InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by Jon on 2009/10/05 11:44

Hi Pierre:

Using version G8 (sounds like a summit). The repair dialog used to have an OK button just like the compact dialog. These acknowledge completion of the process.

I don't know - I'm getting a bit discouraged. IQ is a wonderful concept, but right now there are too many idiosyncracies, too many work-arounds, too many useablility issues and too many annoyances I have to put up with. It is fun seeing what IQ can do, but I need to get work done. I know this is a beta, so I should keep my mouth shut. For now, it is back to Ultra Recall (which I have never stopped using) and Ecco Pro. I plan to keep on using IQ casually and will continue to contribute what I can.

Jon

Comments

What caused you most frustration?

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-2

Hi Jan:

Previously, you mentioned your wish to enable auto refresh. I agree. It is very disconcerting to have to manually refresh IF this works. Maybe you have to close and re-open a grid. Or restart the program.

Filtering is better than it was, but not where it should be. The user should be presented choices so they do not have to construct an argument.

The calendar needs attention and better integration into the rest of the program.

Clicking can be hit or miss (this is erratic for me. It happens too infrequently for me to trace, but it is there).

Layouts should be preserved.

Performance and graphic smoothness needs to be improved/fixed. I know these have been improved, but in my opinion, they are not ready for prime time.

Single line display of multi line items is unusable.

Preservation of indentation when pasting to another program.

There are other issues, but these are what readily come to mind.

Jon

Thanks for your reply, Jon. In fact, our posts x'd paths; see my bug reports

One thing though. On the matter of

[quote] Single line display of multi line items is unusable.[/quote]

3 of us did some extensive testing on your NYTimes article. I even made Pierre & Armando crazy w my numbers but ultimately you will see that everyone reduced their pasting #s w beta v924g8. I believe my #s were 18-19 seconds for pasting in the format you requested.

Do you find that unsatisfactory?

How does URp or EccoPro compare?

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-2

[quote=jan_rifkinson]

Do you find that unsatisfactory?

How does URp or EccoPro compare?

[/quote]

I think the times should be better. I had issues with UR in this regard and it was resolved. The same article takes no longer than 4 seconds with UR and it is virtuallly instananeous with Ecco Pro. On occasion I will have a project in Info Select. This page also gets pasted in instantaneously. I suspect UR's keywording slows the process down, but it is stilll much, much faster than IQ.

Jon

re URp:

URp is a 2-pane outliner, so how is it imported? Does it create some sort of outline, or does the whole document go into a single item with the content in the rich text pane?

You are correct, but there are ways to use UR as a single pane outliner.

Generally the entire document will get imported as you describe. Introduced in UR 4 is the ability to "Paste text one line per item." This gives me flexibility to do as I described. I can also manually enter, hoist, clone, etc. See the screenshot (neat, huh?).

Jon

[quote] I think the times should be better. I had issues with UR in this regard and it was resolved. The same article takes no longer than 4 seconds with UR and it is virtuallly instananeous with Ecco Pro. On occasion I will have a project in Info Select. This page also gets pasted in instantaneously. I suspect UR's keywording slows the process down, but it is stilll much, much faster than IQ. [/quote]

I'd say you were right. It's a good thing I don' t import line by line or I'd be dissatisfied too.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-2

[quote=jan_rifkinson]
[quote] I think the times should be better. I had issues with UR in this regard and it was resolved. The same article takes no longer than 4 seconds with UR and it is virtuallly instananeous with Ecco Pro. On occasion I will have a project in Info Select. This page also gets pasted in instantaneously. I suspect UR's keywording slows the process down, but it is stilll much, much faster than IQ. [/quote]

I'd say you were right. It's a good thing I don' t import line by line or I'd be dissatisfied too.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA
HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-2
[/quote]

Well, I import whole plays in IQ and I'm not that dis-satisfied...

Could be quicker, yes. Would be great if it could be as fast as other sophisticated outliners (Ecco is to "simple" to be compared to IQ IMO). But since I don't do that 10 times a day, it's ok for now (I can wait a few minutes for a whole play to get chopped into individual items...!).

[quote=Jon]

You are correct, but there are ways to use UR as a single pane outliner.

Jon

[/quote]

is doing this as fast as copying in a single item?

Jon, your list of annoyances seems quite short, and most of the things mentioned seem easy to fix (from my point of view, of course), which is encouraging.

P.S: And just as another user point of view : I'd never use URP instead of IQ because there were many things I couldn't do with URP (when I tried it, 1.5 years ago) that I can do in IQ... So I guess it's a matter of priority and needs...

Don't mean to characterize your post Armando but it seems a little defensive to say that a function that could save time, i.e 4 secs vs 20 secs wouldn't be important in this impatient world. My frustration lies in the fact that I believe IQ is a much more capable program than either of the two mentioned by Jon so I expect more from it. I'm sure programming is a tedious task but I'd love to see IQ more widely recognized for what it can do & I wish Pierre every success w it.

Jan Rifkinson

Ridgefield CT USA

HP Blackbird Vista Ultimate SP-2

[quote=Armando]

is doing this as fast as copying in a single item?

Jon, your list of annoyances seems quite short, and most of the things mentioned seem easy to fix (from my point of view, of course), which is encouraging.

[/quote]

It is almost as fast.

Actually I have a longer list. The posted ones are all my show stoppers.

Jon

>Previously, you mentioned your wish to enable auto refresh. I agree. It is very disconcerting to have to manually refresh IF this works. Maybe you have to close and re-open a grid. Or restart the program.

I was going to put Auto refresh in my highpriority bug/feature list, but I didn't as I learned to like manual .

Auto refresh has been asked for lots of times though and I can understand why.

>Filtering is better than it was, but not where it should be. The user should be presented choices so they do not have to construct an argument.

"Named filters" is high on my priority list too. Mantis issue 19

> The calendar needs attention and better integration into the rest of the program.

You should add that to your priority list... See my last paragraph...

> Clicking can be hit or miss (this is erratic for me. It happens too infrequently for me to trace, but it is there).

there are some "issues" with clicking, yes : when 2 vertical/horizontal tab groups are used, it takes 2 clicks to be able to write in the source field of the other tab group. On some occasions it can be confusing to know whether an item's "hidden" link is double clickable or not, etc. But I usually don't have to many problems in that area.

It would be great if you could just pin point one or two situations where clicking is problematic.

>Layouts should be preserved.

On a per grid basis ?

>Performance and graphic smoothness needs to be improved/fixed. I know these have been improved, but in my opinion, they are not ready for prime time.

I agree. But there are progress in the performance department. Item creation could still be speedier (for those of us dealing with huge amounts of these...), the properties pane should not hinder item navigation that much, and grid opening/filter application should be faster.

Apart from that, it's really not that bad... 3 big improvements recently : HTML pane and hierarchy display in the status bar don't slow down grid navigation that much anymore, and item creation is faster (almost twice faster)

>Single line display of multi line items is unusable.

Actually, it's useable, but only if there are no carriage return (shift-enter actually) I believe. But I fully agree that this should be fixed if fixable.

> Preservation of indentation when pasting to another program.

This would be great...

Jon : you should consider writing a top 10 feature/bug list there http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=forum/217, following these guidelines if possible : In your opinion, which bugs/features should be given the highest priority ?. This might help getting a clearer picture of what users need/want most.

[quote=Armando]

[/quote]

Homework? Armando, I am so swamped right now that I don't know when I can get around to this, though I will try.

Thank you for your feedback. At least I feel that I'm not alone in my observations. As I said, I'll continue to casually test, but I cannot use IQ for work until these issues are resolved.

Jon