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1 )
Well, that's what I meant last week: Nothing or almost nothing is done for me, even when programming just would take 1 h (or 90 min.), so why should I help out UR with its accessibility problem concerning the "masses"? As said before, even that two commands, NewSib and NewSub, are real problems for UR beginners, and many of them don't dig any further then.
So there IS the need for a "beginner's manual", and all I'm asking for, is to do some basic things I really need.
If course - I "discovered" this by thinking again, not by searching the menus fervently - you can make your macro pop up the dialog "SaveAs"; just a control-c then, an Escape, and you're done, the name of the current file being in your clipboard. Then, you do the open file dialog, put that name into the file name line, by control-v, and again, you're done.
So, your macros are popping up, and closing again, various menus, just in order to have a simple file toggle: that's very beautiful indeed, and takes no time on a state of the art laptop weighting, say, 10 pounds. /irony off, for the casual reader
2 )
Even MyInfo, a program inferior by design and by execution, has such a file toggle, even if on my request.
So why didn't I stay with MI?
I jumped to UR the moment I had discovered the unintended use of the children pane; I had been desperate for a multi-level outliner, as I had done (a non-stable one) years before, so that additional pane in UR makes me accept a lot of weird things - but the normal would-be user doesn't even know of such spectacular uses and will have left long before discovering them.
And now I discover those little UR quirks that poison my work day, and it's little things, not big ones...
3 )
You say, not many UR users will have a hundred files; of course not. Users having TWO files, or three, won't need a file toggle, the "NextFile" / "PrevFile" commands will serve them as toggles.
But even if you have 3 files open, making without a File Toggle is awkward, since you must do "NextFile" when you want to jump from file 3 to file 1 (= in the line), and "PrevFile" for jumping from file 1 to file 3.
When you have FOUR files, even that isn't possible anymore, and you must press the one of those Prev/NextFile commands TWO TIMES, for jumping over another file between. When it comes to FIVE files, you consider my above-mentioned macro.
So, please, let's be hones, it's not my very specials needs that ask for such a command, it's the needs of ANYONE who normally uses more than 2 or max. 3 files; perhaps I should have stated this, but such is the fact; ridiculizing the need for the command is easy when you consider 100 files, but fact is, you'd do a favor to anyone who hasn't got all his stuff in one big file.
4 )
Since in the children pane, the value "has children yes / no" is computed at "play time" (what was the correct English word for it again), it should indeed be possible, without too many programming efforts, to make it a little easier to the eye, i.e. to introduce the "plus" sign on the left of the entry if there are children for that entry, in that children's pane.
Please note, I'm NOT asking you for doing a second tree, collapsable and expandable, I'm just asking for a sign, indication where "expanding the item in a flat way", so that the children of the item would fill up the children pane would be possible.
5 )
Most of my jumping around between files, I do it by links to those files (and sometimes, to items there, but mostly, for the time being, links to files); I explained all this in detail in a previous post (hint: you can search this forum for posters; if you see then that my very first posts were written in pidgin English, well, that was for amusing myself since once, kinook had said he didn't understand, and it seemed that my mother tongue wasn't English? right so, but then, I'm able to make me understood nethertheless in most circumstances, and I quickly outgrew of that pidgin English approach, didn't amuse myself anymore).
But the important thing here is:
When you click on a link (!) in the children pane, it doesn't bring you to your desired file, like clicking on a link in the tree... but it sets focus... to that very exact entry... in the tree, instead... from which then you can click in order to execute the link: weird !
But normal, considering that that children pane had never been intended to make UR a - spectacular - 3 pane outliner.
This and other behaviors of the children pane should be amended, but from then on, UR will have become VERY close to being one of the top ten programs out there, all areas confounded.
(Perhaps, you could do something on the way UR links to ITEMS in other files: Since the functionality is there, the execution of the necessary commands could indeed be adapted to normal ways of using individual software, the way it is to be done now, is just spectacularly weird - but this isn't a critique: That it IS possible even now, set this program apart, already!)
(And then, my not being able to link to ITEMS in UR files from third party programs was indeed due to the fact that I had installed a PORTABLE version of UR Prof. on my harddisk, instead of installing the "install version" - well, to think that could be a problem, or even, to think that you didn't install the "normal" version, to begin with...)
Again, a help file in which you turn round and round and round, whereas the highlights of UR would deserve to be highlighted in a way that prospects GOT THEM!
I'm not speaking of making a beginners' manual that should be published "as is" - my English is too poor for that. But for the CONTENTS of such a manual, I think you could trust me.
6 )
100 files, the idea came from not having enough (= 50 all in all) favorites in one big file, at a time I thought exterior links to items weren't possible (cf. point 5 above). So it was for "having it flattened out", with exterior programs being a super-level floating over the 100 files, accessing them by filename (i.e. links from 3rd party software to UR FILES instead of links from those 3rd party softwares to ITEMS within one UR file).
And now, as in the old days, ActionOutline and MyInfo (where splicing up your files into tiny ones was a necessity for me), I like it better this way, it greatly enhances the representation of my stuff in my mind (about 60.000 items, and more and more...); just do it in a way that those things are self-contained, even if that means that one file hasn't got by 50 items, and another one 1,000 or more; that the secret, not making any effort to have files of approximately the same size, but making efforts to have self-contained files, of whatever size they might be.
7 )
And then, there are multiple ways of searching multiple UR files; I tried them all, with somewhat incredible result. It cost me 3 work days (since I tried more and more of such programs, and even programs you wouldn't suspect to do the work, and it was those programs that delivered the best results) - it was a passionate experience.
I'd very much like to share this experience with fellow users. Thus, please back my toggle request in number, and my findings will be yours.
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