Two Pane Outliner Shootout

Posted by nathanb
May 25, 2018 at 02:37 AM

Mark wrote:
nathanb wrote re Zoot:
> >> it looks to have an uncertain development future.
> >Zoot’s developer, Tom Davis, has been working on it continuously for
>more than two decades, so it’s unfair to say it has an “uncertain
>development future.” Very little of the software discussed here has that
>long of a history of dedication. He’s continually tweaking the app and
>the most recent update was May 15, 2018.
>

Thank you for clearing this up, sorry for posting false info. Just looked up some of it’s features again. The integrated connections it offers is pretty great. Makes me think of random stuff I have in Evernote, Pocket, etc on their own islands. It looks to offer a unique way to aggregate a bunch of ‘cloud’ flows without itself being cloud-based. Though to be honest, it doesn’t help to make itself appear ‘in development’ when one of the screenshots on it’s website is showing ‘read-it-later’ and ‘google reader’ integrations. Gone 4 and 5 years now. Another way he’s making it ‘seem’ outdated to casual CRIMPers like me is the “what’s new” page is listing a bunch of features that it’s had for years with no dates on what the ‘most recent’ change was. Though it does have a pretty active discussion board on google groups, however one user appears to be a big driver of that. Either way, you are right, it is a bit more ‘active’ than I was assuming.

My impression was that ZootXT is one of several really unique offerings for which major development peaked several years ago. UltraRecall and ConnectedText are in the same boat. A small developer creates this magnificent thing in their spare time and keeps building upon their vision until it’s so complex that ‘re-imagining’ much of it is too daunting a task for something that’s not bringing in much money. Yet it IS still great, even without a significant evolution of function, and it has a loyal and enthusiastic fan base. So it makes sense to work on maintenance releases. Active development certainly isn’t the whole story and I’m willing to pay for the veterans of this category as a nod to their singular achievement with no pretense or expectations of a string of function updates…..but it’s a risk to trust in a platform whose best years are behind, not ahead. If they show signs of still wrestling the beast (Petko, Pierre) instead of just keeping it alive when their attention is clearly elsewhere (Ultra, CT) it means a lot. Maybe I’m wrong about which category Zoot belongs to.