InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by jan_rifkinson on 2009/03/21 14:13

On the home page, the following is listed for promotional purposes:

[quote]

You are a :

consultant ?
project manager ?
researcher ?
writer ?
student ?
custom software provider ?
Ecco Pro user looking for something similar ?
busy person who needs an organizing tool ?

[/quote]

Well, it's not that I fancy myself a "writer" but I do write newspaper articles quite frequently & a few months ago, I tried using IQ for this purpose.

To organize my project

I created a master item with article title -- no problem for IQ ( I think I should have created an independent grid for the article)
I gathered research & made notes from various sources -- no problem for IQ except I want to automate assigning data to the subject (could be accomplished w article grid)
I set organized the research data in an outline that I thought would be useful in structuring my article -- no problem for IQ
I created draft / version sub-items & started writing in the HTML window -- some awkwardness w normal key functioning like carriage return / new line / paragraph....that sort of thing. Didn't seem as comfortable as RTF edior for some reason (TBD)
Tried to check selling -- could not accomplish task in IQ -- only w 3rd party program
Needed to count words (a frequent requirement for writers; either linked to payment or limitations) -- could not accomplish task in IQ
Each version is a copy of version above it with some changes -- copying / pasting item was not possible as this function does not take html data with it. <CTRL>drag / drop does but this is truly a clone & any changes in draft 2, 3, 4 makes changes thoughtout when what I want is a record of changes & I don't want to use MS Word for this function.
Tried writing snippets of article in the outline but can't (or don't know how) to join items into a single item. Could copy items & paste into new item html pane

I know many who rave about using Zoot for this purpose & have written articles about it. . I've used URp w some irritations for this purpose (altho URp does have spellchecker & word counter within the program).

Are there any writer's on this board who have used IQ for writing purposes? If so, maybe we could discuss your approach here.

Maybe it will point to some improvements that Pierre can make to the program for this purpose.

It also occurs to me the more examples of uses we can find & describe (perhaps outline) for IQ, the easier it might be for the next person.And selfishly, in this case, it would also help me.

Looking forward to your thoughts on this subject.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

Comments

I use IQ to do some pretty sophisticated writing/structuring.

> I created draft / version sub-items & started writing in the HTML window -- some awkwardness w normal key functioning like carriage return / new line / paragraph....that sort of thing. Didn't seem as comfortable as RTF edior for some reason (TBD)

I use Word to do my editing if there's anything fancy to be done, format wise.

But, to be honest, I almost never use the HTML pane to write/compose. Just to clip from the web and to use some already made word templates that I invoque after converting to MHT.

> Tried to check selling -- could not accomplish task in IQ -- only w 3rd party program

What does that mean ? You mean check how many article/book sold, etc. ?

> Needed to count words (a frequent requirement for writers; either linked to payment or limitations) -- could not accomplish task in IQ

IQ could probably count words in a grid fairly easily. You could add this to Mantis or here as a suggestion.

> Each version is a copy of version above it with some changes -- copying / pasting item was not possible as this function does not take html data with it. <CTRL>drag / drop does but this is truly a clone & any changes in draft 2, 3, 4 makes changes thoughtout when what I want is a record of changes & I don't want to use MS Word for this function.

Jan... Why do you say that ? Copying as XML does copy/paste HTML or MHT. Id you use the tab delimited, of course it won't because it only takes into account what's shown in the grid. I think it's explained somewhere in the manual.

> Tried writing snippets of article in the outline but can't (or don't know how) to join items into a single item. Could copy items & paste into new item html pane

You asked a similar question there, and some answers were provided:

http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/391

Did you try it? For the outline (without HTML) it works well.

[quote=Armando][snip]

I use Word to do my editing if there's anything fancy to be done, format wise.

