Maps e.g., etc.

Posted by 22111
Jun 9, 2022 at 11:59 AM

This thread is a follow-up to the (originally) Ulysses-thread https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/reply/9752/41640

From what I have understoodfrom some third-party web resource, Ul is NOT a db, but a collection (!) of single xml files (together with other xml files for the administration of the former) - whilst even with xml, the regular way of doing things would be / would have been for the program to create BIG xml files, e.g. one per “book” (or whatever they call a collection of them “pages”); thus, if the information I’ve got is not wrong, there ARE ways to separate your different kinds of stuff, AND they are separated, technically, by the program, it’s just that - according to what I interfere from the info I got - the Ul gui is then a general interface to ALL your stuff (probably all in the same “general” parent folder (desktop or web); this then would be a function of its general xml files and indexes, in order to make available search scope, if wanted, over ALL technically distinct data ; in the line of this “philosophy”, there should be an “export” function, in order to “export” just SOME / ONE of those “areas” / “books” / whatever to a “new installation” of Ul, but it seems (?) that currently, at least, Ul does not allow for such distinct “installations” to run on the same device.

As for the linked screenshot in the other thread - https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/reply/9752/41640 - some of the SEARCH functionality is helpful indeed (”“: include footnodes, annotations, citations, comments / comment blocks, quote…) but others (”“: just subheadings of level 1/2/3/4) seem doubtful when applied overall, i.e. the real life use cases where you would want to find text in specific-level subheadings over non-related “books” or whatever seem quite limited to me.

When I see the screenshot / list, I immediately discover that we’ve got just another case of “what’s technically easy, code-wise, I’ll offer, may it be useful or not to the user, whilst what’s technically complicated or even impossible in my concept, even when it would be of high usefulness, I’ll leave out, not even mentioning it”:

All the “finer details” in the Ul search ARE easy, because of its XML format, it’s just the different xml codes which make all these generically distinct and thus available - on the other hand, I do NOT see any setting to just include “pages” (items) of specific kinds in the search, not even “regular pages” vs. “material pages”, and all the less “pages with specific icons” (i.e. those little, colored symbols I spoke of in the aforementioned Ul thread, then hijacked for almost anything else) - on this latter point, I may be mistaken though, since it might be possible that Ul first lets you FILTER for these icons (i.e. for one or several, specific ones), then allows for applying its search settings (as from the screenshot) upon this SELECTION?

It goes without saying that UltraRecall allows for a filtering for its 8 different item “flag” formats (as they are called over there, 7 plus “no flag”, and yes, that’s less than I would wish it had), in combination with all other, also quite specific search settings;

also, UltraRecall’s - more or less detailed - searches can be stored, so I hope for Ul users that they can apply a given set of “Finer Details” (see the screenshot) again and again, without fiddling with the mouse anew, each time.

Today, I read that for the European Union at least, Apple LOST its “exclusive” claim “Think different”, for most or all of its hardware, and of course, even to begin with, that had always been a fetish claim (I wrote about that here) in the lines of “this totem will make you think better” or “using Ul can make you as big as James Joyce”, since there is no indication of any sort world-wide that using Apple hardware will make you think different, it’s just that in general, Apple users have got more money than Windows users, people with money want to distinct themselves, be it by car, by computer hardware or by their jacuzzi, and IQ / inspiration / “gifts” lead to more income, so there is more Apple than Windows output in the entertainment field, but that doesn’t come from the hardware make use, but from the fact that Apple has succeeded in convincing even otherwise smart people it was “the best”; if it really was, offices worldwide would have “upgraded” to it, which they obviously have never done.

The claim to “think differently” becomes laughable, of course, when “creators” adopt Apple-only software which LIMITS their creativity, and I personally suppose that most “writers” will benefit from NOT “thinking” the way Ul allegedly tries to make them work, by making them accept missing functionality, to be another “feature”... we all know that ages-old Apple claim indeed: whatever you might miss, it’s a feature that it’s not there. (Research if Apple-over-Windows users might tend more to masochism could be interesting, but then again, people with more money tend to live out their masochism, so such research wouldn’t be as easy as it might be be seen at first sight.)

Above, I even read that the (e.g. Ul’s) hierarchical concept, according to the contributor, might not be that much appropriate to the (novel’s) readers’ sequential reading experience, but my impression of Ul rather goes in the opposite direction: It’s hierarchical functionality seems, according to me, being quite sub-standard, i.e. if you “work in the hierarchy”, you should rather flee this “app”, since you wouldn’t become happy with it… whilst, on the other hand, if you rather write sequentially, but need just “some little bit more” than e.g. MS Word or Atlantis WP have on offer, hierarchy-wise, you might probably love Ul - for all three latter programs you will have accepted from start that you better put your “material” into some other repository, of course, and none of the three either comes with cloning or some “alternatives / rewrites management” worth of the name (whilst in Ultra Recall and other generic (more-than-one-pane) “outliners”, that’s easy, in the last-mentioned program not only because of the “flags”, but also for its relatively well-implemented transclusion functionality: in a (key) word:

Ul, according to me, is far more adequate for pantsers (so that’s the key word here, since pantsers will much less need, much less “touch” the “tree”) than for plotters… and then, the “reception” will be “flat” for almost any “literary” work but is not linked to the way the latter will have been created (even some film directors in the past were said to direct strictly in chronological order!), whilst on the other hand, the production of (e.g. technical, medical, legal…) reference works would appear overly complicated nowadays, was it done with a rather “flat and sequential-by-its-nature” tool.

Btw, “folding editors”, and - if I’m not mistaken - even KEdit and such (and their above-mentioned and other rtf-etc. counterparts (“text processors”), and most / all (?) one-pane “outliners”), do NOT allow for “filtering” by “just show the titles / subtitles where the text beneath (! and then above the next title/subtitle of course) contains ...”, so even Ul is a big step beyond those indeed.