The Function Beyond

Posted by 22111
Jul 30, 2022 at 06:41 PM

Thus, Pieter being the “function beyond” Hanno/Janno - and yes, some thriller’s a tragedy, too, and at the end of the day, every good thriller will be also a tragedy and foremost indeed -, outliners all are ONE SINGLE outline, up to this day, and that’s obviously nuts - it’s just that technical, and even more so, conceptual difficulties (i.e. intellectual limitations) have prevented that “function beyond”.

(NO politics here, just technical stuff:)

Here - https://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/41841 (“Who are you? I’m next” - citation from the extended version of “Apocalypse Now”) - I described somewhat my problems with multiple dimensions in an outliner, with the example of my Covid/Corona press clippings of all sorts, and I described, or rather implied, my personal problem that for some 15,000 press clippings, the number valid some months ago, I had not been able anymore to correctly “file” those clippings, but had “filed” most of them just by “country”, not by “subject” (e.g. “disease”, “possible origin”, “vaccination, medical aspects”, “vaccination as a measure”, “other measures”, etc., etc.) - I had been simply overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and by the difficulties, not only to apply multiple “copies’ links” “in time”, but then also, and especially, to stay “on top of things” while perusing my “savings” - I also described my “need” - which would be technically, but just technically, solvable - to have all of the other dimensions “available”, for any originally “taxonomic” category; - and not even speaking of the fact that for those press clipping, or at the very least, for the most blatantly biased of them, I would have liked to also have entries in “Politics - Press”... whilst my “Politics” UR db is quite another UR db, with again more than 15,000 “items”, and with again more than 1 GB of (squeezed) data, so (re-) combining the two DBs would not really help, since both DBs, even individually, clearly show signs of “SQLite (or then, is it “SQLite in its UR outlining flavor”?) not really being fit for big data”...

I then shared my observations with SQLite’s FTS (see there), in “Tags, and Export” = https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9828/0/tags-and-export-cave-canem-or-whatever-you-might-be-in-awe-of where I listed many of SQLite FTS’s exceptions, whilst also listing four non-exceptions, i.e. °, §, ¦ and ¢, all four of them easily available on my keyboard, whilst not having checked all of similar “special chars” indeed.

This way, in UR at least, but very probably in some other “outliners”, too, and which also rely on SQLite’s FTS functionality, you’ll be able to LEAVE OUT one of the - important, but troublesome - dimensions: out of your - just one-dimensional - “outline”, whilst putting it back “into the game” by e.g. “°cd”, or whatever your individual “tag” my be, written into, e.g., the very first line of the “content” of your “item”, or even at the end of your “item”‘s title, in order to get that important dimension which would otherwise much too much complicate your tree, “°cd” meaning, in the example above, “country: Germany”, ditto for cc = China, cu = U.S., e = Spain, etc., etc., with, in the case of need, some “°cos” for “Countries - Other European countries - Sweden” or “°cas” for “Countries - Asia - South Corea” - you’ll have gotten the denominational system, I suppose.

(And for press clippings, you could introduce a similar system for the origin of the press clipping in question, e.g. “°sf” for “Source country: France”, and the like…)

Then, what will you get by that? You will be able to “filter” by that “tag” (i.e. in UR at least, and in several other “outliners”), i.e., if you will have set the “columns”-to-be-displayed (and their “order” order) accordingsly, you will get a “hit table”, i.e. a list of research results, by “tree order”, of all those “items” which will apply (°c…) to, or come from (°s…) some country, i.e. you will have a geographical filter set now, but you will get the tree as-it-is…

Except that your new “tree” will (and in “tree” order, but without the respective item indentations) be in some search results window, which is quite awful indeed (but better than “nothing”; in UR you then can even edit the “hits”, without the “results lists” vanishing, IF you de-select “highlight the hits within the text”...)...