But, to be honest, I almost never use the HTML pane to write/compose. Just to clip from the web and to use some already made word templates that I invoque after converting to MHT.[/snip] [/quote]

I'll have to try it your way, i.e. w Word or Jarte or something

[quote]

> Tried to check selling -- could not accomplish task in IQ -- only w 3rd party program

What does that mean ? You mean check how many article/book sold, etc. ?[/quote]

No, it means I want to check the spelling of my words in the document. I suppose this could be solved if I used Word or Jarte

[quote]

> Needed to count words (a frequent requirement for writers; either linked to payment or limitations) -- could not accomplish task in IQ

IQ could probably count words in a grid fairly easily. You could add this to Mantis or here as a suggestion.[/quote]

I need word count of complete document -- not grid -- again can be accomplished in Word or Jarte (I believe)

[quote]

Ignorance I guess

. Don't know anything about XML but will try it. Thanks.

[quote]

> Tried writing snippets of article in the outline but can't (or don't know how) to join items into a single item. Could copy items & paste into new item html pane

You asked a similar question there, and some answers were provided:

http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/391

Did you try it? For the outline (without HTML) it works well.

[/quote]
Again

. I'll have to try it. Now have it in IQ database w foloup tag attached

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1

If you try XML copy paste, be aware that items will

1- appear at the bottom of the grid once pasted, that is IF they meet the grid's source.

2- not appear anywhere because they don't meet the source of the grid where you pasted them. Easiest way to solve this infortunate situation -- that I feel shouldn't occur in the first place -- is to use the quick search : order items by last created, find them and select them, press GO, and then move them from the search grid (or use the properties pane to adjust proper fields) where you want them. Fiou !! Then go have a pizza and a beer.

From my initial checks IQ may not be the best choice for a dedicated writing tool. Yep, I've also tried a host of apps ranging from the excellent ywriter http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html to the superlative LyX Tex Latex document processor http://www.lyx.org/ Also for the dedicated research write you have to look at zotero http://www.zotero.org/ IQ appears to be an application that can be honed into a great analytical tool for data manipulation. However it is quite labour intensive to set up, understand and tweak for best results. I don't agree that it is simple, intuitive and easy to use. In fact it requires more in depth study than URP. The import functions are also limited compared to URP that can import many types of data such as PDFs and even make them searchable. This is a huge feature that I sorely miss. AS a new user, I may be green here, but can IQ import a whole pile of text files like URP? It strikes me that IQ stands alone in it's ability to be customisable, powerful and flexible, but that comes with a steep learning curve and a possibility that it can be made to work almost any task, but at the cost of being over complicated.

[quote=Richard]From my initial checks IQ may not be the best choice for a dedicated writing tool. [snip][/quote]

Quite right, Richard, but then IQ wasn't developed as a dedicated writing tool.

Havings said that, two points:

1. My personal interest is to have a single program where I can do most of my work on a daily basis which may include taking notes for a future article, gathering research, marking things for foloup or pending, etc + some writing, multi-tasking w simultaneous projects, scheduling..... I don't think I'd use IQ if I was writing a novel

2. Comparing IQ to URp is comparing apples to oranges & I do it all the time (& it's not really fair). URp is on v4, i.e. a mature program. IQ is still in beta, not even v1 & yet it is stable & extremely capable but it does not have a lot of the fancier stuff yet. It will. I daresay -- if Pierre sticks with it which he assures me he will -- IQ will out pace URp in it's overall abilities. But, URp is currently an excellent program & has many fans.

I think your evaluation of IQ is right on but, as someone who writes as described, I have found IQ excellent @ gathering / organizing information but weaker on the actual writing side. I know Pierre (developer) is working on this; making the html editor more responsive, intuitive, etc. As you know URp uses an RTF editor. There are probably advantages to each. And for all I know Pierre may have an RTF editor planned for IQ in addition to HTML & MHT.

In the meantime, if you have specific questions about how to set something up, let us know. This is a very helpful forum.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-2

Hello Jan, thanks for your response. [quote=jan_rifkinson]

