Multiple DB Search Awaiting the In-Built Function

[schferk]

I

Since I had spoken here in this forum about the possibility to search multiple UR db's, but then refrained from sharing my know-how, being treated as a machine pouring out bla-bla, by a guy calling himself "dollar bill", you had to do without my findings in the meantime.

Since today another dollar-only driven guy on bitsdujour made me so angry that I simply HAD to give away my information, there, and since there are indeed people who steal from one site, giving info as theirs on another one some moments afterwards (= Alexander D. took my UR-as-3-pane-outliner idea from this forum, in order to present it within that coffee table round "outlinersoftware-com" without giving credit), I prefer to present it here, myself.

I'll spare you all the details - in fact, I've taken notes of my experiences with all those programs in detail, in order to fight any claims -, but allow me to remember you of a crucial thing:

Before searching multiple UR db's, in order to have reliable results (i.e. to avoid false finds), you must, of course, empty the db's recycle bins, and even do a "Compact and Repair" - on the other hand, any UR-integrated inter-db's search function has to overcome exactly those difficulties, and that might be the reason integration of that command takes Kinook that long.

II

I don't want to be censored for being against the common (whilst idiot imo) R.I.P. idea, so I weighten my words: Today is a day on which we poor Windows users can take a deep breath: Slates will become Windows 8, with reasonable power, with our usual Windows programs (= UR, etc.), with intelligent integration into your corporate IT environment, without the need to endlessly translate from one format into another and back again, without the need for developers to spare their time on a second, third, fourth format for an endless row of new "portable devices", instead of concentrating their programming efforts on the optimization of the core functions of their given programs, and with - speaking slates again - 8 to 9 hours running time (= preferably more, of course ; if this paragraph remembers some similar but more to the point on welt-de, today, no theft, that's mine, citing yourself without giving credit must be allowed then).

III

So here's my BDJ post, finally :

http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/xyplorer-lifetime-license/#comments29049

Yes, this might be a great piece of software, but I feel the urgent need to intervene.

The guy who has the "strong feeling" that a very equilibrium-driven comparison between XYplorer and Xplorer2 was a scam, made me more than angry, so I'll give some very valuable info here that took me 2 days of hard way to gather:

I'm not happy with Xplorer2 because of its looks, and some weird things; tree does not function as it does in most other programs, "Go to recent folder" just brings a list to make your choice from (good) but is not doubled by another command that just brings the recent folder, one-key; in the same way, "Copy/Shift to last target" commands do NOT do what they promise but open a dialogue to choose from: again, these commands do MORE than what they promise, but do NOT do WHAT they promise to do; Xplorer2 should, then, discriminate and retain those commands, by other names, but should offer also exactly the commands promised, one-key.

So, I'm not happy with Xplorer2, and notwithstanding, I'll buy next time it'll appear here (and I'll take the effort to put a copy of my post on their latest offering, so that Nikos, it's developer, will be informed of my discussing his program, and I'll give my real mail address).

So why do I prefer Xplorer2?

Because I tried to find a program being able to do serious SEARCH, not only for the abc...z English characters, but also for European language äöüéèÃ*ê and many more such latin chars, not speaking of East European chars.

You might suppose this wasn't any problem: You're wrong. Most dedicated search programs are NOT capable of doing such searches in any reliable way, NOT Copernic (= on offer here yesterday, and I shut my mouth on its incapability, my motivation not being to harm the owner of this site, but to offer right directions in software development), and not dtSearch, with its 200 dollars price tag, either (= yes, that's incredible, but it's the simple truth)).

Out of about 20 or more dedicated searchers (= with or without building up an index), there is NOT ONE such a program.

(But for all other means, the FREE Agent Ransack is fantastic! It's the free version of the 40 dollars File Locator Pro, but which also fails on the given task, so for any no-special-chars search, Agent Ransack is preferable to any other program.)

So I tried the "File Commanders" category of software offerings, and heureka!

TWO file commanders, out of a bunch of perhaps 12 or 15 I tried, do indeed offer searching of special chars in your files and give reliable results:

It's Xplorer2 and TotalCommander.

