Why isn't notetaking software better?

Posted by Derek Cornish
Sep 24, 2006 at 10:12 PM

Reading Cassius’s “From Jot+ to ???” got me thinking more generally about notetaking programs, so I thought I had better start a new thread. I’d like to jump in with some general comments about what, for better or worse, have become known as “two-pane outliners” - essentially note-taking programs the titles of which are displayed in the form of a hierarchical tree in one pane, with the corresponding notes in the other one.

There are so many of these programs - e.g., MyInfo, WhizFolders, Treepad, Jot+, etc., etc.,etc. - that it is difficult to differentiate between them - in part, no doubt, because they make use of many commonly-available “bolt-on” elements. When considered alongside free programs like KeyNote (http://www.tranglos.com/free/keynote.html) or similarly free word-processors like RoughDraft (http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd.htm) it is often hard to see (1) what value is being added by the commercial products; and (2) and how different they all really are from one another.

Last month I carried out another glum trawl through some of the better-known programs to see what was happening. The answer seems to be “not much”. It’s true that one can occasionally point to useful differences: MyInfo’s .HEAD import feature is one example, and WhizFolders’ upcoming “copy universal link feature” (see the thread on “Whizfolders and graphical front ends” back in July) promises to be very helpful, and may temporarily differentiate it from the other clones.

Overall, though, I have been rather disappointed with these programs. This is probably a bit unfair. After all, I already use Zoot, a free-form database program that covers many of the PIM or note-taking and note-organizing features that I need. If I weren’t using Zoot I might be looking for one of the two-pane notetakers, although I’d probably plump for something more like MyBase or UltraRecall. As the main defect of Zoot is its lack of a rich text editor, the new Whizfolders, with its promised universal links is the only one that directly adds much value to what I already have.

Even so, the sector does look rather moribund. What is really wrong (IMO) with all these two-pane notetakers is the lack of a decent single-pane outlining facility within the notes pane of the software. Suggestions and calls for such an obvious feature fall upon deaf ears in software forums, and one has to conclude that this is mainly because there is no easy way of implementing it with available rich text editors. The only notes programs I know of that have such a feature are ndxCards, MS OneNote and InfoSelect. Given the drawbacks of two of them - InfoSelect (lack of a demo; high upgrading price) and ndxCards (oddly archaic interface, to my mind) - that leaves MS poised to sweep the general two-pane note-taking field with its new version, even though its outlining features so far are rudimentary.

What has gone wrong with this software sector? Or am I just experiencing one of those jaded plateaux that are to be expected when in the grip of longterm CRIMP…?

Derek