4 Feb
2022
4 Feb
'22
5:01 p.m.
Today I bit the bullet and dropped my many articles and electronic
documents related to my technical explorations into Zotero. I was tired
of constantly having to remember where the documents were located and I
wanted to be able to curate them better (I tried git for a while, back
when, but I'm not a fan of non-text data in my repos, and it wasn't
really much better than the base file system approach). I've been using
Zotero for years now, for academic works, but not for technical works
unrelated to my research. I realized the man-years of effort to clean up
the entries that I had created in about 30-40 seconds of exciting drag
and drop, just about the time I deleted them from their original
locations. I think the work will pay off in due time, but we'll see.
Then I thought, surely, I'm not the first person to have had this
problem... it occurred to me that y'all must have faced this very
problem, a few years in, back in the late 70's, early 80's. That is,
document management. What did you do, variously, considering both text
and non-text?
Will
4 Feb
4 Feb
5:35 p.m.
Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> writes:
Then I thought, surely, I'm not the first person
to have had this
problem... it occurred to me that y'all must have faced this very
problem, a few years in, back in the late 70's, early 80's. That is,
document management. What did you do, variously, considering both text
and non-text?
I'm sure the vast majority of document management was in real folders in
real filing cabinets. We take our vast stores of electronic documents
for granted these days, but it's shockingly recent in computing terms!
Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^)
Will
-Seth
--
Seth Morabito
web(a)loomcom.com
Poulsbo, WA, USA
5:43 p.m.
Don Lancaster's "Tearing" method of understanding Apple II assembly
programs, but, really, generalizable to anything, is, forty years later,
*still* magnificent. https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/tearing_rework.pdf
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 10:40 AM Seth J. Morabito <web(a)loomcom.com> wrote:
Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^)
8:51 p.m.
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito <web(a)loomcom.com> wrote:
Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^)
I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a
documentation resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used
in evidence against us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original
electronic doc. I wish I had a better approach that wasn't so
environmentally destructive, but I just don't notice errors as easily when
they're just on the screen.
[*] See <
https://web.archive.org/web/20210321003206/http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/a…gt;.
With feeling.
13 May
13 May
1:09 a.m.
On Fri, 4 Feb 2022, John Cowan wrote:
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito
<web(a)loomcom.com> wrote:
Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^)
I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a
documentation resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used
in evidence against us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original
electronic doc. I wish I had a better approach that wasn't so
environmentally destructive, but I just don't notice errors as easily when
they're just on the screen.
Have you looked into e-ink tablets? The reMarkable series seems to be
pretty popular. I recently got a Boox Nova Air e-ink tablet, works
great as an e-reader, but it also has a pretty decent PDF editor built
in that lets you scribble all over PDF docs like they're paper.
--
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
1:52 a.m.
heading off-piste, the Boox series are also worth looking at. Android,
anything android can do, a boox will do slowly in eInk. their version
of the reMarkable markup thing may not be as "good" but its the
alternate, and alternate pricepoint.
when I think about the BSD manuals, bound with steel rods, in a metal
construct welded to the desk at the back of the lab. Wonderful source
of knowledge. Or.. the VMS fiche set, and the reader. you want to fix
this problem? ok, if you learn Bliss32, then everything is in this
stack of blue-grey plastic, if your eyes are good enough. No peeking.
I think the experiential aspects of 2D thinking with pens, on paper
are lost online. I totally don't engage with "visualisations" beyond
the very very good. It is very easy to avoid having to say why by
falling back on "my eyes aren't good" or "I don't understand
this" but
in truth, I dont LIKE them. I like paper, and I miss fanfold printout.
Plus. I liked taking the boxes of it to kindergarden and handing them
over for the kids to write on.
On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 11:33 AM Michael Parson <mparson(a)bl.org> wrote:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2022, John Cowan wrote:
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito
<web(a)loomcom.com> wrote:
Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^)
I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a
documentation resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used
in evidence against us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original
electronic doc. I wish I had a better approach that wasn't so
environmentally destructive, but I just don't notice errors as easily when
they're just on the screen.
Have you looked into e-ink tablets? The reMarkable series seems to be
pretty popular. I recently got a Boox Nova Air e-ink tablet, works
great as an e-reader, but it also has a pretty decent PDF editor built
in that lets you scribble all over PDF docs like they're paper.
--
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
2:04 a.m.
On Fri, 13 May 2022, George Michaelson wrote:
heading off-piste, the Boox series are also worth
looking at. Android,
anything android can do, a boox will do slowly in eInk. their version
of the reMarkable markup thing may not be as "good" but its the
alternate, and alternate pricepoint.
I love my Boox Nova Air. I carry with me just about everywhere. I can
read the book I'm currently reading, plus I also scribble notes and
doodles in the note app. I've doodled ideas for things I later work up
in FreeCAD for 3D printing. If my focus was more on the note taking and
drawing, I'd have gone for the bigger, closer to sheet-of-paper sized
devices, but I primarily wanted an e-ink e-reader that could also do
other things. So far, I've been very impressed with the other things it
could do.
I've been a fan of e-ink displays for a long time. I really wish
someone would make a reasonbly priced 20+ inch e-ink monitor. Most of
the stuff I deal with is in text, and working with text on an e-ink
display would be so much easier on the eyes.
