this will eventually be a blog about neomem, and its successor, abby, and/or trying to make the file system more tag-friendly. and neuroscience-type things.
here’s the problem: infoglut!
neomem just can’t handle the rate of influx. it’s having a bit of a nervous breakdown. i need something with a console interface, for speed, just throw things into a common store and let the tags organize it all.
so that’s what led to work on abby…
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September 21st, 2005 at 9:08 pm
sam
i think zoot is a good software.
http://www.zootsoftware.com
September 22nd, 2005 at 1:45 am
bburns
thanks, that looks interesting.
i’ll have to check it out, after rita passes and life returns to normal.
September 26th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Michael Vogel
It would be nice to give the attributes hide/normal to any folders and items, so you can easily hide all lookups and other items if you don’t need them…
September 30th, 2005 at 10:24 pm
jf
It feels like a very intuitive interface to a relational database. Are you actually using one as a backend? SQLite? SkipDB? Tsunami? etc.
October 1st, 2005 at 1:18 pm
bburns
michael - thanks, it’s on the list and the upcoming roadmap/feature list
jf - the current abby prototype is using zodb which lets you store python objects in different formats, eg a file or a mysql database. i’m not sure if i’ll stick with that approach though. i also kind of like the idea of abusing the file system, with one file or folder per object, which would also tie in to adding metadata to the existing file system.
October 2nd, 2005 at 12:17 am
jf
Brian,
By the way I was refering to Neomem when I said it reminded me of a relational database. If you are now working on Abby, does that mean that you stoped working on Neomem ? Should we discuss Neomem here or on the forum ?
October 2nd, 2005 at 2:50 pm
bburns
oh, well neomem is just a bunch of objects kept in memory then written/read to a file using MFC’s object serialization - i didn’t think it warranted the overhead of a database, not seeing the need to do queries, and there are the interface issues between objects and relational db tables.
future versions might have a more open file format though, that other programs could access as well (eg just one big data store that you could access via neomem, or abby, or any other program that knows what to do with it).
i’ll be focusing mostly on abby in the short term, though will try to get to a few minor features for neomem as well, and especially to getting neomem up on sourceforge or someplace similar.
and good question, it’s a little odd having a forum and a blog - i’ll need to work out what should go where. but i can always move some of these comments to the forum eventually, and/or merge some of my own into blog entries.
October 3rd, 2005 at 1:16 am
jf
About the feature list,
What’s holding you back? Just post what you have now, that would be a start. This way, we could see if the suggestions we are all burning to make are already on your list. We could also make suggestions as to which ones we would like to see implemented first.
Suggestions: I’ll second Michael’s suggestion about a flag to make a folder visible or not.
You could also add a flag to allow any field to be displayed in the “big view port”. This way there could be many more tabs. For ex. there could be two text tabs, one for the content of a document, and one for the notes on that document.
Also, when a field containning a file link is flaged for display in the “big view port”, the document is displayed in the “big view port” when you clic on the tab.
How about a field that contains a form. If this field is flaged to appear in the “big view port”, the form is rendered when a user clics on its tab in the “big view port”.
October 18th, 2005 at 5:28 am
Ivan
imho, Zoot is very comfortable soft due to its database structure and user’s ability to modify properties of folders: from fields and views to Rules (for example, certain field of item assigned to folder begins with …), Actions (modify specified field of items assigned to folder) and Filters. It is very fast and customizable.
And one important thing I couldn’t find in NeoMem is ability to link items directly
I use Zoot as contact manager, organizer and information manager (notes, etc.). And for me is very convinient and quick to make task linked to certain person from Contact database.
Minuses of Zoot(imho): $, non-OS-independent (at least Win and Linux) and a little bit poor interface.
October 18th, 2005 at 2:22 pm
bburns
jf - thanks for the comments - dealing with the backlog of feature ideas and requests has always been a rather daunting task, due to all the different formats the data is stored in, checking for similar entries already in the database, and then cleaning it all up so it’s understandable, but i’m working on it, slowly…
and i initially didn’t understand your suggestions about the big view port (i was reading kind of quickly), but those are all good ideas - ie to let the user have any number of Text Views, and have more control over what gets displayed there. i also like the idea for displaying the contents of a referenced file
i’m not sure what you mean by displaying a form though - did you have something particular in mind?
ivan - i still haven’t tried out zoot yet, but i will eventually. it’s always interesting to see how other programs handle these issues. and after becoming accustomed to wiki syntax and how easy it is to create links, that is definitely something that will be going into the new version of neomem…
July 24th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Thanos
Sorry
July 28th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Maximos
Nice