newbie questions

[mlwang]

Hi,

I'm new to Ultra Recall and so far the experience has been pretty good. There are nevertheless a few small issues that I can't seem to figure out:

1. Is there a way to export an item to a web page (.html file) with the source URL and user-defined keywords included (at the bottom of the page)?

I currently have stuff (accumulated over many years) in Firefox Scrapbook extension, Evernote, OneNote, & Surfulater, and I'm trying to find a new home to consolidate those scattered data. When trying to get data out, I'm very thankful that Surfulater allows me to export with tags (keywords) appended at the end of an article (item in UR lingo).

Like most info. collection/notebook users I don't want to be locked in and prefer to be able to get my stuff out when necessary. While Ultra Recall does have extensive export functions, I can't seems to find a way to export to .html (or rich text) files with associated keywords and URLs, making the exported files much less useful.

Exporting to XML does provide options to include URLs & keywords, and I've tried the VB script in the FAQ that would turn the .xml file into an html file. The keywords and URLs are stored in a toc.html, however, not the individual items.

There are two main reasons why I prefer to have keywords stored with the individual items:

1) so I can rearrange/rename the articles without being tied to a specific toc.html.

2) so a local file indexer (in my case, Windows Search and Archivarius 3000) could point me to a file directly, not a toc.


2. Is there a way to tell Ultra Recall to put the source URL at the bottom of the captured page?

When I capture a web page (or part of it) with UR (using the Firefox extension), I would prefer to have the source URL readily visible at the end of the page.

Currently I use a customized layout with the Item Attributes Window docked at the bottom, and then customize the window to show only the Keywords and URL. It's only a partial solution, because ...

1) I have to unhide other attributes if I want to see them, and coming back and forth is a bit cumbersome;

2) I can't click on the URL to launch it in the browser; and

3) when opening the document externally (in a browser), and you decide you want to see the source page, you have to come back to UR to click "Click here to open linked document". Wouldn't it be easier if one could just click on a link at the bottom to launch it without leaving the browser?

Looks like this is turning into a long post. I'll stop here and post the rest in a separate post.

Thanks for listening.

[mlwang]

Forgot to mention, I ran into a bug when testing the VB script (ConvertToHTML.vbs) that would turn export.xml into toc.html.

It seems the part of code for "check for non-ASCII charcters" doesn't work. (see screenshot below)

It worked after I replaced that part with simply "Unicode = True".

[mlwang]

A couple of unicode-related oddities:

1. there seems to be issues with searching in Chinese/Japanese text? Some can be found straight up, some can only be found with an asterisk at the end, and still some others need to be sandwiched by a pair of asterisks. Is this a known issue?

2. when capturing selected part of a Japanese wikipedia page using the Firefox extension, the result shows mixed fonts (screenshot 1 below).

There's no such problem when capturing the whole page, nor is it a problem to do the same (capturing partial page) with IE8.

I'm using English Windows 7 x64 SP1.

[mlwang]

The same text when captured properly should be like this:

[mlwang]

One last question (for now): it seems Ultra Recall is quite slow at launch, even when no .urd file is loaded. I know this is subjective, but it's significantly slower than anyone else (Onenote, Evernote, Surfulater, MyInfo) here. In fact, it's slower than Firefox 4 with tons of extensions installed.

The performance is quite ok after launch (I don't have a big database yet), so it's not too big an issue. I'm just wondering if I'm doing anything wrong?

[kinook]

Originally posted by mlwang
Hi,

I'm new to Ultra Recall and so far the experience has been pretty good. There are nevertheless a few small issues that I can't seem to figure out:

1. Is there a way to export an item to a web page (.html file) with the source URL and user-defined keywords included (at the bottom of the page)?

I currently have stuff (accumulated over many years) in Firefox Scrapbook extension, Evernote, OneNote, & Surfulater, and I'm trying to find a new home to consolidate those scattered data. When trying to get data out, I'm very thankful that Surfulater allows me to export with tags (keywords) appended at the end of an article (item in UR lingo).

Like most info. collection/notebook users I don't want to be locked in and prefer to be able to get my stuff out when necessary. While Ultra Recall does have extensive export functions, I can't seems to find a way to export to .html (or rich text) files with associated keywords and URLs, making the exported files much less useful.

Exporting to XML does provide options to include URLs & keywords, and I've tried the VB script in the FAQ that would turn the .xml file into an html file. The keywords and URLs are stored in a toc.html, however, not the individual items.

There are two main reasons why I prefer to have keywords stored with the individual items:

1) so I can rearrange/rename the articles without being tied to a specific toc.html.

2) so a local file indexer (in my case, Windows Search and Archivarius 3000) could point me to a file directly, not a toc.

No.

2. Is there a way to tell Ultra Recall to put the source URL at the bottom of the captured page?

When I capture a web page (or part of it) with UR (using the Firefox extension), I would prefer to have the source URL readily visible at the end of the page.

Currently I use a customized layout with the Item Attributes Window docked at the bottom, and then customize the window to show only the Keywords and URL. It's only a partial solution, because ...

