Curio 28 has been released (Mac only)

Posted by Amontillado
Feb 9, 2024 at 12:53 PM

Fanboy? Not at all. One should be enthusiastic about tools.

Curio may have evolved some. If you want to type a text note that’s 10,000 lines long, it won’t be that much different than using a Markdown or RTF editor. These days a text box grows and scrolls vertically as needed. You set the width of a text figure, Curio scales the height to contain your text.

I don’t write drafts in Curio, unless you count working on embedded word processing documents. Curio is a lot like Obsidian’s Canvas, except with almost no effort it has a pleasant, well produced appearance.

It’s not for everything. I have some large document collections that would be poor candidates for Curio. Just like I wouldn’t try to store a library of PDF’s in MindNode, which is a fine but focused application, I wouldn’t put a thousand PDF’s in Curio.

For replacing a wall full of sticky notes, it’s cool. Mind mapping in Curio does more than many mind map applications, although some of the features don’t jump out. I didn’t realize at first that every node can have file attachments, a text note, and other things.

Curio was also sort of on the shelf for a long time. Things that got me back into using it were enhancements like synced text figures, where a single note can appear in multiple places, or a mind map node can appear in more than one mind map.

The biggest drawback is probably the lack of an iOS version. That’s a deal-killer for many. I don’t like cloud sharing, not that I have anything to hide other than embarrassment over crummy writing, and I prefer my laptop to my iPad. I rarely touch the iOS version of any application, so no iOS is no big deal for me.

Later today I’m going to fire up Tinderbox again and see if I can make my peace with agents, edicts, stamps, lions, and tigers, oh my. ;-)

Rausch wrote:
I tried using Curio for quite a while as it looked so good on paper: but
>I gave up a few years ago mainly because of your point 2 on the lack of
>a proper text editor. This lack of easy (and what i would consider
>genuine) notes.
> >I’d been playing with Tinderbox at that time but dropping Curio led me
>to use it properly and with the changes to Tinderbox over the past few
>years (I started on 5, it’s now on 9.7) it’s become both even more
>powerful but also easier to use. I’m a relatively unsophisticated user,
>but I use it every day and couldn’t do my research without it.
> >The ‘lack of documentation’ has become much less true than it was:
>Tinderbox has a really helpful user base and there is now a whole set of
>how-to videos from a user who has charted his use from causal to expert,
>and there’s a lot of tips and tricks posts too.
> >(Apologies if this is beginning to sound a bit fan-boy).
>