Both of them ain't that good, GUI-wise, but Xplorer2 even has a "search in the search results" function, and has Boolean search, when TC doesn't have any of those (= Xplorer has "AND", "OR", "NOT", etc., and even "NEAR", where TC's got only "NOT").

(Besides, even for "normal" abc...z chars searches, Xplorer2 is 5 times faster on my system than XYplorer is, and I even "succeeded" in making XYplorer CRASH several times with just "normal" searches; don't expect the overpriced and ridicully-licensed Directory Opus to reliably search for special chars, but it's got "search in search results functionality" at the very least.)

Thus, there are just TWO programs out there, from several dozens tried and that should be supposed to be able to do it, that really can (= by checking the UTF-8 option in both, of course) search your files for European chars in a reliable way, Xplorer2 and TC.

Thus, European customers've got EVERY interest in trying out both, and encourage their developers to apply some better GUI design to their fine progs. (Of course, both developers are Europeans (= Nikos being Greek, Ghisler being Swiss), so they "needed" to implement this function for their own needs, but then, for American developers, we other Europeans out there, with our good money to spend on their products, don't we not count enough? And for American scholars, searching for "European" chars could be rather helpful, too, in many ways. I'm not touting European products over American ones, I'm just saying, for searching European chars, two - European - products are reliable, whereas NO other product I've tested, does it, be it European, American, or of whatever descent.)

These are FACTS, then, not "spam for Xplorer2" or other crap that id*** out there tries to make us believe.

(and:)

http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/xplorer/#comments29051

F F Since today somebody in the current XYplorer offering here at bitsdujour made me very angry, I was driven to give some comment on Xplorer2, and thus, I want Nikos to be informed of it, so I post it also here.

(...) (same as above)

[schferk]

With regards to point II above, I must correct an error. In fact, I had read this IW article from Sept 14, 2011

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/231601410

that had led me to believe Win 8 and Win 8 slates would have that big advantage over Apple and the Google's Java system what is it called again, that you could use, within reasonable limits (= UR would be available, whereas Macromedia FreeHand would not, to give an example), your Win applics on your future Win slates ; of course the future of UR and competing programs will depend of such portability of your data from your desktop to the edge of the desk of your customer ; if there isn't such a portability, two-way and without any fuss, inferior progs like Evernote et al. will overtake, which cannot be in our interest.

Just one day later, IW published the "correction" paper (which I missed at that time)

http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/231601473

which states that applics for the X86 processors will NOT run on the awaited usual Win 8 slates being run by the for-those-systems usual ARM processor.

Thus, we are to fear :

- Primo the appearance of genuine Win 8 slates, at par with Holy Stevie's offerings, slick, 10 hours' running time on the road, etc. ... but NOT with UR, etc., and hence as useless as the iPad is ; secondo the appearance of some not so genuine Win 8 touch-operated X86-driven keyboardless portable pc's, thick as a telephone directory and weighting 3 times more than the genuine variety, but offering 3 hours' independence from AC/DC... and costing 2 times the price of the real thing - that will be for us, running UR, etc. (There have been such devices mainly from Win Vista on, that for the above-mentioned reasons almost nobody wanted to buy, which farther augmented their prices ; at this moment, you can easily sell heavily used touch-notepads for 4 times the price you bought them for 2 years ago.)

- Primo the lack of interest of developers to go into the necessary doubled programming efforts, hence the disappearance / fall into oblivion of many of today's serious offerings ; secondo the divertion of developers' programming efforts into that necessary transposition / need of totally new programming from scratch on in order to avoid the first alternative ; tertio running with the second alternative and caused by it, both only rudimentary functionality in those new offerings for the ARC platform, and total impoverishment of development resources for the X86 versions of all those surviving programs.

