Advice needed on how to start a new PIM program

Dennis Brown see3d at writeme.com
Fri Feb 3 11:16:21 EST 2006


Hi Rev Gurus,

After spending 2 days looking for a outliner or database program for  
OS X that can solve a specific personal PIM need, I have come to the  
conclusion that I will have to make something in Rev for myself.  I  
looked seriously at Note Taker, Omni Outliner, iList Data, DEVONthink  
Pro, and not so seriously at a lot of others, but each one had one  
different serious limitation that made it not work for me.

Here is what I want to do:

This is my personal investment ideas PIM

I envision that this will be a stack of cards --one for each  
investment idea.
Cards will have a number of fields with specific information about an  
investment or potential investment --no brainer
I need to be able to cut and paste text from RTF emails or HTML web  
pages into a big scrolling field, like a blog of info. --limitations?
I need to be able to drag and drop JPEG images from a screen capture  
program onto a card. --never did this before?
I will need to have a summary card that contains a table of a line of  
formatted info gathered from cards that meet certain criteria --no  
brainer

The problem I see is that in Rev all the cards have to be in memory  
at the same time.  This stack could become large over time, as I  
don't want to discard old stuff, but want to keep it for future  
reference.  I could possibly take the big stuff like the images and  
save them in a folder to be displayed on demand --perhaps even using  
Preview.

Another approach would be to use a database program like altSQLight3  
perhaps (I have not looked at that one yet).

The catch is that I need to have it running by MONDAY (yesterday  
really).  That means that I need to find something to use as a  
starting point stack that I can just edit to get me off the ground  
faster.  Most of my time will need to be taken up by interface  
design, not a lot of time for learning how not to mess up the data.   
I know most of you Rev experts could create the whole thing in a day  
or less from scratch.  However, I have spent the last year learning  
how to crunch numbers in large arrays and generate graphs on a one  
stack, one card application.  I have more than a few things to learn  
about pushing data around in different formats --without much time  
for trial and error.

This seems like such a generic thing, that I am sure there are  
hundreds of similar things already done.  I just don't have time to  
find and look at all the possibilities right now.  I am hoping that  
my needs will ring a bell with a few of you, and you can point me in  
just a few directions so I can get to work right away.

As always, your expert advice is greatly appreciated.

Dennis







More information about the use-livecode mailing list