Quoting Jan 2. Comparing IQ to URp is comparing apples to oranges

[/quote] Very true and that would be the same for the other software such as LyX and yWriter. These are dedicated to the writing process and in fact fail totally in other tasks that IQ excels in. No-one expectas a boat to win a land speed record. The challenge as I see it with software development is that when you open it up to public debate there is a rush of features, requests and variations from users. This can be helpful for the debug, but often overwhelming for the developer/s. The fear is that the initial roadmap for development becomes contorted and fudged as new tangential ideas take our eye off the ball. To acommodate everyone's need is a mistake that leads to a piece of over bloated software like MS-word. From my POV I would like to see IQ expand in its connectivity to other 'helper' programs, rather than get over bloated with yet more features and options. I don't want another 'jack of all trades and master of none'. Maybe Pierre would consider some plugin architecture, with a framework for third party developers to produce add ons, like spell-checkers/ dictionaries etc. From my experience with open source web development software, Publishing an API in this way often provides the greatest exposure to a product, while still maintaining commercial viability/ integrity. I digress ... Maybe this is a discussion in its own rights. Richard

Jan, as a quick follow up on 'helper programs' It appears from a brief check that ensowords http://www.humanized.com/enso/words/ works with IQ and performs some of the following: word count, character count, spelling, dictionary, thesaurus, google search. Also working partially with some focus issues is wordweb http://wordweb.info/ This may address some of your original questions in this post. Regarding versioning: My immeadiate reply would be to use dropbox http://www.getdropbox.com/ If you are not familiar with this online service, it allows you to store/ synchronise local information with other computers, either privately or publically. That may not be so important to you, but one feature is that it records versions of each change in any file allocated to be watched on your local machine. I suggest you allocate your IQ SNDB database folder to be monitored, as each time it changes dropbox will make a backup version of the old data. This should work in theory to provide a rollback, well, it works with URP MyInfo and pagefour that use databases. The backup is stored on the remote server, so you would have to navigate to this. If you wanted a compare function, I run out of ideas that work easily, except to use third party programs, which gets too long winded. These are not out of the box solutions, but workable options that may address your queries here, untill IQ grabs a few more features.

Re Dropbox,

I use it with IQ . . actually I think Jan may be using it as well :-)

It's important to note that it only backs up on closing the IQ file:

[quote]Dropbox will backup your file and make a revision each time you close the file (Note: only for the last 30 days in the free version)[/quote]

from 3. Backup your database, Encryption

Enso sounds good - thanks for the tip !

edit/ corrected link

[quote=Richard]Jan, as a quick follow up on 'helper programs' It appears from a brief check that ensowords http://www.humanized.com/enso/words/ works with IQ and performs some of the following: word count, character count, spelling, dictionary, thesaurus, google search. [snip}[/quote]

Richard, Thanks very much for the Enso tip -- a very interesting helper program. Unfortunately, I've not been able to make it work for data within IQ's HTML pane where I need it most. I can call ENSO, make corrections in ENSO but the corrections are not inserted into the original document. Word Count reports no text selected even though it is so I suspect it may be a clipboard conflict of some kind.

I've written the developers today. Let's see how they respond. If they can get it to work maybe Pierre can get together with those guys & figure out how to integrate it within IQ -- a la web searches, or calling word / Blocknote.

I'll report back when I hear something.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-2

Hi Jan. I did some test with enso and found that the spell check also failed to replace the corrected version. However, word cound, character count, define, and thesaurus did work on my windows portable version. My guess is there are some focus issues, which maybe easily corrected- if this is the right way to go ... Enso does have a fairly high memory usage at 39168 kb on idle, compared with IQ 48000kb so it may not be everyones' choice. However it is a pretty cool application and I think the developers are fairly active to establish it at the moment.

Hi Richard. Note that for spell checking there are some applications like As-U-Type. Pierre said that he could have a special price from the developer. As-U-Type works well for English (other languages as well, but with some problems with " ' " in french, I found while testing it).

Looks like this thread here http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/368 reveals similar problems with third party clipboard apps.

A few essential pretty essential things for writers, and probably for others too -- most have been put in mantis already :

- All hierarchy display issues... (mantis : 213, 214, ... )

- Nameable filters (mantis : 19)

- Reliable (and "infinite/multiple"...) Undo/Redo -- it's pretty... errr... weird (?) as it is now. (mantis : 189)

e.g. #1 of "weirdness" : If I'm in the filter box and I press undo, my last editing in the grid will be removed... :( And who knows what it was. I can press ctrl y, hoping that it fixed it.

e.g. #2 of weirdness : if I'm editing something in the grid and I make a mistake, press ctrl-z, it'S the previous item that will be changed back to its previous state, not the one I'm currently editing. Now, that might be kind of logical from a database standpoint, but completely unintuitive from any other intuitiveness, user friendliness, stand point...)