So, future's bleak for Win users, and for once, Holy Stevie's NOT responsible for that desaster, but Win leaders are. They should be whipped 24 hours a day, every remaining day of their life, like the Saudis do with their enemies in their dungeons, but since that unfortunately won't take place, the only viable alternative is :

Accept the necessity that there will now be TWO mandatory operating systems, instead of just one, with acceptance of the above-mentioned side-effects (= no many more functional goodies within the old system variety, and sheer functional bleakness within the new), AND with the decision to go, for that second system, NOT with those Win enemies of us that are responsible for that state of affairs, but with the Google Java system that's "neutral" to our demise.

In all evidence, it was TOO MUCH to ask Win developers to strip off that bloated operating system so that it would have been suitable for just the normal things, on a Win slate, running UR, etc., which would have been perfectly possible had those enemies of us other priorities than just making the max of money for themselves and their shareholders, and all the worse for their loyal customers -

no, it's US now, loyal Win customers, that'll have to strip our expectations to our applications' functionality to the bare minimum instead, for many years ahead.

You know what their spying program (= one of their spying programs ?)'s called :

"Windows Genuine Advantage" - ho, ho, ho.

Thus, I would so much like to exhort to go to Apple, in order to punish the Win people, but alas, and as we all now, Holy Stevie's NOT been that visionary genius the press wants him to be

- "Der Spiegel" 's (= legendary German news magazine being, in the Sixties / Seventies, by far the best in the world, having since long become a lifestyle magazine, to which Vogue Uomo might be preferable after all) cover story after the man's death : "The man who invented the future" - and they do it for free, they don't even have to be bribed for pouring out such mountains of crap -,

but just was the best marketing man alive (while alive), who also decided, in order to maximize fulfillness of his financial interests, to decide AGAINST portability of (even rather basic) Mac progs to the iHype platform.

Again, those questions are crucial for the industry as a whole ; appboys LIKE to be treated that way, and Win users flee to the cloud ; the Win world is, thanks to the grandiose stupidity of its decision-making people, BREAKING APART.

Take over, Oracle.

[quant]

"... which states that applics for the X86 processors will NOT run on the awaited usual in 8 slates being run by the for-those-systems usual ARM processor."

i'd think there would still be some compatibility mode where one could run x86 apps ...

for me, no reason to do any win upgrade, hopefully for another few years down the line ... i'm still running xp on both viliv s5 and thinkpad x61 tablet, where i run my UR databases

[schferk]

quant, forums thruout the web are full of people doing all sort of cloud things to have instant access to their data anywhere ; any software developer in the information management sector MUST make available such instant access, any which way he can ; your lenovo x61 is a very fine thing, and you've realized the best intermediate solution to data access on the road but it does NOT give instant access everywhere to your data, its handling isn't just simple enough, and there's always the Win starting phase, before anything can be accessed, and not speaking of its NOT being handy 24 hours a day, whilst the iPad, if we like it or abhorr it, IS at your fingertips around the clock.

There is of course not a single serious outlining software available for Win and for any real leightweight tablet, or any "same data format" solution, and, unfortunately, be sure that it won't be UR that'll be present in this market soon - perhaps it never will be.

It had been you, quant, who asked, sort of, "why backing you since you're leaving anyway ?", when in fact, up to your statement I'd leave, it had never ever occured to me that leaving'd be in my interest.

But I've come, after considering your remark, to the conclusion that here with UR and zero backing for my ideas, UR's basic philosophy of doing it all in one big file would never be of real excellent putting into work, all those cloning / favorites / tabs / hoisting / whatever substitute elements notwithstanding :

If you've got some 80,000 items like me (and a 1,000 or so new items to be integrated each month), any system putting it all into one big bag isn't a solution - and thus, in any corporate environment, that idea is doomed also -, since your management efforts within that big bag just'll become much too heavy... and helpless, in the end.

Yes, you can optimize by heavy cloning of various parts, but to put it simply, normal brains, like mine, won't follow ! I.e., you'll stay with your organizational chaos within your head, even if you've tried to flatten out somewhat within your data base : Your memory and imagination simply cannot realize your multiple intervowen clustering efforts within the prog - which is to say, normal minds do NOT function in such a narrowly clustering way if effective / let alone. (And that heavy spider web producing within monster Personal Brain databases, well...)

