Idea: Linux PIM in Ruby

[Hal Fulton]

On my wishlist of top 20 things I'd like to do: A PIM for Linux.

Why in Ruby? Silly question. I'd use it no matter the language, but
if I were working on it, I'd want it to be in Ruby.

The "traditional" PIM has never been of much interest to me -- the
contact manager, address book, phone book type of thing.

I have used a fairly non-traditional one since 1987. At that time
it was called Tornado; now it's called Info Select. As with many
things, not everything in its evolution has been a step forward.

What I like about it:
1. It's very good at handling "totally random," unstructured,
unformatted information.
2. The search capabilities are awesome (and screamingly fast).

But, of course, it's only on Windows and Palm OS. And it has many
features nowadays that I don't want/need -- some of which I can't
turn off, either. :/

Anyway, what I have in mind is basically a gigantic pile of virtual
sticky notes (categorizable into groups). They'd be stored in a
database and represented onscreen as a bunch of little text widgets.

Possibly the categories would be a tree view on the right... but I
wouldn't want the items in the tree view. (That's one complaint I
have with IS -- once you expand a category, the tree view is dominated
by that list of items and becomes essentially useless.)

Once that was working, I'd be interested in possibly adding some
hyperlink facilities of some kind.

I'd likely choose FX/Ruby as a GUI, though GTK+ might be better in
some ways. Hmmm.

Anyone interested in working on this with me??

Hal

 

[Gavin Sinclair]

On my wishlist of top 20 things I'd like to do: A PIM for Linux.

[...]

I have used a fairly non-traditional one since 1987. At that time
it was called Tornado; now it's called Info Select. As with many
things, not everything in its evolution has been a step forward.

[...]

Anyone interested in working on this with me??

I use Info Select as well and really like it. Like you, I don't use
all its features, but I haven't really come across things I've wanted
to turn off.

I would certainly contribute to any effort you make to create a
similar (and simpler) program, but I wouldn't have time to work on it
all the time.

Cheers,
Gavin

 

[Hal Fulton]

I use Info Select as well and really like it. Like you, I don't use
all its features, but I haven't really come across things I've wanted
to turn off.

I would certainly contribute to any effort you make to create a
similar (and simpler) program, but I wouldn't have time to work on it
all the time.

Nor would I be able to work on it every day. But I find if I'm working
with someone else, I leave something on the backburner for shorter
periods of time.

I'd begin with a tree list (of categories) on the left and a window of
overlapping text widgets on the right.

Beginning functionality:
- create/delete/rename categories
- create/delete/edit/move/copy notes
- search

And that's about it. That would be pretty much the functionality
of Tornado in 1987, which wasn't even a GUI.

Speaking of GUIs: What's your toolkit of choice?

Hal

 

[Robert Feldt]

Nor would I be able to work on it every day. But I find if I'm working
with someone else, I leave something on the backburner for shorter
periods of time.

I'd begin with a tree list (of categories) on the left and a window of
overlapping text widgets on the right.

Beginning functionality:
- create/delete/rename categories
- create/delete/edit/move/copy notes
- search

I'm also interested in this. The reason I started doing a port of lucene
to Ruby
was that I wanted to use it as the search function for such an
"unstructured" db of
info. I felt that reldb's are the wrong way to go for many apps since
the info
is not structured and you'll get enough speed anyway with text indexing
alg's.

And that's about it. That would be pretty much the functionality
of Tornado in 1987, which wasn't even a GUI.

Speaking of GUIs: What's your toolkit of choice?

I've used Fox but checked out GTK/Gnome2 some time ago and was quite
impressed.
I don't know the state of wxruby though.

Regards,

Robert

 

[Armin Roehrl]

Forgive my ignorance, I never used Info Select, but just now looked
at their webpage: http://www.miclog.com/isover.htm

Would a modified wiki do? I guess you want a stand-alone solution
without any webserver invovled.

What are the "killer" feature you especially liked in Info Select?

Thank you,
-A., who loves wikis .

 

[Carsten Eckelmann]

On my wishlist of top 20 things I'd like to do: A PIM for Linux.

Why in Ruby? Silly question. I'd use it no matter the language, but
if I were working on it, I'd want it to be in Ruby.

The "traditional" PIM has never been of much interest to me -- the
contact manager, address book, phone book type of thing.

I have used a fairly non-traditional one since 1987. At that time
it was called Tornado; now it's called Info Select. As with many
things, not everything in its evolution has been a step forward.

What I like about it:
1. It's very good at handling "totally random," unstructured,
unformatted information.
2. The search capabilities are awesome (and screamingly fast).