- Better copy/paste functionality (XML especially... tab delimited is too weird and capricious for me to use everyday...) (mantis : 210, 246, 247, 439)

- ** Able to reliably save the "sorting" (paragraph order) , without having to renumber items all the time (that's so time consuming...) (mantis ??)

- Hoist / Dehoist (the tagging function is mostly useless for me : I want to see my items in context, not in some other unrelated grid... ) (mantis : 298)

Somewhat Related :

- Easier filtering/searching (mantis : 312, etc.)

- Grid specific quick search (mantis : 146, etc.) (kinda solved... But definitely not userfriendly and "quick" enough -- think evernote... For the current grid. Like I said previously : I don't like to see items in an unrelated context -- the search grid...)

Filtering is still much to complex. Users need a grid specific quick search (with results shown INSIDE that grid). using textfields like "blablabla" in the alphanumeric toolbar works... But a burried and usually used for other purposes anyways. Named filters might fix these issues anyways.

- Automated numbering styles for outline. (mantis ??)

- Easier (less capricious) drag & drop of items in grids. (mantis ??)

- Import/export between IQ database : kinda shaky... (mantis : 8, and maybe others...)

- Feature to save HTML export settings (in html export window) into different config files that can be imported at any times (mantis : 91, ... ?)

If these issues were fixed / taken care of, life in IQ would be much much much much easier. (that plus some infuriating bugs like the one that eats up all my grids' columns. But I'm drifting.... :) )

Then, maybe, for those who like working in the HTML pane :

- Possibility to see HTML pane content in the grid.

- Possibility to have and editable, unified view of all the HTML pane contents of selected items.

Clearly there are some things that can improve. Pizza & beer sounds

It just seems a shame to me for a user to have to leave IQ to do any kind of work that deals w data. Graphics I understand but otherwise, it seems to me that Pierre has the possibility of the crimpers holy grail here in IQ, i.e. an all-in-one.

That's my starting point with all these programs, what I keep looking for & I've used quite a few of them, including:

Lotus Agenda
Ecco Pro
Ariadne
ADM
Zoot
URpro

For me ADM was an extremely interesting approach to data gathering & manipulation but it went by the wayside for really stupid reasons as far as I can discern. Never mind. Back to IQ. There are sooooo many quirky things about IQ that many times I feel like I have to take 3 steps to do one simple thing.

Having said that I also understand that IQ is an complex & talented program & Pierre makes a lot of magic with it. I admire that & want to embrace the program. I just wish I could make more magic with it with fewer steps.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-1

I'm no writer but I've wanted to write about certain topics for a couple of years now -

started by writing notes all over the place - now very gradually adding worthwhile stuff to IQ

I was generously given a key for PageFour writing software - while it seems good for actually writing in, it's not a good place to organise notes and try to make something coherent from them.

Armando, you say:-

> I use Word to do my editing if there's anything fancy to be done, format wise.

But, to be honest, I almost never use the HTML pane to write/compose

does that mean that you actually write in the grid and then polish it off in Word ? (If so, an interesting approach - I always thought of approaching it in HTML pane. I find the grid font a little small for writing but I can always change that cant I ...)

A field with number of words in the item field or in HTML pane could be helpful here - also an easy way to add up this field for selected items if one is building up an article in the item field(s) (current right-click and down to "Info" is not very user friendly - a display in the status bar would be very nice when I think about it

)

Oh... Forgot the

- "easier navigation" (horizontal and vertical --- between parents and siblings) thingy. Talked about in a recent thread.

I manage data in Microsoft Office Access, Microsoft Office Excel and of course in InfoQube.

I present information using Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office PowerPoint.

I am a teacher and a researcher.

I have used outliners for 25 years. InfoQube is, as I have said before, the best outliner I have discovered so far. However, for final presentation, I have used PowerPoint for teaching and other presentations, and Word for publishing - for over fifteen years. I make very extensive use of the built-in outliners in both PowerPoint and Word - in PowerPoint, it's the main way of structuring slides and presentations, and in Word, because it is so easy to use styles in conjunction with outline mode. And, despite recent improvements, I still find that Word is a better tool for general writing than is InfoQube; this thread has already mentioned several reasons for this.

