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[ba-unrev-talk] Re: ADM is not only an Outliner - its for managing all your projects and information


ADM Staff wrote:    (01)

> Peter's review of ADM here was generally favorable and friendly.  But
> it may have inadvertently conveyed the impression that ADM is simply
> an outliner.
>
> From our perspective, this is not the case. That's why we call ADM a
> `knowledge management desktop'   ADM can be used ot manage all types
> of information and all your projects because it includes: an internal
> web browser, internal document management screens, drag and drop
> linking to URL's and  files of all datatypes, and many other features,
> as well as capability for interoutline or interdatastructure
> connectivity for forthcoming global connectivity of data over the
> worldwideoutline.    (02)

By the way, thank you for the demo you gave of your system the other
day.
I have a lengthy review to post one day, but for now I'll try to hit the
highlights.    (03)

ADM is clearly "more than an outliner". It looks like:
   a) A great web browser that promotes "bookmarks" to first-class
citizens,
       making them outline-entries that can be easily copied and
organized.    (04)

In addition:
   b) It's an authoring tool
   c) Pages can be annotated with additional information.
   d) You can link to other outline structures, which makes easier to
        "graft on" other structures.    (05)

However, to my mind it falls short of being a "knowledge management
desktop",
because there did not appear to be any good way to import the
*collective*
wisdom of the group -- or more importantly, the collective wisdom of the
global
web community.    (06)

For example, the ability to annotate pages has tremendous potential for
adding
Amazon-style ratings. But unless I can find all such entries, made by
anyone
who visited that page (using backlinks), then I can never get a complete
picture
of what others are thinking. (Given such capabilities, the next step
would be to
merge the rankings, Amazon-style, but a google-style backlink-server
would be
a minimum necessary condition for that capability.)    (07)

The system we looked at (and the upcoming version we discussed) had two
other notable limitations, as well:
   a) A proprietary, binary data format for the outline structures.
       More than anything else, this choice will limit wide-spread
adoption,
       because the structures will be neither as easily readable or as
readily
       constructable as HTML or XML documents. (I hope, therefore, that
       you are considering switching to an XML format, in future.)    (08)

   b) A windows-only implementation.
       A "reference implementation" is needed that the open source folks
can
       utilize and extend on a variety of platforms -- because *no* web
based
       solution can hope to achieve ubiquity if it only runs on a single
platform.
       (And if multiple platform implementations must depend on a single
small
        company acquiring the resources to develop them, then I fear
that the
        effort is doomed from the outset.)    (09)

Finally, a word on the interface. I was favorably impressed my much that
I
saw, including the various mechanisms for acquiring entries and
shuffling them
around. Although I've never been a big fan of the Lotus-style 3-column
hierarchy
implemented in the current version, I look forward to the collapsible
tree
you're working towards in the future.    (010)

Unfortunately, as you are no doubt finding out, collabsible tree
components
only allow for single-line entries, rather than multiple lines -- a
factor which
more than any other has limited the functionality of any GUI-based
outlines
which have been developed in the last couple of decades.    (011)

luck.
eric    (012)