Submitted by Paul_J_Miller on 2019/03/07 06:09
As InfoQube becomes more suitable for the purposes for which I use it I find myself relying on it more and more.
 
This was not always the case, I tried InfoQube several times before I finally understood it.  Those first attempts were frustrating.
 
With the advent of a decent customisable editor (this was before the new 'Item Editor' dialog) which supports CSS sheets I find myself using it for the composition of documents and as such it has taken over from Scrivener.  Of course InfoQube does not have all the formatting and publishing facilities of Scrivener but it has enough to be useful and the tables are now better than in Scrivener.  Having the note taking and document editing in the same application is useful, the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.  In my opinion reading, writing and taking notes are inextricably linked, they are not separate activities.
 
My notes are now spread between InfoQube and ConnectedText, this is a bit of a problem but it is helped by the fact that InfoQube and ConnectedText both support universal links, if InfoQube didn't support universal links then my notes would have remained in ConnectedText.  MyInfo is now no longer used, it was still in use because it contained historical notes I wished to keep but they have migrated to InfoQube now.  Right Note was never really a contender, it has a very pretty user interface (some of the skins are amazing) but it doesn't support transclusion at all.
 
Moving many of my notes to InfoQube I was able to re-organise them properly.  The notes themselves are in a single grid called 'Zettel', they are in a simple non heirarchical list in chronological order.  However I am able to extract clusters of notes and place them in other grids in any arbitrary arrangement without affecting the 'Zettel' grid, which is useful.  You may have heard of a German sociologist called Niklas Luhmann who used a paper card index to store his notes.  I follow his zettelkasten method but with software.
 
I follow the Zettelkasten Method as described by Sönke Ahrens in his book How to take Smart Notes.  In my opinion this book should be made compulsory reading for anyone doing a university degree.
 
At the moment my calendar is still handled by Thunderbird but I have no doubt that at some point InfoQube will eventually handle that as well.
 
Meanwhile InfoQube continues to improve and I hope it continues to do so.
 
Pierre has put a lot of time and effort into this program, I hope he gets a good return on his investment.  However I fear the market for note taking software is too small at the current time for anyone to make a decent living out of just selling a note taking program.  I hope I am wrong.
 

Comments

 Interesting thoughts. Thanks for sharing! 

Hi Paul,
 
Thanks for these comments. I remember that just one year ago, IQ was much less adapted to your needs indeed, and through your comments, and those of others, I worked hard to improve that aspect of it. Thanks !
[quote=Paul_J_Miller]
Moving many of my notes to InfoQube I was able to re-organise them properly.  The notes themselves are in a single grid called 'Zettel', they are in a simple non heirarchical list in chronological order.
[/quote]
If that flat list becomes too long, you can certainly use the Date Filter toolbar to show a subset. As items don't belong to a particular grid, you can also have more than one grid, each containing a sub-set of your notes. With IQ, you have many many ways to slice and dice your information
[quote=Paul_J_Miller]
Pierre has put a lot of time and effort into this program, I hope he gets a good return on his investment.  However I fear the market for note taking software is too small at the current time for anyone to make a decent living out of just selling a note taking program.  I hope I am wrong.
[/quote]
I'm not too concerned about return on investment... We only live once and I'm quite proud of what was created. It is quite a unique tool  
 
I'm not sure what the market is for note taking software, but IQ is much more than just for note taking. It is an information management system and there is a market for that, in particular those that support collaboration. It's the direction that IQ is moving to. 
 
Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer
 

Paul_J_Miller

2019/03/08 06:10

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I do create subsets of the Zettel notes, I call them clusters and they are placed in new grids often created on a whim and only temporarily, and this process has no effect on the Zettel grid.
 
The one thing 'ConnectedText' is still better at than InfoQube is that one can create a link on the fly just by typing the name of a page [[within square brackets]], the page doesn't even have to exist yet.
 
This is one thing InfoQube cannot do because in ConnectedText page names have to be unique, in InfoQube you can have many pages with the same names, SQL sorts them out using their ID number.
 

Pierre_Admin

2019/03/08 12:28

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[quote=Paul_J_Miller]
The one thing 'ConnectedText' is still better at than InfoQube is that one can create a link on the fly just by typing the name of a page [[within square brackets]], the page doesn't even have to exist yet.
 
This is one thing InfoQube cannot do because in ConnectedText page names have to be unique, in InfoQube you can have many pages with the same names, SQL sorts them out using their ID number.
[/quote]
It's on the roadmap, don't worry. IQ will support that, no problem. 
 
Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer
 

firstteamm

2019/10/22 11:31

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[quote=Pierre_Admin]
[quote=Paul_J_Miller]
The one thing 'ConnectedText' is still better at than InfoQube is that one can create a link on the fly just by typing the name of a page [[within square brackets]], the page doesn't even have to exist yet.
 
This is one thing InfoQube cannot do because in ConnectedText page names have to be unique, in InfoQube you can have many pages with the same names, SQL sorts them out using their ID number.
[/quote]
It's on the roadmap, don't worry. IQ will support that, no problem. 
 
Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer
 
[/quote]
 
I look forward to this with eager anticipation. Among many functions that IQ has shown its multi-faceted capability, this should IMHO be an icing on the beautiful cake ! If this was already done and I missed it please point out to me.
I am talking about   [[ Link Here ]]   kind of creating linkages between articles or items in IQ like in ConnectedText.

patteoks

2019/10/23 08:30

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[quote=Pierre_Admin]
[quote=Paul_J_Miller]
The one thing 'ConnectedText' is still better at than InfoQube is that one can create a link on the fly just by typing the name of a page [[within square brackets]], the page doesn't even have to exist yet.
 
This is one thing InfoQube cannot do because in ConnectedText page names have to be unique, in InfoQube you can have many pages with the same names, SQL sorts them out using their ID number.
[/quote]
It's on the roadmap, don't worry. IQ will support that, no problem. 
 
Pierre_Admin
IQ Designer
 
[/quote]
 
Looking forward to seeing this implemented. It will be a new paradigm shift for me in how I'll be able to use InfoQube much more productively especially when inputting information and organizing and linking related information to specific parts of an item rather than just to an item, just like in a wiki.

Thanks for recommending the Ahrens book.
 
There's a big difference between knowing how InfoQube works and knowing how to best use it to accomplish your purpose.  I sometimes struggle with the former and often with the latter.
 
I use InfoQube mostly for research where I want to gather information from many sources and consolidate it into a single set of notes that:
 
1) Accurately summarizes info from multiple sources
2) Is organized by topics
3) Provides easy access to the source material to verify that the summary notes are correct.
4) Keeps track of which source material has been incorporated into summary notes.
 
I've been going in circles for some time trying to figure out how best to accomplish the above using some combination of fields, tags, hyperlinks, and multiple parents. 
 
Wayne