From: Sam Roberts <sroberts@...>
Date: 2004-02-23T23:19:07+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Tycho - A PIM under development

Quoteing hal9000@hypermetrics.com, on Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 01:47:35PM +0900:
> >>Tycho is loosely based on an older version of Info Select, a
> >>commercial product for Windows. (In its earliest incarnation,
> >>it was a DOS program called Tornado.)
> >
> >Wow - I used to run Info Select, I ran across an old copy the other day. 
> >I immediately thought, "Hey, this is a lot like a Wiki." Just wondered 
> >if you'd thought about that, and how you think Tycho would differ from a 
> >Wiki.
> 
> I think there are some similarities in concept.
> 
> Some differences in Tycho would be:
> 1. not web-based
> 2. not publicly accessible
> 3. all local data
> 4. much better interface and faster response - see #1 :)

I, too, was thinking how similar to a wiki this sounds, a few months ago
when this was first discussed.

The nice thing about designing this as a local front-end to a wiki is
that you can reuse a wiki's markup language, and its data storage, you
might even be able to use it to locally edit a live wiki.

And no, I have no time to help on this, I'm sorry. Also, I found
something like this for OS X, so don't need to build it:

  http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad.html

  VoodooPad is a new kind of notepad.  It's like having your own
  personal hypertext library, where you can jot down notes, web
  addresses, to-do lists... Anything on your mind. VoodooPad
  automatically links each page together, to form a miniature world wide
  web, on your desktop!  Anybody familiar with the WikiWikiWeb will feel
  right at home with VoodooPad.

  Type in your notes, and highlight important words or phrases to create
  new pages; or drag and drop folders, images, applications, or URLs
  into VoodooPad - they're linked up whenever the word representing it
  is found.

I've started using it off-and-on, to see if I actually like it, and I need
some way to keep all my notes, so I thought I'd give it a try, I'm still
not sure its right for me.

The one thing I'd really, really, like that voodo pad doesn't do is
someway to graphically see the web of connections. I'd like to have
a pop-up window that showed each note as an icon (with title?), and
each link as a line, and as you select a note, it would show that note
in the view window.

I organize things in my head that way, and I've often wondered whether
or not I could organize things on a computer that way.

The problem with the web-like interfaces where you follow links is that
it can feel like you are in a maze - you see where you are, you see
where you can go, and you remember the last few places you were. What if
you could move up a level, see the relationships between places?

Cheers,
Sam