The solution as I see it, as much for thinking enhancement / organizational backing of your decision making as for corporate environmental needs, lies within fractionizing your data as much as possible (i.e. self-contained outlines, might they have 50 or 3,000 items in every given case, self-containment being the key word here), and then dumping those parts into clusters being managed within a super level, as much for project management as for reference and archiving needs.

In my information management system back in 1998 which I realized then with the (inferior and buggy, then specializing elsewhere) ToolBook scripting language, I had such a zero level management system, as "just another list", prominently displayed within the upper left corner of my screen, above the first of multiple possible trees / subtrees - today, 13 years later, not only nobody in the whole industry has realized such a super tree, but also, any developer to whom I try to explain my ideas, is so much lacking any interest in them (the "not developed here" phenomenon) that I don't even get into any discussion of them which would've been the bare minimum for me.

Thus, the most basic (but very intuitive and utmost stable) program of its kind, ActionOutline, does very fine for me, as soon as I get that necessary super tree on top of it ; okay, I won't have the expanding function like here in UR, but when I make some remarks how to optimize that UR-inbuilt function, kinook doesn't even answer me, and if I want to fiddle with external macros to replace the expanding sets from one language to the other, from one data environment to another, I can do that in that (free) German text expander.

So, all those external progs like PB, ListPro, etc., they all do simple hyperlinking at best, whilst not one of them, to my knowledge, does MULTIPLE hyperlinking : one click, and loading a group of files into memory at the same time.

Of course, with scripting, you can do such a thing, as said in my other post some days ago, you just format the link list in the form "a.suffix" "b.suffix".... by macro, pour that (short or lengthy) line into the "open..." dialog, Enter, and you're done.

Doing such a system internally would be much more elegant, not only esthetics-wise, but especially since any renaming, deleting, splitting up or even physical moving of files would be checked and processed automatically, without bothering the user / the multiple users within a corporate environment.

But no, developers just don't see it, and from kinook, I didn't get the slightest (positive or other) reaction to all this either.

But that's why on outlinersoftware.com there's so much crimping : Why choose sophisticated software if even the most basic things are absent in them, and won't perhaps ever implemented into them ?

Since there isn't any zero level but within the main tree, in UR, if you realize it there, artificially, by this getting a very inferior sub- main tree (and do it by tabs / hoisting or by the related items pane as "main" pane, no big difference), why consider UR (or any other competitor with the same missing basics) as "superior", when, on the other hand, with just a little bit macro works, you can build your own really superior information management system, even with a poor sibling like AO ?

Or, to put it simply, why cope with an elaborate system intended to be self-contained but being highly insufficient, when, in order to do serious work, you'll have to put your own programming efforts upon it anyway ? As soon as you have to do combinations, it's important for the parts to be integrated to stay simple, isn't it ?

And let's be honest : I didn't get some kind of "well done" for my "UR as 3-pane outliner" but by one single person, whilst in several weeks now, there have been THREE THOUSAND accesses to my thread, which proves how deeply the need for a zero level on top of any information management system is felt by lots of people. But as said, if you do the main tree a surrogate zero level tree, you're up with the related items pane as your main tree, and that's awful working in the end - trying to do serious work in this way held me back for some weeks, but it's to no avail.

This is not to say UR doesn't have its advantages, for those files where you need several looks upon your data indeed : your customers by region, by importance, by name, whatever... but then, doing multiple clones for that ? This is to say wherever you need the three-dimensional look into SEPARATE items, tagging systems should be considered superior to clones.

And then, there's always askSam for that : You can built up different, virtual trees on the spot by taking field contents in different order, e.g. your customers by region, then by importance, or by turnover, then by turnover of a special goods category, whatever - (It's just the building up of such trees that, even by macro, is weird, and no storage of different such tree designs up to now, perhaps never.) - it's evident that no such flexibility can be realized with multiple cloning.

So much for the three-dimensional look into separate items, as said. But, and herein lies the secret of the superiority of my system design for information management in general : Most needs for a three-dimensional look upon your material (except, as said, for customer / prospects databases, spare parts databases, and other naturally fractionized but similarly constructed material) are NOT on the item level,

but on a yet-aggregated cluster level : hence the need of a "project management" / "different working environments" zero level above your main tree.