Some developers tried to do this better, among them the ones of “Maple” (by “Crystal Office”, very different from the much more known “Maple” maths app), and which then, i.e. upon search / “filter”, open another “tab” within the “tree” pane; unfortunately, with “Maple” 8, as well as with “MyInfo” 6, I got to crash the programs within minutes, and on very simple tasks, but then, “Maple” is currently in version 9 (and “MyInfo” in version 7), so I cannot pretend these respective deal breaker prevail (UR is perfectly stable though, and, ironically, MyInfo’s (versions 5 and 6; as said, 7 is the current one) crashes systematically occurred when I tried to use, just some, and very basic, data within MI’s “columns”, which can (i.e. could, in 5 and 6, I don’t have trialed 7) be systematically displayed there, as in a spreadsheet, which is not the case with UR, unfortunately).

Then, lately, I made a very important observation: In most fields, that “other, almost-tree-breaking, at the very least tree-(building-)highly-complicating”, alternative view / dimension” isn’t necessary but for just some items, in special situations, and thus, the above-described tagging seems “ideal” for it, albeit “filtering within the tree pane, instead of within some additional pane” should always be at the users’ fingertips (i.e. by 1-key-toggle) indeed.

On the other hand, the above-mentioned Corona example, and also, in a broader sense, the “Politics” example (almost 20,000 items, classified by countries since otherwise I simply would not have been able “to do” it, within UR’s, or then with any other current “outliner” of my knowledge) are core examples of “use cases”, i.e. areas in which “just apply the additional dimension by tag” simply “isn’t enough”: There, you will need real “pivoting”, as there is, for “data crunchers”, available in MS Excel.

Then, obviously, the software developer will encounter a big problem: They will not know, beforehand, which sub-trees (i.e. parenting for their own sub-tree of multiple sub-trees, that is) the user will need to have “pivot(e)able”, and where such functionality will not be asked for, so they will have to implement it everywhere, which will tend to multiply the tabular data to be maintained by the “outliner” software, even wherever the additional functionality will not be called for.

And that’s obviously that “functionality beyond” in this thread’s title: Nobody, to my knowledge, ever cared for implementing it…

except for, ironically, askSam’s developers, before those, obviously, left the room, and thus left the owner, an old aviation hero at the time, and the marketing chief, some Mr. Goodman, but who obviously wasn’t able to do the (necessary amount of re-) coding by himself, alone with their obvious “mess of code”; considering that they claim to have sold 350,000 (or more) of licenses (and most of them without intermediaries, obviously), that makes 50 million bucks, at the very least, probably much more and even about 100 million, of which I’d very much like to know the whereabouts, since I could change the (IT) world (at the very least), with 100 million…

Now, let’s speak about a fallacy: Most “outliners” - whilst not all of them, but then, the ones that don’t do it, don’t take advantage of it, obviously - don’t differentiate between “folders” and “items”, and “correctly” so, since our file systems’ differentiation between the two concepts more often than not seems arbitrary.

On the other hand, in our “outliners” - and I personally speak of about 350,000 or near 400,000 “items”, spread over some 30 SQLite DBs - since SQLite isn’t “good enough” to “hold it all in just one file” (and that may be, in part, UR’s way of implementing it, but then, other SQLite-backed “outliners” also show quick, sometimes even very early, lack of means for administering large data sets, even way “before” UR stumbles somewhat, so 350,000 divided by 30 does NOT mean that UR just “takes” 10,000, but then, it doesn’t “take” 350,000 either, and much, much less indeed, unfortunately…) - - in our “outliners” then, even most “parent” items are just that, parent items of some sub-items, “siblings”, that would never ever have to be considered as some “pivoted group”, whilst on the other hand, many such “groups” exist indeed, and even every single item might be considered within, not only multiple contexts, but multiple pivotal data representations.

The answer of this enigma - but not the solution to it, too - lies in, from our, nowaday’s point of view now, “early” works of those, not only in their time, “brilliant”, no: genial!, askSam developers’ developments, and which didn’t come thru b/o askSam’s incredibly awful “forms” concept: any new “field” wasn’t possible but within a form for new (sic!) items, and that’s the “detail” that killed askSam.