But, of course, it's only on Windows and Palm OS. And it has many
features nowadays that I don't want/need -- some of which I can't
turn off, either. :/

Anyway, what I have in mind is basically a gigantic pile of virtual
sticky notes (categorizable into groups). They'd be stored in a
database and represented onscreen as a bunch of little text widgets.

Possibly the categories would be a tree view on the right... but I
wouldn't want the items in the tree view. (That's one complaint I
have with IS -- once you expand a category, the tree view is dominated
by that list of items and becomes essentially useless.)

Once that was working, I'd be interested in possibly adding some
hyperlink facilities of some kind.

I'd likely choose FX/Ruby as a GUI, though GTK+ might be better in
some ways. Hmmm.

Anyone interested in working on this with me??

Hal

Have a look at Leo (http://leo.sf.net) which is a very sophisticated
Outline Editor written in Python/Tk. It features the category tree (only
they call it an outline) and unstructered text in the nodes. The good
thing is, that it can be scripted (though only in Python) and that nodes
can be 'cloned' i.e. appear in different places in the outline but
always point to the same content.

I used it for structuring my thoughts and also for programming tasks. I
just don't really like the Tk interface.

Cheers,
Carsten

 

[Gavin Sinclair]

Forgive my ignorance, I never used Info Select, but just now looked
at their webpage: http://www.miclog.com/isover.htm

Would a modified wiki do? I guess you want a stand-alone solution
without any webserver invovled.

What are the "killer" feature you especially liked in Info Select?

Instantaneous search capability is the killer feature. Just hit F5,
start typing what you're looking for, and it (incrementally) shows you
how many matches there are. The outline view narrows down to only the
items that match. F3 to jump from match to match. End result: you
can find your information quickly. F4 to stop search mode and return
to the item you were editing before you searched.

There are heaps of other features, but the above gives you some idea
why I use it. I can throw information in it without caring too much
about structure. I can make notes without going to the effort of
creating a text file, thinking of a name for it, and then wondering
where the heck it is in a month's time. Still, some things do get
lost in there. Dont they, Hal?

Thank you,
-A., who loves wikis .

I like wikis too, especially the "recent edits" feature. I wish IS
had that. The basic wiki features (WikiLinks) would work well too,
although text-based markup is out of place in a PIM.

Gavin

 

[Gavin Sinclair]

Beginning functionality:
- create/delete/rename categories
- create/delete/edit/move/copy notes
- search

And that's about it. That would be pretty much the functionality
of Tornado in 1987, which wasn't even a GUI.

Speaking of GUIs: What's your toolkit of choice?

optparse

Seriously, I've never written a Ruby GUI. Once upon a time, I thought
along your lines, and figured it would be a good exercise. Then I
thought that such a product would be no fun to use if the GUI sucked.

Gavin

 

[Hal Fulton]

If FXRuby were the GUI of choice I could pitch in to help with the GUI
programming parts of it. I've not used this particular application, but
I did take a look at the Info Select web page
(http://miclog.com/is/7/features/index.shtml) and I sort-of get the idea.

One thing that is obviously missing from FOX (and which it appears would
be needed for this) is some kind of "Rich Text" widget. That is, when
you're composing the "sticky notes" I think you want to be able to embed
images, use different fonts and styles, etc.

As with most endeavors (in my experience) the GUI is the hard part,
so your help would be appreciated.

As for rich text: Hmm. I'd like to be able to handle italics and
boldface, but other than that I could deal with plain text (speaking
for myself) at least in the beginning. 99% of what I want to deal
with is plain text.

One question I'm uncertain about is how to store the data in a
search-friendly way. Gavin, would you like to look at that aspect?

Lyle: Is it hard to put a bunch of tiny subwindows inside a parent
frame? I've never done that in Fox.


Hal

 

[Zachary P. Landau]

--OgqxwSJOaUobr8KG
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Have a look at Leo (http://leo.sf.net) which is a very sophisticated=20
Outline Editor written in Python/Tk. It features the category tree (only= =20
they call it an outline) and unstructered text in the nodes. The good=20
thing is, that it can be scripted (though only in Python) and that nodes= =20
can be 'cloned' i.e. appear in different places in the outline but=20
always point to the same content.
=20
I used it for structuring my thoughts and also for programming tasks. I= =20
just don't really like the Tk interface.

For those of you looking for a similar type of program with a text
interface, check out hierarchical notebook (hnb) at
http://hnb.sourceforge.net. It is another outline editor. I use it for
TODO lists, contact information, book lists, etc. It's definitely worth
checking out.

