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Old 05-08-2012, 08:27 AM
schferk schferk is online now
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Join Date: 11-02-2010
Posts: 151
More details of such an interoperability system Outliner (or whatever) -To-Elaborate File Commander

For the time being, in my system, if I switch between files in and from within my main system (.ao files), the selected entry within the external list (= file commander) is not updated. Of course, there is a macro that will determine the current file name (= in AO), then look it up within the big list there (= file commander), then select that entry, for further processing (in order to then apply, e.g., the corresponding routines for altering the "comment" attribute of this current file, e.g. the general comment edit routine (for manual editing) or for (automatically) inserting a specific ToDo code or for (again automatically!) deleting such a ToDo code, but then, it would of course be much more elegant for the (always visible) file list to have selected the current file (on condition that the current file IS somewhere in that list; if not, at least it would be elegant to de-select any list item that would have been selected before, being the current item then, but not being the current item anymore - remember you can change files within AO (or any other main program you use) itself, by this causing - if there isn't an automated routine intercepting and processing such changes accordingly - de-synchronization (or is it called asynchronization) of the current item in your main program and the selected item in your file commander window. It goes without saying that all such interoperability functionality should be triggered by an extension of such a file commander, even allowing for choosing your own main program at your will.

For the time being, in UR, you cannot (easily) distinguish the "natural" (= original, main) parentage / fathering of a "clone" (= in fact the "original item") from any more (= real) clones of that item, let alone any changing of that status (= sometimes, it could become handy to make the original entry a clone, but mark the clone / one of the clones as the "original"), whilst both in my one-big-file system 15 years ago and in my file-system system today, the original items (then) / files (today) are clearly distinguished from their clones. Since in almost any cases, there is a "natural position" for any item, and then there could be (often multiple) "adoptive positions" for them (e.g., a law disposition, then being cloned into a lot of legal cases, and believe me, it's the same thing for almost every imaginable item / file: As with a child (boy/girl), there's only one real family "from which it comes from", and then, he / she will perhaps marry a few times, have children with several fathers / mothers, i.e. create several new families of its own, and even, in RARE cases, will (in-between, that is) be adopted by another family, it's "original original" family becoming secondary, as will once be these marriage families (hence the need to be able to change a clone into an original, the original becoming (just) a(nother) clone) - whilst UR's NOT doing the difference here will "sometimes" (i.e. rather ofter, in my experience) cause a rebirth of that old "lost in hyperspace" phenomenon; in fact, during the months a used (= did a paying trial of) UR, this not-distinguishing between originals and clones had been the most important factor in my leaving clones out of my working space, after some initial (and rather unfruitful) tries.

If you do as many brackets as I do - oops, that wouldn't be easy to find -, you could try to format those bits in italics, instead of enclosing them in brackets - of course, that wouldn't be possible in posts as this one (but in your own blog, in web site texts, in printed texts, in .pdf's...).

Whilst for every outliner applic appearing on bitsdujour, there's invariably the question, can it search imported pdf files?, on that all-encompassing outlinerthing.com, people currently relate their problems with pdf annotations / comments / pdf text passage yellow highlightings (if you want to check out, the search term would be "docear"), and that's simply another bit of proof (if any such was considered necessary) that all these concepts to import external files into an outliner software (and make 'em searchable or not, afterwards), is the bad approach, and I insist on my (ultimate but not necessarily to be realized today or tomorrow) concept of clearing your main applic from ALL possible content (including even text contents, that is): Specialized applics for processing different file formats, but the very best possible applics then, and with perfect integration, please!

With import of web pages, it's exactly the same thing: It's not the (sometimes slow, sometimes buggy) import of web pages into UR that would be a problem, but trying to import web pages altogether, in the very first place, that should be subject to discussion! (And it's not I trying to develuate UR here: In many a forum in the www people relate their dissatisfaction with UR's web pages capabilities and sometimes even say that this is their reason for not doing their stuff within UR (anymore): It's evident that they've left or avoid UR for very bad reasons.)

As stated before and elsewhere, I only import text passages (in plain text) from web pages (but often I format the most important parts of these excerpts in bold, afterwards, in my target prog), and some pictures only (i.e. containing graphs / numbers), and tables (= as rectangle (= not full screen but minimal) screen captures, as I import Adobe Flash texts or other bits I cannot import as text / graphics). As for pdf's, I download them as they are, then import important passages into my main prog (and, in case of need, do some de-securizing of these, and if they are really scrambled, I revert to screen captures of important passages, again) - it's all about standardization of content, as it is for everybody else, and importing whole web pages, with or without ad / Flash blockers applied, is certainly not the best way to do things if you want to avoid clutter (both in your electronic staff as well's in your head) to a max in further processing (of any sort) of any imported material. (And for forensic use, importing web pages into UR or any other outliner isn't the best way to hedge your interests either.)

(Fellow forum contributors suspecting me of cluttering this thread with off-topic material should be aware that there's Google out there, referencing anything, and producing a helluva of hits to this forum, and I insist upon stating that if I consider UR not good enough for me, I truly consider it the best current self-contained (!) outliner out for the moment, even if I'm quite unhappy with the factual unresponsiveness of its developers. Yes, I truly believe that if even minor outliners can buy / rent a third-party component as their editor, UR / kinook should NOT rely on the gratis MS piece of sh**, and without its users having to do a collection to pay for such a decent editor, but then, within UR you can do a lot of things you wouldn't be able to do with lesser contenders, and they are legion. (This last paragraph was written in order to hopefully prevent censorship again.)
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