A New Tool

Posted by Hugh Pile
Oct 24, 2007 at 03:43 PM

I’d forgotten Rationale and had assumed that Flying Logic was more or less out on its own.

FL appears to score in at least two ways. It adds logical and arithmetic operators to its maps, so that proportional and numerical relationships can be made to flow through the nodes and links. The only other software that I can think of that also does this is a concept-mapping programme with some spreadsheet functions, development now discontinued, whose name I have forgotten but which has been mentioned here before.

The second immediately impressive aspect of the software is the degree of maturity that seems to have been achieved with the first released version. An uncommon amount of work and thought already appears to have been put into it and its documentation.

The price of the software, at least in the most versatile version, is in the DevonThink Pro Office/Curio/TinderBox drawer, and I guess people may find the UI cumbersome or clever according to taste.

It’s interesting, however, that software that appears to have been targeted chiefly at the business operations market seems to have so far created most excitement amongst writers. A good example of the application of a Law of Less Intended Consequences?