Amazing new discovery

Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 20, 2011 at 01:11 PM

Ah Graham, you did make me laugh! You’re quite right, so many promising projects fall by the wayside. But Yaroslav has kindly confirmed that he does have a roadmap (including a collaborative version, eventually), and he’s also got a very nice Error report function set up in the software (I’ve come across a number of minor issues when searching). In my experience, programmers who invite user feedback with this degree of efficiency are less likely to drop their development work. Nevertheless, many a promising product has vanished in the deeps of time.

What I particularly like about this product is its sheer speed, and - as Jerome has remarked - the very elegant window management. More advanced file preview would be nice, and spellchecking is, I think, an essential next function (plus all sorts of little author-friendly tweaks such as e.g. word/character count, export templates, note templates and so on). But as you say, it’s still only version 1.0, and it’s an impressive start. I don’t usually get very excited by a new product, but there’s something about the sensible design and stability of Smereka that has caught my imagination. I like OneNote too, but it’s a cumbersome thing that relies too much (IMHO) on the Windows Search function to be regarded as a truly independent piece of software. Whereas Smereka relies on widgets that could easily be used for cross-platform development (apart from Visual Basic, of course), ? la Writers Cafe.

Besides, conceptually I’m currently working on the Ultimate Information Manager, and I’d love to assemble a team prepared to take it on… but more on that anon. The concept is (a) collaborative and (b) pretty darn complex! so I’ve still got a lot of work to do just in terms of drawing up the specs. Apart from anything else, I hate software (pace OneNote) that LOOKS complex. I prefer it to BE complex, but LOOK really simple! Which is probably another reason I like Smereka.

Cheers,
Bill