--=20
Zachary P. Landau <[email protected]>
GPG: gpg --recv-key 0x24E5AD99 | http://kapheine.hypa.net/kapheine.asc

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--OgqxwSJOaUobr8KG--

 

[T. Onoma]

As for rich text: Hmm. I'd like to be able to handle italics and
boldface, but other than that I could deal with plain text (speaking
for myself) at least in the beginning. 99% of what I want to deal
with is plain text.

Just a suggestion: Perhaps you don't need rich text edit. Just display the
info-note as html. (deos fox have html widget?) When you go to edit the
info-note it can switch to plain text, and then a wiki type markup would be
useful.

T.

 

[Hal Fulton]

For those of you looking for a similar type of program with a text
interface, check out hierarchical notebook (hnb) at
http://hnb.sourceforge.net. It is another outline editor. I use it for
TODO lists, contact information, book lists, etc. It's definitely worth
checking out.

I will check out hnb and Leo, but I'll make another comment along
these lines.

The typical "outline-oriented" program is not the style I'm
after, either.

I'd probably like to be able to put the list of categories in a
hierarchy, but:
1. I don't want to display the notes (or their titles/IDs)
as part of that tree.
2. I don't want the notes themselves to be hierarchical in
nature -- just plain notes, "info atoms" so to speak.
3. The overly hierarchical nature of the later versions of
Info Select is one thing I *don't* like about it.

Just my opinion. And obviously if I end up leading a little
group in working on this, I will nudge it in the direction
of my tastes.

Cheers,
Hal

 

[Hal Fulton]

Sure, definitely. That's what layout managers are all about.

I was thinking not of tiled windows but overlapping, like notes
on a (physical) bulletin board. Probably easy, I've just never
done it.

I think it would be fun/informative to try to abstract away the
GUI here... I've tried that two or three times before with
mixed success.

In other words, I'd create a layer that would never change, then
create a mapping from that to Fox. (But nothing too fancy --
just wrap some calls if possible, not create a new GUI system.)

Then for example it would easy(-ier) to switch later from Fox
to GTK or wxWin or whatever, or even make alternatives.


Hal

 

[Stefan Schmiedl]

Hi Hal,

I will check out hnb and Leo, but I'll make another comment along
these lines.

While you're surfing, also take a look at the Visual Knowledge Builder
at http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/VKB/

It has some nice features, but is written in Java ...

s.

 

[Its Me]

I use Info Select as well and really like it. Like you, I don't use

all its features, but I haven't really come across things I've wanted
to turn off.

A bit off topic ... do/would you use InfoSelect to also manage your web
bookmarks/favorites?

 

[Gavin Sinclair]

A bit off topic ... do/would you use InfoSelect to also manage your web
bookmarks/favorites?

No. You probably can, though. I do keep some links in there.

Gavin

 

[Robert Feldt]

One question I'm uncertain about is how to store the data in a
search-friendly way. Gavin, would you like to look at that aspect?

Don't forget to check out lucene (apache foundation project) here. It's
got lots of features and is very fast, imho.
It basically pre-indexes text for fast searches.

/Robert

 

[Ian Hobson]

A bit off topic ... do/would you use InfoSelect to also manage your web
bookmarks/favorites?

Stick them in a page, with comments, and put the page under the topic I
would look for them.

If I am thinking straight I also add the keywords I would use to search
for them again.

I find this a most helpful when doing web research - I end up with a
document of comments and links to relevant pages.

It was doing this that I learned that frames do not show the current
page's URL, so I would end up back at the site at the top level. Frames
are a pane! :#)

 

[Emmanuel Touzery]

As for rich text: Hmm. I'd like to be able to handle italics and
boldface, but other than that I could deal with plain text (speaking
for myself) at least in the beginning. 99% of what I want to deal
with is plain text.

i just dealt with that today :O)
FXText does support underline and strikethrough, it might be enough for
you if you just want to emphasize parts of the text. For bold, italics
and others, scintilla might be suited, but i miserably drawned in its
API (not OO at all, one file with tons of methods). if someone
succeeded, i'd be happy to get some code to do it :O)

emmanuel

 

[Emmanuel Touzery]

I think it would be fun/informative to try to abstract away the
GUI here... I've tried that two or three times before with
mixed success.

In other words, I'd create a layer that would never change, then
create a mapping from that to Fox. (But nothing too fancy --
just wrap some calls if possible, not create a new GUI system.)

Then for example it would easy(-ier) to switch later from Fox
to GTK or wxWin or whatever, or even make alternatives.

wouldn't it be smarter to have a core which knows nothing about GUI and
then several GUI layers ontop of it?
you think application directing GUI. how about GUI directing
application? seems cleaner to me, but then again..

emmanuel