Specify parameter when hyperlinking to a file

Legacy MyInfo versions topics and topics that are no longer relevant
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mfelix
Posts: 126
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:54 pm
Location: Basel, Switzerland

Specify parameter when hyperlinking to a file

Post by mfelix »

Sorry, if I'm generating a real flurry of new topics, but I'm still evaluating, i.e. I'm using MyInfo now in my daily work and whenever I come across something that is missing I feel it is worth just documenting it. Maybe there is a chance to see it as an improvement in a future version.

When setting a hyperlink to a file I cannot specify which parameters to pass to the executable. Most of the tools I know have this clever feature.
wsp
Posts: 518
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:54 am
Location: Washington, DC

Post by wsp »

Actually, I'm glad to see some more participation in this forum. I use MyInfo extensively, but at times I wonder many other active MI users there are. This forum feels uncomfortably quiet at times.
Bill
mfelix
Posts: 126
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:54 pm
Location: Basel, Switzerland

Post by mfelix »

When you say quiet, is it just the users, or is the lack of reply from the makers of the software that disencourages more postings ?

I've seen both in the forums I that I frequent:

A lot of users just pop up when they have a problem and very often the do not even bother to come back for thanks or providing additional information.

A lack of response from the company or person behind the software is also very frustrating: it is certainly time consuming to answer a lot of posts, but very often this is the only means to get in touch with the users of the software.

Felix
wsp
Posts: 518
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:54 am
Location: Washington, DC

Post by wsp »

Petko, the creator of MyInfo, is in many respects the most responsive developer I've ever discovered. I recall that once, on this forum, I pointed out some minor glitch, and to my astonishment he fixed it in an interim release two days later.

On the other hand, he's very economical with words. I was raised among some extremely silent Norwegian-Americans, and although I know that he is Bulgarian, I could swear that he is a Scandinavian in disguise: he says little, but it is always courteous and to the point.

As for the users of MyInfo, I have no idea why few of them participate in this forum. I sometimes suspect that it is because the development of MI has been slow and steady; it's a tremendously useful program, but it has none of the sizzle and glamor of Evernote (my other note-taking program). Perhaps it's hard to get excited about a piece of software like MI that simply does the job very well and makes no large, pretentious claims (e.g. Evernote's slogan "your external brain").
Bill
mfelix
Posts: 126
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:54 pm
Location: Basel, Switzerland

Post by mfelix »

We're straying a bit far from my original topic, but I was wondering why you use both Evernote and MyInfo. Just because of the things you wrote I stayed away from evernote.

Most of my databases are still in askSam which is still a more powerful program than MyInfo. But it has so many quirks and unresolved issues and hasn't seen any development within the the last 2 years that I'm seriously thinking about changing to MyInfo. Probably the two of them will then persist on my desktop for quiet some time, because a migration will take time.
Fred
Posts: 216
Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:07 pm

Post by Fred »

Hi again,

"Most of the tools I know have this clever feature." No, they haven't, I fear, but those that have, it's a splendour, I know. In fact, 100 p.c. on your side, and indeed, that has been on my list to "sell" to Petko.

Since you speak about AS here and of coexistence of the two programs on your pc, have a look into my posts where I say that indeed, for special needs, MI at this time has no chance to substitute AS - it has been for that reason that I told people here (and in the AS forum where nobody knew / shared the info) AS was - and is - downloadable for free:

Indeed, if MI wants to REPLACE AS in its core functionality, Petko couldn't bear it / us anymore, so I thought, let's optimize MI together, step by step, very calmly, without any pressure to implement too much things that are too difficult to encode in a minimum of time - why not simple use AS for some things, when in fact for 90 p.c. of our work, MI is / will soon be perfect even without those AS features yet?!

Just try the MI feature "Search in all loaded files" - ok, it's ugly that there's not yet any arrow scrolling in the search results pane, and it's not that handy that you can very well have displayed the first lines of the relevant items, but not the immediate context of the (first) find in the item (= as in AS)... but this will be - and has to be - amended rather soon. But even now, this search is functioning rather well, and quick, and you even have some sort of a (2-level) outlining in the search results: topics (= even collapsible, that is), and then items.

This is not to say MI search capabilities are on par with AS's yet, but in everyday life - and I'd tried to communicate this at the AS site once -, MI search capabilities, when lesser than AS's, are quite as good as those, i.d. the aforementioned 2 points could be enhanced, and for the rest, well, searching in search results, of course, but then, I developed this thoroughly weeks ago, explaining that as a first step, searching has to be integrated into tagging, or the other way round, and then, even searching within search results - or any other sub-group of items, over many topics at once, will be really easy!

It's really an architectural problem, not creating spaghetti code for 100 dissociated functions here and there... and the MI I've got in my mind, is a splendid thing.

Let's say that AS's linking is awful, terrible, aghasting; but 100 p.c. on your side, MI's one needs to be enhanced. I'm just putting into relation for some intermediate months... ;-)
wsp
Posts: 518
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:54 am
Location: Washington, DC

Post by wsp »

We're straying a bit far from my original topic, but I was wondering why you use both Evernote and MyInfo. Just because of the things you wrote I stayed away from evernote.
I have a long and complicated connection with Evernote. I fell in love with it when it was a Windows-only program but then became disillusioned when EN later transformed itself into a cross-platform, whizbang phenomenon. The problem (and I was certainly not the only person to notice this) was that many of the most attractive features of EN -- such as cross-note linking and smart folders -- disappeared at that point and have not yet been restored.

On the other hand, I had a huge amount of material stored in EN 2.2, and I wasn't sure how to proceed. At about that time I discovered MyInfo and realized immediately that it was in fact much better than EN for highly structured information. Hence I transferred (manually!) several thousand notes for a book-in-progress into MI. The majority of my other notes I dumped into EN 3.x, because they were mostly rather miscellaneous, I didn't need daily access to them, and I just wanted an archive that I could consult only occasionally.

And that is approximately how matters still stand today. I have thousands of various kinds of notes (not at all well organized, I'm afraid) in Evernote. EN has excellent search capabilities, and I can find what I need very quickly. But for my book or any article I may be working on -- whenever I need to envision the structural relationships of a large body of information -- I turn to MI.

I should add, in fairness to EN, that it does have some very useful features. I love the ability to access it on a smartphone or an iPad, and its clever trick of doing text recognition in images is a godsend. But MyInfo is still the best program I've discovered (after much searching and experimentation) for a writer/scholar like me. It is stable (unlike EN, which lurches unsteadily from one version to another); it is utterly reliable; and it helps me make sense of all my research notes. When, in the future, the tags in MI become visible on the main screen and when I am able to tile multiple documents from within one topic, it will seem (to me at least) almost perfect.
Bill
mfelix
Posts: 126
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:54 pm
Location: Basel, Switzerland

Post by mfelix »

Thanks wsp for your update !

I think I can follow you reasoning in using both tools. As Fred wrote, there is no need to get tool-infested with only one tool :mrgreen:
Some things come more more naturally with something different.
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