InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by WayneK on 2015/11/24 00:14

I frequently need to create large numbers of blank items (eg 40-50 at a time). I usually do this by hitting return but the process frequently bogs down and is way too slow. There's a substantial delay after the insertion of each blank item, and I end up sitting here watching the cursor slowly work its way down the screen to catch up with the many returns I just entered.

Is there a way to create a big block of blank items instantly? In Excel, if you select 10 rows then click on "insert row", it'll insert a block of 10 rows.

Wayne

Comments

Hi Wayne

A possible work-around that comes to mind is to simply import (File->Import->Non-Hierarchical Data) from an Excel Spreadsheet (see the one I have attached).

A single column with "Item" as header, n blank records and at the end a dummy non-blank record.

Ivan

Another workaround using any text based programme/word processor:

press return e.g. twenty times

select and copy

create new item in IQ

paste in the item field (*not* in edit mode - item field or full item just selected)

choose 'Paste each line in a new item' (cant remember exact phrasing

there you have a new item for each carriage return

Thanks for the ideas to try.

1) I downloaded the Excel file and tried to import it. It didn't give me the option to import into the current grid (grayed out). It gave me only the option to import it into the inbox or nowhere specific, so I bailed out.

2) I tried copy/pasting blank lines from notepad. It worked, in a way, but when I hit "paste", the hour glass came up and InfoQube went into "not responding" mode for about thirty seconds. So in the end, it was about the same delay as just hitting return 20 times.

The problem doesn't occur all the time. I just tried copy/pasting blank items from another grid and it worked well but we'll see if that holds up over time.

Wayne

Win 7, 64 bit Cyberpower Model 1, C Series (2011) 16 GB RAM

27" Samsung S27A350H, 24" ASUS VW242H 1920x1080

[quote=WayneK]

[/quote]

FWIW I created 30+ here and it was almost instantaneous - well, very quick -- maybe Pierre can figure out why the difference...

I suspect it's related to the number of items in the grid, though even there the behavior doesn't seem to be consistent.

Wayne

Win 7, 64 bit Cyberpower Model 1, C Series (2011) 16 GB RAM

27" Samsung S27A350H, 24" ASUS VW242H 1920x1080

I'll add an Item > Insert > Items... command

Just how many items do you have in that grid ?

(perhaps doing a hoist or a column filter before inserting could improve the performance)

I'll try hoisting, as you and Tom suggest.

Grid currently has 2,000+ items. It's probably going to be 200,000+ before I'm done. Is that beyond the capability of InfoQube? Would it help if I created fewer items with more text in each item?

Wayne

Win 7, 64 bit Cyberpower Model 1, C Series (2011) 16 GB RAM

27" Samsung S27A350H, 24" ASUS VW242H 1920x1080

200 000 is enormous. After many years, my DB contains 167450 items.

Do you need to see all those items, all the time?

If not, you could either
1- activate the date filter toolbar and select a time range (e.g. itemcreated > 2015 11 01),
2- use the alphanumeric filter toolbar and select some letter or type some string in the text box -- I don't know what kind of data you're displaying in that grid .

Alternatively, you could :
3- use a column filter - the manual gives some examples.

4- use a full blown filter (in the filter text box from the source bar (alt+S to show) ; e.g.: itemcreated > now-20 )

(5- and/or hoist as it was mentioned)

Notes :

the sql type syntax fort filters isn't very complicated. What the "itemcreated > now-20" above says is : show all all item created in the last 20 days.

You can add and "|" at the end of the filter to add a separate filter for sub items. E.g. itemcreated > now-20 | tasks

That would tell the grid to only show sub items that are tasks.
leaving it blank (itemcreated > now-20 | ) would show all subs, whatever field they "contain".

-------------------------------------------------------

Windows 8.1

Sony Vaio S Series 13 (SVS131E21L)

Ram:8gb, CPU: Intel i5-3230M, 2.6ghz

I'm not sure what the grid capacity is but 2000 items is manageable but high, especially if you have wordwrap on the item column. That explains some of the slowness you've observed.

[edit] I opened a grid with no source so it had all 15,000 items of my IQBase, it loaded in a 20 seconds. Adding items was very fast if wordwrap was turned off, slower but manageable when it was turned on) [/edit]

The database capacity is huge however.