In fact, as soon as you differentiate between an item’s title’s “field”‘s (i.e. “column”‘s) name (i.e. the name of the table column), the title of the record…

AND THEN ALSO THE CATEGORY NAME IN-BETWEEN THE TWO

- i.e. you just need, in any SQL system, another, intermediate table, with which you can render ANY sql “outliner” as “pivotable” as MS Excel is, for its cell data…

the same unfortunately not being also true for NTFS file system folders and files, since NTFS and other (but not necessarily all) file systems do not assign ID numbers to their elements, neither to their folders nor to their files (so that it lacks the necessary indexing facility).

HENCE

We need, in “outliners”, a new category, call it “category” or whatever pleases you, and which may not necessarily be, but can be, in cases, a specially-formatted, intermediary tree entry, or just, that’s just as good, a specially-formatted, otherwise ordinary, “parent” entry, but of which the special formatting indicates it’s also (i.e. additionally) retrieved and indexed in the special “categories” table…

And then, you just need the necessary pre-sets (i.e. “stored views” for those sub-trees of the global (hopefully Postgres- instead of SQLite) tree, and the necessary pivotal code, and then, pivotal views are nothing more than pre-set views, as any common, today’s “stored search” is, any current “filter” is.

“Outlining” is its own, inherent fallacy, by pretending, by having pretended to us, for some 40 years now, that “outlining” is ONE hierarchy (amended or not, i.e. with some sub-trees “cloned” elsewhere or not), and askSam’s developments around 2000, or even at the expiry of the 20th Century, have amply proven that to every (sub-) “outline” there is, there may be multiple alternative (sub-) “outlines”, you just pre-set, and store, preferably in short, abbreviational “codes”, as I have amply described here in this forum, the respective hierarchy to be displayed.

It goes without saying that if you work in “folders”, you can preserve some manual “order” (within the groups) wherever that makes sense, whilst if you apply such a system just with tags, you will just get (multiple possible) ways of automatic ordering of the elements, but the core message is, you “file”, “work” in some - whichever! - “outline” representation… and next time, you pursue your “filing”, your whatever “work” in whatever alternative “outline” “view”, and then again, you’ll “switch back” to any of the previous “outline views”, or you create new ones which will fit into your “workflow” as well.

As for the “special formatting” mentioned above, and since I amply discussed the necessity of user-specific “tree entry formatting”, I suggest, for “category formatting”, a special symbol, so that “bolding”, “coloring”, “italicizing” and the like will remain available for the individual user’s means (cf. my comments on the awful “factory formats” in Devonthink…).

Then, the user, wary of creating the necessary “categories” for tree-building - and even the term of “pivoting” would then be misleading, since it implies a “natural”, “base” “outline-form”, whilst there is none, taxonomies in themselves being the fundamental fallacy, see? Be it “natural phenomenons”, be it “measures”, be it “consequences”, be it “actors” (in that “scene”), be “countries”, be it “anything”, any relevant dimension in any area:

Software, at the end of the day, should provide you with that functionality beyond, which opens up your range of doing things, by first viewing them differently.

So that you’ll need “°somethingsomething” tags just for “special cases”, in order then to better “weigh” possible FTS (see above) “search results”, before AI steps in and takes over.

In practice, all “dividing”, (“sub-)titling”, “categorizing” “parent(ing)” items should be (more or less automatically, certainly by 1-key attribution in case) also become “categories” (in waiting), the secret here being that their “category name” is NOT also their title, but within your tree, you would have those entries (whenever the “category” is not distinct, as a pure “folder”, and as implied above, that’s not even necessary, whilst in NTFS, it currently is indeed), in the form
SpecialIcon space TitleAsFormattedByUserE.G.France space (and in () and in grey: Category, e.g. Country)
(= 1 line)

And then your preset “tree-building” would create, from “Categories” in/on ANY indentation-level, “totally mixed-up”, “top-down”, “bottom-up” and every which way of combining such concepts, category by category, ANY “outline”, not only from any, alternative “global” pov (e.g. “geographical vs. systematic”), but then also with any “in-between” “alternative detailing / ordering” as you might need in any specific “use case” - those “use cases” differing by the individual “sub-trees”’ requirements or by those of individual DBs… but then, believe me, here again: Some one-and-only Postgres db, even spread over several physical devices, would be oh so much more welcome than multiple SQLite DBs…