I only mentioned the reMarkable because it seems to be one of the
popular ones out there, or maybe they just have better marketing. I
think my wife said that one of the women she works with at her design
firm has a reMarkable and loves it.
when I think about the BSD manuals, bound with steel
rods, in a metal
construct welded to the desk at the back of the lab. Wonderful source
of knowledge. Or.. the VMS fiche set, and the reader. you want to fix
this problem? ok, if you learn Bliss32, then everything is in this
stack of blue-grey plastic, if your eyes are good enough. No peeking.
I think the experiential aspects of 2D thinking with pens, on paper
are lost online. I totally don't engage with "visualisations" beyond
the very very good. It is very easy to avoid having to say why by
falling back on "my eyes aren't good" or "I don't understand
this" but
in truth, I dont LIKE them. I like paper, and I miss fanfold printout.
Plus. I liked taking the boxes of it to kindergarden and handing them
over for the kids to write on.
I miss fan-fold paper too... I pretty much quit printing out program
listings when I quit having tractor-fed printers. It just wasn't the
same. Also, no more multi-page big-text banners. :)
--
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 11:33 AM Michael Parson
<mparson(a)bl.org> wrote:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2022, John Cowan wrote:
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito
<web(a)loomcom.com> wrote:
Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^)
I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a
documentation resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used
in evidence against us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original
electronic doc. I wish I had a better approach that wasn't so
environmentally destructive, but I just don't notice errors as easily when
they're just on the screen.
Have you looked into e-ink tablets? The reMarkable series seems to be
pretty popular. I recently got a Boox Nova Air e-ink tablet, works
great as an e-reader, but it also has a pretty decent PDF editor built
in that lets you scribble all over PDF docs like they're paper.
--
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX 
2:41 a.m.
On Feb 4, 2022, at 12:51 PM, John Cowan <cowan(a)ccil.org> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 12:39 PM Seth J. Morabito <web(a)loomcom.com> wrote:
Besides, it's fun to scribble notes all over printouts and Xeroxes :^)
I mark up a printout with scribbles ("hourglasses and arrows and a documentation
resource for each one, sayin' what they was about, to be used in evidence against
us"[*]) and then re-transcribe them into the original electronic doc. I wish I had a
better approach that wasn't so environmentally destructive, but I just don't
notice errors as easily when they're just on the screen.
[*] See
<https://web.archive.org/web/20210321003206/http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/alice_flame.txt>.
With feeling.
There are iPad apps such as CollaNote (free) & GoodNotes ($)
which allow you to write/scribble/doodle with an Apple
Pencil. Note the same experience but there are some other
benefits. You can zoom in to write small, easy ink color
change, moving portions of written text, OCR, search,
hyperlinks, digital planners, synchronized audio (with
writing) etc. You can paste in pictures, videos, pdf and so
on. And now you can easily scribble/highlight on any PDF etc.
For some things I still prefer computation notebooks with 4x4
Quad light green paper but increasingly I am relying on the
iADHD device! In any case I still prefer writing as opposed
to typing when {t,m}aking notes and for design notes or
sketching new ideas. The writing experience on the ipad is
not great even with a paperLike(TM) plastic screen protector
But I can live with that.
In contrast the Unix GUI experience is falling further and
further behind. Wish it weren't so.
I haven't used any e-ink device as they are expensive and they
seem limited in other ways compared to the iPad.
4:01 a.m.
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 10:02 AM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Today I bit the bullet and dropped my many articles
and electronic
documents related to my technical explorations into Zotero. I was tired of
constantly having to remember where the documents were located and I wanted
to be able to curate them better (I tried git for a while, back when, but
I'm not a fan of non-text data in my repos, and it wasn't really much
better than the base file system approach). I've been using Zotero for
years now, for academic works, but not for technical works unrelated to my
research. I realized the man-years of effort to clean up the entries that I
had created in about 30-40 seconds of exciting drag and drop, just about
the time I deleted them from their original locations. I think the work
will pay off in due time, but we'll see.
Then I thought, surely, I'm not the first person to have had this
problem... it occurred to me that y'all must have faced this very problem,
a few years in, back in the late 70's, early 80's. That is, document
management. What did you do, variously, considering both text and non-text?
Emacs org-mode comes to mind
Will
4:08 a.m.
On May 12, 2022, at 9:01 PM, Kevin Bowling
<kevin.bowling(a)kev009.com> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 4, 2022 at 10:02 AM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com
<mailto:will.senn@gmail.com>> wrote:
Today I bit the bullet and dropped my many articles and electronic documents related to
my technical explorations into Zotero. I was tired of constantly having to remember where
the documents were located and I wanted to be able to curate them better (I tried git for
a while, back when, but I'm not a fan of non-text data in my repos, and it
wasn't really much better than the base file system approach). I've been using
Zotero for years now, for academic works, but not for technical works unrelated to my
research. I realized the man-years of effort to clean up the entries that I had created in
about 30-40 seconds of exciting drag and drop, just about the time I deleted them from
their original locations. I think the work will pay off in due time, but we'll see.
Then I thought, surely, I'm not the first person to have had this problem... it
occurred to me that y'all must have faced this very problem, a few years in, back in
the late 70's, early 80's. That is, document management. What did you do,
variously, considering both text and non-text?
Emacs org-mode comes to mind
And if you happen to need presentations....
https://github.com/yjwen/org-reveal
That's right: Javascript slide deck directly from org-mode.
Better than sliced bread.
Adam
707
days inactive
805
days old
9 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Adam Thornton -
Bakul Shah -
George Michaelson -
John Cowan -
Kevin Bowling -
Michael Parson -
Seth J. Morabito -
Will Senn