1) I have to unhide other attributes if I want to see them, and coming back and forth is a bit cumbersome;

2) I can't click on the URL to launch it in the browser; and

3) when opening the document externally (in a browser), and you decide you want to see the source page, you have to come back to UR to click "Click here to open linked document". Wouldn't it be easier if one could just click on a link at the bottom to launch it without leaving the browser?

Looks like this is turning into a long post. I'll stop here and post the rest in a separate post.

Thanks for listening.

http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...?threadid=4126

[kinook]

Originally posted by mlwang
Forgot to mention, I ran into a bug when testing the VB script (ConvertToHTML.vbs) that would turn export.xml into toc.html.

It seems the part of code for "check for non-ASCII charcters" doesn't work. (see screenshot below)

It worked after I replaced that part with simply "Unicode = True".

If you're referring to http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...?threadid=2104, that has been superseded by the built-in HTML/XML export options (File | Export).

[kinook]

Originally posted by mlwang
A couple of unicode-related oddities:

1. there seems to be issues with searching in Chinese/Japanese text? Some can be found straight up, some can only be found with an asterisk at the end, and still some others need to be sandwiched by a pair of asterisks. Is this a known issue?

No.

2. when capturing selected part of a Japanese wikipedia page using the Firefox extension, the result shows mixed fonts (screenshot 1 below).

There's no such problem when capturing the whole page, nor is it a problem to do the same (capturing partial page) with IE8.

I'm using English Windows 7 x64 SP1.

There's probably an issue with the encoding Firefox uses when copying to the clipboard.

[kinook]

Originally posted by mlwang
One last question (for now): it seems Ultra Recall is quite slow at launch, even when no .urd file is loaded. I know this is subjective, but it's significantly slower than anyone else (Onenote, Evernote, Surfulater, MyInfo) here. In fact, it's slower than Firefox 4 with tons of extensions installed.

The performance is quite ok after launch (I don't have a big database yet), so it's not too big an issue. I'm just wondering if I'm doing anything wrong?

Testing on a i7 860 Intel CPU machine with Win7 x64 SP1, startup time in our tests is under 2 seconds (with or without a 250MB .urd file opening). That seems pretty fast, but if you leave UR running all the time, startup time may not be a huge issue.

[mlwang]

Originally posted by kinook
http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...?threadid=4126

Thanks for the pointer. I'll look into it, though please consider adding the ability to export into .html files with keywords and URLs appended in a future release. Thanks.

[mlwang]

Originally posted by kinook
If you're referring to http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...?threadid=2104, that has been superseded by the built-in HTML/XML export options (File | Export).

No, I was referring to http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...&threadid=2054, though I did try the one you mentioned as well.

The built-in HTML export option is nice, except it doesn't have keywords and URLs, so I thought I could use the VBS in the FAQ to turn exported XML into html.

It works, but only in a toc, as mentioned in my first post. Anyway, I'll try the customized form or see if I could write my own script to handle this.

[mlwang]

Originally posted by kinook
Testing on a i7 860 Intel CPU machine with Win7 x64 SP1, startup time in our tests is under 2 seconds (with or without a 250MB .urd file opening). That seems pretty fast, but if you leave UR running all the time, startup time may not be a huge issue.

2 seconds? Then there's indeed something wrong here. Timed it just now, and it took 9.5 seconds after I hit the pinned icon on the taskbar for me to see the program window (with no .url file loaded at launch).

My system is a i5-2400 with plenty of RAM, and my system drive is an intel 25-M SSD. Before testing, I've disabled all pre-loaded programs and then rebooted the system. I also launched UR once (so the program should be loaded in system cache already), closed it, and then relaunched and timed the second launch.

I know i5 is no i7, but it's a Sandy Bridge cpu (so should be a little faster than i5 of the previous generation), on a P67 board. 9.5 seconds to launch doesn't seem right, does it? In comparison, Firefox 4 (a program notorious for slow start) with dozens of extensions and 4 tabs open took less than 2 seconds to launch. Any suggestion where I might look into?

The unicode issues will take more time to test. It's past 2 AM here and I'm going to bed. I'll report back tomorrow.

Thanks for your prompt replies to all my questions.

[kinook]

Originally posted by mlwang
2 seconds? Then there's indeed something wrong here. Timed it just now, and it took 9.5 seconds after I hit the pinned icon on the taskbar for me to see the program window (with no .url file loaded at launch).

That does seem slow. I'm not sure what could cause that. Some things to try: http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...?threadid=4041

[mlwang]

Originally posted by kinook
Some things to try: http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...?threadid=4041

8.5 seconds in Safe Mode. Uninstalled and reinstalled UR. No difference.

Just to be clear (I thought it should be apparent, but anyway), I'm using the TRIAL version of UR Pro 4.2a, should this make any difference?

[mlwang]

Tried it just now on my aging and underpowered notebook. 4+ seconds for the first launch, 3 seconds for relaunch. Obviously something wrong with my desktop. So I took the drastic step to image my system and then reinstall Windows. Install UR before anything else. Now the launch takes less than a second (couldn't time it properly with a stopwatch for my hand was too slow).

Sorry for the false alarm. Now off to finish rebuilding the system.