I think you need to rethink your information management strategy and / or start applying filters. The date filter is the first one that comes to mind. Also, if you categorize your items, using some yes/no fields, set the grid source to one of those, instead of the full list

If you want, I offer a free voice or Skype call to help speed start you on IQ. Feel free to take me up on this !

Pierre_Admin

I've mentioned before what I'm using InfoQube and have raised questions about whether it's suitable. I really like the flexibility and control it gives me and I'm perfectly willing to alter my approach as needed to make InfoQube work better.

I'm interested in the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Custer Battle) as a hobby. I've been reading about it and studying it for 30+ years and have several articles published. Now that I'm retired, I'm returning to it after a long layoff and would like to take advantage of software developments to make research easier.

There is an enormous volume of information available on the battle. In the past, if wanted to research a topic, I'd have to go back and skim read all my books and articles to look for material relevant to the topic. This obviously is very time-consuming.

My objective is to put all my source material into InfoQube divided into "topic segments". Each segment might be a single sentence, several sentences, or a whole paragraph.

After that, I can apply a wide variety of topic categories, date filters, etc which will allow me to do nearly instant research on any topic. Assigning categories to text snippets is called qualitative data analysis and is used for research in the social sciences. There is dedicated software for QDA, typically costing thousands of dollars. I did a trial on one of the cheaper ones but didn't like it at all because it gave me very little control over how things are done.

I'd appreciate any ideas on how to make things work better in InfoQube. I don't need to see everything at once in one grid, but I do need to be able to apply filters to all my items at once. Don't I need to have them all displayed in a grid to do that?

I could divide my work into multiple databases to reduce the number of items in each (for example, could have one for Indian sources, one for soldier sources, etc). It wouldn't be as convenient as having everything in one database but I could make that work.

Wayne

Win 7, 64 bit Cyberpower Model 1, C Series (2011) 16 GB RAM

27" Samsung S27A350H, 24" ASUS VW242H 1920x1080

Hi,

This is an ideal project for IQ. And one which will allow you to better understand how it works...

No need to split the database, in fact, I would recommend against it.

The way I would do it is as follows:

Grab content from documents or the web into your inbox.
In the Inbox grid, break it up in smaller chunks if need be and add categories, Wikitags and/or yes/no fields to these
Mark the items as done (Ctrl+M)
In my personal Inbox, I added a source filter (Grid > Source Bar): done is null or (done < now+2). This makes items automatically disappear 2 days after you've marked them as done, this way, the inbox is clean of old stuff
Setup other grids to view a subset of the items, typically based on your categorization
You can also use the search (Ctrl+F) to find stuff back

HTH !

Pierre,

That's great news. I'll set things up as you suggested. If I understand, the thing to avoid is overloading grids with too many items to display.

I might take you up on your phone call offer. I'm pleased right now to be getting research into the database. I'm proceeding cautiously with understanding how to search, filter etc. I've spent quite a few hours with InfoQube but obviously have a lot to learn.

Wayne

Win 7, 64 bit Cyberpower Model 1, C Series (2011) 16 GB RAM

27" Samsung S27A350H, 24" ASUS VW242H 1920x1080

[quote=WayneK]

My objective is to put all my source material into InfoQube divided into "topic segments". Each segment might be a single sentence, several sentences, or a whole paragraph.

[/quote]

I do that kind of work myself, with a somewhat modified version of QDA (I don't need all the details involved in "full blown" QDA). It's not hard to do, it just takes patience and intelligent planning. I find IQ is ideal for that kind of work.

I don't have the time to explain in detail how I do it right now.

Rapidly:

1- I differentiated several types (with Y/N or boolean fields) for classification items (items I use to classify quotes) : metathemes, themes, subthemes and keywords

2- Created some other types (fields) to differentiate between quotes and my own comments or writing: quotes/citations, text, and comment

3- Created a few text fields that I can apply to any item (generally quotes or keyword items): tags (I use the wikitag field for that), author, date, title, explanation, fact, etc.

The tricky part is how to fill those easily, in a perfectly consistent manner. For that I use a system of popups & various scripts to fill fields partially or globally (when necessary).

In grids, I never show everything I have in my DB at once as it is useless. And one of the reason I've decided to dedicate full items (in the item field) to write keywords, themes etc., is that it allows me to collapse entire hierarchies and see less items.