Yes, do it within your main tree, as UR does, and you'll get an almost unintelligeable, impenetrable jungle. But as kinook notified me here, months ago, "we've got too many panes already as it is". (I'm citing from memory.)

I'm not willing to think my ways within such a jungle, and my ideas are scaleable, whereas the all-in-one-dump idea's not.

And, to come back to the original topic, having a super tree with just references to one / some / many outliner's trees (of which you'll have perhaps stored 500 in total) on your 800 g slate'll come easy, no heavy processing involved, thus immediate availability of all your stuff everywhere, 24 hours a days, even w/o ac/dc - now compare with a big UR system where on every slight change, might it be the suppression or addition of a comma, heavy processing'll take place.

My purist system isn't but scaleable up to the needs of a 100,000 employees' company (and they certainly have got systems alike already), but it's also downgradeable up to the slightest slates available soon, be it with AO or any other similar and acceptable outliner.

It's the architecture, stup**. (I'm citing from memory.)

[quant]

sorry, you lost me ... you post so many things in one post, it's very difficult to reply

"your lenovo x61 is a very fine thing, and you've realized the best intermediate solution to data access on the road but it does NOT give instant access everywhere to your data, its handling isn't just simple enough, and there's always the Win starting phase, before anything can be accessed, and not speaking of its NOT being handy 24 hours a day, whilst the iPad, if we like it or abhorr it, IS at your fingertips around the clock."

1. when I'm on the road, i use viliv s5, it's up from standby in 3seconds.
2. I can do more with my viliv s5 and full blown operating system than anyone can do with their ipad toy. i have the same UR db on both systems, with a simple copy from one system to another, i don't need to worry about any security cloud issues.
3. UR is stable, has templates, saved instant searches, plus many more features, it's really just a powerfull frontend to stable database backend, i'm happy with it. i don't need to waste time crimping and testing every new outliner or PIM there is. i have work to do, and UR is helping immensely, it's all i need :)

"If you've got some 80,000 items like me (and a 1,000 or so new items to be integrated each month), any system putting it all into one big bag isn't a solution - and thus, in any corporate environment, that idea is doomed also -, since your management efforts within that big bag just'll become much too heavy... and helpless, in the end."

I don't have 80k items in UR, true ... however I have that many or more files on my file system, fully indexed ... again it works perfectly fine for me ... whatever i need to find, it's there within seconds ... and if it's something crucial, something i can build/extend and interlink with my information/knowledge and i need access 24/7 to - it goes to UR ... that's it.

nothing is perfect, we have to work with what is available. we have work to do, and we have to deliver, at least i have to :) . it's very simple really, find tool that's useful for you, and use it.

sorry, i still didn't get your 3 pane outliner in UR ...

[schferk]

quant, the Viliv S5 - being from 2009 and not being sold anymore (except second-hand or from obscure sources) has got a lousy processor and a 4,8" (no, this is not my joke, whilst being one indeed) screen, so don't make us believe you'll be happy with it searching your UR database.

"I don't have 80k items in UR, true ... however I have that many or more files on my file system, fully indexed " - you have work to do, no time for crimping, no time for real discussion : I accept that from you, but not from information management system developers since my discussion contributions are core to their business, or should be if they took their business serious, not only from the financial rewards point of view, but also from that other point of view, not only pretending to offer a professional program, but to enhance it up to the point of being priceless, and not by adding various goodies, but by rethinking the architecture - and that's lacking, everywhere (except perhaps for very big corporate things I don't have knowledge of) - even PB is crippleware as they say (and I'm not speaking of the collaborative functions withheld from it).

Everybody who carefully rereads my post, and then rereads your sentence, "I don't have 80k items in UR, true ... however I have that many or more files on my file system, fully indexed " - and who might have a minimum of IQ -, will immediately see that your sentence is PROOF to the utility and necessity of what I've developed here and elsewhere, before, and that my thinking goes in that direction, how to combine those scattered sources, in ways that will be MORE useful than indexing / search only.