The problem this gives me

As far as I can ascertain, there is still no way in which to export an outline from the main pane in InfoQube as a Word outline. Am I wrong? The HTML export option produces pretty bullet points, but these do not correspond to Word's outline styles (Heading1, Heading2 etc.)

It is of course possible to manipulate bullet points etc. in the HTML pane - but one pane is associated with exactly one IQ item.

What I would like, in an ideal world, is to be able to:

Export a filtered selection from IQ and have it import as an indented outline in Word / PowerPoint (minimum)
Be able to re-import a Word outline as an IQ outline, with the Word / PowerPoint outline levels becoming an IQ hierarchical outline (better)
True "round-trip engineering", whereby I could flip between IQ and Word / PowerPoint at will without significant loss of formatting (optimum)

Is any of this possible now? Are there planned enhancements that would make it easier?

Who else on this forum would find this kind of functionality useful?

And can anyone suggest workarounds that make it straightforward to do what I'd like to do, which is to manage my information in IQ and present it in Word / PowerPoint?

Thanks for reading all this...

PS: I am VERY supportive of the 0.9.27 feature:

0173

New feature

Copy / paste from Excel

This will make it possible to carry-out "round-trips" of data (though not, of course, formulae) between Excel and IQ.

Mark Gregory, Rennes, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6

[quote=gregory]

[...]

What I would like, in an ideal world, is to be able to:

Export a filtered selection from IQ and have it import as an indented outline in Word / PowerPoint (minimum)
Be able to re-import a Word outline as an IQ outline, with the Word / PowerPoint outline levels becoming an IQ hierarchical outline (better)
True "round-trip engineering", whereby I could flip between IQ and Word / PowerPoint at will without significant loss of formatting (optimum)

[...]

Who else on this forum would find this kind of functionality useful?

And can anyone suggest workarounds that make it straightforward to do what I'd like to do, which is to manage my information in IQ and present it in Word / PowerPoint?

[...]

[/quote]

Hi Mark,

I'd definitely be in favor of a such a feature. I think it's an excellent idea. I never thought of it in these terms.

- It would make IQ more flexible and powerful

- It would be a selling factor for IQ : researchers, students, writers, etc. could use it more easily to structure papers.

- It would complement the other mantis issue already entered by Pierre (no assigned date at this point) : 491

[Edit : I forgot the last part of your post... The workaround part : not sure what you mean... I just do an HTML export, then I get rid of the extra columns at the right when it's a multicolumn export. It takes a bit of fiddling around if you want to obtain a specific format. Otherwise, when there's only one column involved, it's pretty straightforward... HTML export, indentation, bullets or not... Paste in MS Word, etc]

Salut camarade.

I'd forgotten about Mantis issue 491. Good to bring that back to prominence.

I don't understand what you mean by the "extra columns at the right when it's a multicolumn export". As far as I can see, HTML export only exports the items, not associated columns.

Mark Gregory, Rennes, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6

[quote=gregory]

I don't understand what you mean by the "extra columns at the right when it's a multicolumn export". As far as I can see, HTML export only exports the items, not associated columns.

[/quote]

Salut !

When you

1- select a bunch of items

2- select a bunch of columns

3- select the "Selected items and columns (optionally with the HTML pane content)"

4- "Use settings" tab. Select any options you want.

5- Copy to clipboard

6- paste in word

In word 2003 : Table --> deselect "Hide GridLines"

You shall see lots of unused columns at the end of your pasted exportation. I asked at some point (a long time ago, at least a year) if those could be removed in the export process but I can't remember what Pierre said exactly.

Thanks very much for that clarification, Armando.

I've now got the export working, and it works largely as described at Selective HTML export

Interestingly, opening the .htm HTML file works both in Word - and in Excel. Both are useful to me, so thanks again.

I can confirm the presence of additional empty columns in both Word and Excel, and yes, it would be better if they didn't appear.

Mark Gregory, Rennes, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6