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Where are the exciting developments?
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Posted by Randall Shinn
Jan 22, 2009 at 05:37 PM
Chris Thompson wrote:
>The Mac environment is still going strong. OmniFocus 2.0 is in development,
>OmniOutliner 4.0 is (finally) in development. The Hit List was just released. Circus
>Ponies Notebook 3.0 was just released three months ago (seriously, that’s become one
>impressive application!). Curio gets frequent revisions.
>
>Journler was always
>more shareware than a commercial product, and it had too many good competitors for the
>developer to keep going with it.
>
An interesting aspect of this list of software is the issue of synchronization. OmniFocus functions well with MobileMe. The files for OmniOutliner, The Hit List, Circus Ponies Notebook, and Curio can all be placed in iDisk or Drop Box, and thereby be synced between different computers. (So far, for me, Drop Box [free] seems considerably faster.)
Journler seems difficult to synch in this way. A few people have apparently made it work with Drop Box, but others found it wasn’t reliable. You can synch the files using a program like ChronoSync, but it means remembering to do it, and carrying a USB drive. Together synches via Mobile Me, but it seems to still have some issues with that. (I’ve had problems, and I’ve read about others with this issue. It too can be reliably synched with something like ChronoSync, as long as the program is closed.)
OmniFocus seems to have the synch issue worked out well with its database. Together seems to still be working this out. I can understand how hard this would be to do when your database has multiple files, as compared to programs where you only have to sync a single file. For me, being able to sync over the Internet is a wonderful convenience, and this seems particularly true when you are talking about software that you use to manage projects and keep daily notes about projects. (Long-term storage items are not so likely to need onging synching.)
Randall
Posted by Chris Thompson
Jan 22, 2009 at 06:06 PM
Emacs is a text editing program with a very long history (26+ years of development I think). It’s most popular on Unix computers but is available for virtually any platform. The distinctive thing about Emacs is that it’s built on top of a programming language, and over the years people have built all sorts of customizations for it (web browser modes, email client modes, diary modes, various outlining modes, etc.). A good analogy would be the way that President’s Planner and other applications were built on top of Lotus Agenda.
org-mode is one of those modes. It seems to have started as just an outliner with some task/date/calendaring support, but it’s grown into a kind of Swiss army knife of outliners/PIMs.
In terms of outlining features, it’s got:
- hoisting, multiple views
- footnote support
- sections of the outline can have columns (different parts of the outline can have different columns)
- calculations can be done in column cells
- tagging of individual outline items
- exporting as documents to HTML (and a few others, e.g. LaTeX).
In terms of task management, it has:
- categories and priorities (of course you can use tags too)
- the ability to create multiple task states (e.g. TODO/DONE, READ/SUMMARIZE/DONE, TODO/WAITING/DONE) and use them as appropriate in the same outline
- strong date and calendaring support for tasks
- concept of deadlines and another concept of scheduled items
- repeating tasks
- filtering views by effort required
- aggregation of tasks from multiple files into an agenda
- time tracking, automatic generation of reports as tables in the outline.
There’s a bunch more. More than just the list of features though, a lot of the features have impressive depth. For instance, for repeating tasks, there’s an ability to create a task of the type “Call Dad” which is scheduled for every two weeks on a Sunday, and if missed, will carry forward until you do it, but after you do it, will push it forward not just two weeks from the day you mark it done, but to the Sunday after that (because you might always want to make that type of personal call on a Sunday). This last little bit is a form of recurrence I haven’t seen in any other program. Of course it supports standard recurrences to (repeat every two weeks after scheduled, repeat every two weeks after marked done). And virtually everything is customizable. It’s basically a toolbox to build the kind of PIM you want. Like Ecco, but more customizable. The underlying file format is plain text.
The downside to org-mode is that it’s built within Emacs, which is crusty and bizarre (e.g. windows are called “frames”, subareas in windows are called “splits”). Without the Org menu it would be impenetrable for amateurs. I think it’s worth learning though for PIM fanatics. I remember feeling the same way about DOS Agenda.
The manual is here… it discusses some of the features:
http://orgmode.org/org.pdf
—Chris
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>
>I looked at the org-mode web site and I
>have to say I didn’t really get it. First of all, I don’t know what emacs is. If you have a
>few moments, I’d appreciate it if you could provide a little more information about
>org-mode. Thank you!
Posted by Manfred
Jan 22, 2009 at 06:13 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Yes, Connected Text is a fine program, but development on it hasn?t exactly progressed at a rapid pace in the past two years.
Well, I would beg to differ. Since January of 2007 ConnectedText has gone from Version 2.0.0.9 to Version 3.1. While many of these versions seem like incremental increases, many companies would have made them major versions, and they would now be at 5.8 ()or something like that.
Some of the (for me) most important developments:
* a USB version and topic redirection (March 2007)
* a new highlight plugin (June 2007)
* template manager (July 2007)
* Filter manage (August 2008)
* Footnotes (October 2007)
* Autolinking and a new Table of contents View, which allows intinsic outlining of documents (October 2007)
* Outlines (extrinsic outliner for topics) (October 2007)
* Autobackup to Text files (April 2008)
* semantic functions of properties and attribute (April 2008)
* new functions for properties (later in April 2008)
* Outline export to HTML (June 2008)
* Outline export to Freemind (and printing of outlines) (August 2008)
* Summaries of properties and attributes (September 2008)
* Outlines can be printed with linked text included (December 2008)
* Outlines can be exported to text (December 2008)
* Support of folding in editor (December 2008)
* Macros and Buttons (December 2008)
* 12 new macros (later in December 2008)
* URLs that can be used by other applications (December 2008)
This does not include some of the many improvements and changes that were not as important to me.
In any case, the last two years have changed the application to such an extent that it is a completely different “animal” now, with sophisticated outlining and semantic extensions that works well with other applications.
I continue to bet on it just BECAUSE of its RAPID development.
Manfred
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 22, 2009 at 07:00 PM
Manfred wrote:
>Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>>Yes, Connected Text is a fine program, but development on it
>hasn?t exactly progressed at a rapid pace in the past two years.
I stand corrected… and happily so. Thanks, Manfred.
Steve
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 22, 2009 at 07:02 PM
Chris Thompson wrote:
>Emacs is a text editing program with a very long history (26+ years of development I
>think). It’s most popular on Unix computers but is available for virtually any
>platform.
Chris,
Thank you for the detailed answer to my request for more information about org-mode… now I even understand the unusual name. You’ve definitely made it sound worth investigating further.
Steve Z.