Your system of relying on (indexed) searching only, with "important things" being recollected in a separate "one-for-all" database but which for you only serves as sort of a "special collection", is a hybrid system from which you can work, and even big corporations have got, some of them, such systems where there is endless going forth and back between "did we systematize it, or must we rely on search only" - but in their systems, search's enhanced by AI, at least, when within individual pc's, UR databases or askSam databases - and that, about 25 years after the creation of AS -, it is NOT.

So your very own way of handling data PROVES there must be much better systems than those, and it goes without saying that they'd be much more helpful, in avoiding clutter within the results or a "search" / "looking after something", as well in avoiding NOT finding relevant sources / documents / ideas / whatever.

My thinking's purpose is, how to develop a system that INTEGRATES your "select data" and "just searching for everything else", without becoming cumbersome when data's growing. Your 80 / 100 k of external docs show us you've understood, years ago, the limitations of UR (in response time, in organizational efforts, in impenetrability when item count's too big, so you did your own material selection - a very wise decision.

But the problem is, 80 to 100 k documents "indexed", NOT organized. Your private solution shows how worthwile my thinkings are.

BTW, as we all know - since virtual all of us look into both forums -, "JBfrom" in outlinerblablabla's trying so badly to "sell" his integrated system that will never sell to anyone, but have a look into his site where he asks some very good questions indeed (without giving very good answers, well...).

An INTEGRATIVE approach to ALL your data is needed, AND FREE combination of data, but UR's a "virtual advantage" for this, it's too limited for this, as with MS, NO "genuine advantage" here, I'm afraid - your seperating things into TWO different data bodies says I'm right.

quant, you're one of the longtime UR experts : your dividing data into UR data and "all the other stuff" speaks to us in length.

So much for the generally assumed irrelevance of my various discussion contributions here and in those other forums, outl..., myinfo, PB...

On a practical level, please let me say that the headline should be :

DON'T LOAD FILES

But only load "projects", which might consist of one file, several files, many files, of possible different types btw. Some files would automatically be loaded with other files, you'd have "given combinations" from which you then'd cut off unwanted files, and so on (developed in the MI and PB fori)...

Your work output from such a system, your 80-100 k files being available, in various combinations, from such "projects", would be even much better, quant, than I'm absolutely sure it is even today.

quant, your way of organizing your things is to bring some hygiene into your material ; all I'm dreaming of is to make it all much more clean and organized yet.

Again, that zero level from which you have the clear view - "the empty table" but on which lays ALL THAT MATTERS -, in not even 3 months, 2,800 people here were interested in, why them having looked into a 3-pane-outlining idea if they were happy with their organizational state of things with what they've got ?

All I want is doing away with those hybrid, tinker-up systems every one of ours is making up for himself - bringing up even heavy crimping with various file managers in last resort for many people -, and of which yours, quant, is a revealing specimen. I want my info man being a first-rate butler, not asking here, looking there, all that daily fiddling around...

I'm looking out for an integrative, really useful system - and since there isn't any on the market, developers' interest approaching zero, I'll have to organize my things with a superposed zero level management system, thus degrading my outliner (whatever its make) to a second-level service provider.

But then, MS Excel, and other third party applics, and which are as useful as necessary, beyond your outliner anyway : Why not step'em up, to the outliner's level, instead of just doing links to them, IN your outliner ?

All things said, I think outlining is a trap since for a first level of your work - as a first level of your working environment -, it's tremendously useful, for cluster building, "pm", whatever you call it. But then, your actual work is done WITHIN the outliner (for people that use outliners in the first place, that is), and this will automatically mix up your "vision" level and your "administrative" level.

In the same way most people constantly mix up their goals and their targets / objectives, they mix up the zero level of working and its second level, and virtually ALL outliners out there do their best to have this eternalized. And then, 3 k views into a glimpse of a better way of doing things in 3 months just here within the UR crowd.

That's surprising indeed.

[tfjern]

Schferk, could you please keep your posts, always enthusiastic and generally informative, as short as possible.