How things are displayed once they've been manually sorted (basically, as there are some nuances I won't go into):

theme

-- sub theme

---- keywords

-------- quotes and comments

But before reaching that stage, all quotes are found under "book" or "article" items, and structured according the article/book structure (I'm simplifying here, but it's the general idea). I structure quote under themes, etc. at a later stage.

Book/article

-- Chapter

--- keywords

---- quote

Filtering keywords using the WikiTag field or any other field (like the item field) I can reorganize quotes as I see fit in themes, subthemes, etc. I have several strict rules I follow so that original book structures remain intact in the process, and so that quotes can be reorganized at will under new keywords, themes, etc.

Hope that helps...

-------------------------------------------------------

Windows 8.1

Sony Vaio S Series 13 (SVS131E21L)

Ram:8gb, CPU: Intel i5-3230M, 2.6ghz

Armando,

Thank you for taking the time to write that out. I'm going to put that to good use as I'm just at the stage where I'm going to be making these decisions. Your thoughts are very similar to the ones I've been having. At this early stage, I wanted to just get a good sampling of source material into InfoQube, then get serious about how I want to do the categorizing and filtering.

I think the multi-pick fields will be a big help by allowing the consolidation of multiple yes/no fields into a single column.

On the other thread, we were talking about how to get rid of unwanted line breaks when copying text from pdf's. I gave you a website that will remove the breaks. That works fine but I found something that's working much better. It's a little free utility that automatically removes the breaks as soon as you copy the text, so there are no extra steps to get rid of them. You just paste into IQ as you normally would, and the breaks have already been removed.

The program is called PDF Copy-Paster. Here's the website: www.onehourprogramming.com/blog/2010/9/1/fix-copy-and-pasting-in-pdfs.html

Use your own discretion because this is an .exe file and I just stumbled across the website while searching for a solution to the line break problem. It seemed liked a legit site so I took a chance on it. You just launch it and let it run in the background. My anti-virus didn't object and I've been using it for over a week. It's worked flawlessly. It's really one of the best tools I've found for reducing some of the tedious copy/paste work.

One note: it's made to work with Adobe and a few other pdf programs. It won't work for the one I use (PDF Revu) but that's not a problem because I simply switch to Adobe for the copy/paste work.

Wayne

Win 7, 64 bit Cyberpower Model 1, C Series (2011) 16 GB RAM

27" Samsung S27A350H, 24" ASUS VW242H 1920x1080

You're welcome.

Thanks for the link!

Rereading my post, I'm not sure if it's easily understandable. The problem as there's some complexity involved and I'd probably have to take more than an hour to detail the whole data structure and classification/categorisation process.

-------------------------------------------------------

Windows 8.1

Sony Vaio S Series 13 (SVS131E21L)

Ram:8gb, CPU: Intel i5-3230M, 2.6ghz

[quote=WayneK]

I suspect it's related to the number of items in the grid[/quote]

[semi-off-topic]

not sure how you work Wayne, but just in case it might be helpful:

I often have two copies of one grid open in a dual-vertical-pane setting. That way I dont have to scroll so much, and what is expanded in one can be collapsed in the other - also makes drag-n-drop of items easy (again less scrolling).

Also, I might use hoist on one, or both of them, as Pierre suggests.

Tom

Which version are you currently using?

I have no trouble importing into the Current Grid, not greyed out and actually it is the checked option in this particular dialog.

Running 61 here.

I answered earlier but it didn't show up. I'm using 61 also. Not sure why mine is grayed out.

Wayne

Win 7, 64 bit Cyberpower Model 1, C Series (2011) 16 GB RAM

27" Samsung S27A350H, 24" ASUS VW242H 1920x1080

I was still having a problem with slow item entry and it occurred even when I had the parent hoisted and only a few items displayed. Here's the solution I'm using now, in case it might help someone else.

I keep a buffer of blank items at the bottom of my outline. As I approach the point where there are 10-15 left, I copy them and paste them at the bottom several times (using option "Paste each line into a separate item...". That creates a new buffer of 50+ blanks ready for use.

Wayne

[quote=WayneK]

I was still having a problem with slow item entry and it occurred even when I had the parent hoisted and only a few items displayed.

[/quote]

is that still a problem Wayne?

I came across this while searching for a related topic and FWIW creating new blank items is very fast here (currently using 70a)