abc” field in some records.

This inability is extremely harmful to AS, since in the end, either you cannot use a) multiple similarly-named fields and/or multiple entries in single fields, or b) you cannot use the smart tree; in fact, this is really extremely harmful, since both would be needed, but without “hit” records being left out of the tree in consequence.

Zoot here? Same problem? Or, of course, Zoot not even allowing multiple fields and/or multiple entries in one field (which would avoid the problem from the wrong side, of course).

Finally, a very big advantage of AS is its “hit table”, meaning you will see every hit term, within its textual context, as in desktop search engines. This is extremely helpful. Ultra Recall, for example, is unable to do this (if I did not overlook this, but I searched in vain for it), and as for MyInfo, I don’t know. I think it cannot do it either but I’m not sure (version 5 was able to show the 3 first lines of the record, which is not possible anymore with version 6, but that was quite another thing anyway).

Zoot here? Does it show hits together with their context? Btw, many such programs show hit tables with lots of attributes and such, upon request, but that does not mean they show textual context, too.

Would be thankful to know a little bit more about it, also with regards to other outliners in this respect. In everyday life, this context for hits is one of the most important features an outliner should have.