Outlines of outlines

Posted by Derek Cornish
Oct 6, 2006 at 12:02 AM

Graham -

Thanks for casting an eye over my description of problems with Zoot file-linking. There are so many ways to do (roughly) the same thing in Zoot that it is not always clear which action will achieve what result. The sync-ing with Windows folders does work neatly, though.

> I have been usiing Infoselect for a few months now, instead of Zoot.

I used IS for many years when it was a little DOS post-it notes type of program - but very versatile. I re-installed it a few months ago, but can’t remember whether I got it to run under XP. In any case I doubt whether it would be much better than a simple Windows two-pane note-taker nowadays. I haven’t tried out the IS/Windows version you use, mainly because they don’t seem to have a trial version. I like to see what I am getting. It’s clear, though, that it has become a much more powerful program. As others have mentioned in this forum, MS-OneNote (the 2007 version) is also looking pretty enticing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_OneNote).

Most of my activities are text-based, however. Although we used a lot of photos, tables, graphs, etc. for the last project, I’m not planning another one like that. So while I have looked at other software (e.g., Ultra Recall), RTF and ability to store images internally haven’t been priorities. Given my modest requirements Zoot remains a very powerful HQ for information-management - hence my continuing exploration of its linking abilities. I do hanker after an integrated outliner for its editor-pane, however, so even for text-work it has its limitations for my purposes.

Like others here I regularly do the rounds of competing software (CRIMP twinge: IdeaMason looks interesting), but the more often I come back to Zoot and use it again the more I admire it. There is something positively virtuous about its focus on the text…

Derek