“Outlining”‘s (and now 40 years’) fallacy consisted in not distinguishing between the tree’s sub-titles’ NAMES and their possible CATEGORY NAMES, and that’s why - whilst askSam should have been our teacher, in its final version 7’s help file it’s all written down IF you’re able to read between the lines -, even today, we (? I!) know of no “outliner” with “alternative trees”: with the (sub-) titles (and their IDs) you can’t do it indeed, you can’t do it indeed, but with their - “implied” category names, i.e. with ___which category’s individual value then___ they represent, it’ll all become easy, technically AND conceptually… including “cloning” of sub-trees, their “clones” just being included within those new “meta categories” or whatever we could call them, “here” and wherever they belong, too:

From the “taxonomy” pov, your car assurances belong within “assurances”, but you will create the clone of that “group” or whatever we call it, in “our cars”, which will in turn be a (cloned) sub-group (or whatever you call it) of (“natural”, taxonomy-wise) “group” “transport(s)”.

And yes, the above doesn’t deal with ease-and-speed of “multiple-filing”, and it’s obvious that the latter problem should be resolved by - before AI takes over - “individualized” “selections to click” of allegedly appropriate secondary filing targets, individualized in the sense of you first, in your “general inbox”, typing some char, e.g. “p” for “politics”, you getting a list of countries, with your “standard” countries all 1-char = 1-key, and other countries 2-key, in the above-described “(en)coding”, even multiple entries being allowed, e.g. df meaning “Germany” AND “France”, and then you type a comma, which will aim your subsequent entries to another part of the displayed info list, and in which you will, again by 1-, 2- or 3-char “codes”, either memorized, for your standard “filings”, or then read from = looked up in the lists displayed, determine further, “systematic” filing targets (with commata in-between, for your kb entries), and another comma will get you to more filing tables, non-standard within your current situation, and any “return” will process your “filing” entries; for my UR filings and for “standard” filing situations, I have even realized, within AHK, such half-automated ways… (It’s obvious though that any distribution of your filing targets upon more than just one db unnecessarily and awfully complicates things…)

Of course, “consumers” of this forum - to call them “contributors” would be a blatant lie for most of them - are free to shout, “Zettelkasten, Zettelkasten, Zettelkasten”, just as totally incompetent politicians here all over Western Europe constantly claim their minimum of competence to political thingies, defending their 300,000 bucks-and-more p.a. emoluments, by uttering the “necessary” “key terms”, but at the end of the day, software development should not be about facilitating paradigms of the past, considering that yes, searching for ID numbers’s faster on a pc or a Mac than it was in the card box and drawers age, but be about delivering THAT FUNCTION BEYOND.

“Die Stropers” is a tragedy: It’s about a human being which, with all toil, will never be able to cope with the expectations of some “environment”, dying anyway, just not as quickly as their outcast, literally sacrified victim who gives up.

When I said, in the one link above, with “°something”, you can (I left out, sorry: “in a way”), replace XML elements, that wasn’t entirely correct, since both askSam “fields” (just not for outline building, as explained before: then just the very first one), and XML elements, allow you to then even search for one of several elements, whilst in UR and other SQLite-backed “outliners”, you would have to write °ar, °av, for being then able to retrieve different, “r” OR “v”, values for attribute “a”, there’s no “r or v in a” then…

But that’s details; as for their “real possibilities”, current software developers fail, the ones who dare charge “subscriptions” as well as the much more modest ones.

They lack inspiration, and that to the point of not even being able to steal the core from genial ancestors. They seriously think that me-too’s good enough, even when it’s sub-standard.

And, with all due respect, “standard” is, at any time, what exists, be it Twain or Faulkner quality for modern writing, or then askSam for “outlining” in the 21st Century: stepping behind, and wanting to be paid? Become honorable: open a fries stall!

(And then, Die Stropers is a tragedy because they discarded the wrong boy.)