Advice needed on how to start a new PIM program

[Jim Ault]

On 2/3/06 8:16 AM, "Dennis Brown" <see3d at writeme.com> wrote:
> This is my personal investment ideas PIM
> The catch is that I need to have it running by MONDAY (yesterday
> really).   
> This seems like such a generic thing, that I am sure there are
> hundreds of similar things already done.
> As always, your advice is greatly appreciated.

Ahh, there are probably 282,342,978 PIM projects that have been started in
the world today.  There is always room for another, so jump in.

For what its worth...
My quick recommendation is to think about substacks connected to a main
stack.  The memory load could be managed by opening and closing those, as
well as mainstacks that are connected and share data, etc.

You need to be careful not to head down the wrong path before Monday, or
there will be many hours of rework in your future.

Quick recommendation:  Download NoteTaker and use the 30 day demo period to
model the organization you want
--use the notebook.section.page system to be a stack
-- use the ability to link notebooks, and pages using drag-drop
-- use the ability to copy and paste outlines between pages
-- use the ability to drag-drop jpg, even whole web pages
-- web pages actually work within a page in a notebook

Now add descriptions of the Rev code and objects in each location, and build
the linking that makes sense for your interface.  Include a list of all the
buttons, fields, combo boxes, and user interface requirements, and you
should have a pretty close blue print for a Rev project.

As far as tons of data in different formats, Rev is really quite fast at
reading and writing text files to the hard drive.  So Monday morning, I
would recommend not including the SQL part of the solution.. save that for
coming up to speed later in Feb.

Final note, try to think modular with your code.  This means that you can
call a function, use a button many times throughout your project with
modification of parameters or names.  One example of a short cut for
buttons.. give the button a label you see, then a name that Rev will use
(eg. getChartData) and then the handler will be
on mouseUp
do the short name of me
end mouseUp
--> the handler in the stack script is
on getChartData

Now the script for most of your buttons is exactly the same.. do the short
name of me

Good luck on your lost weekend of fun :-)

Jim Ault 
Las Vegas



On 2/3/06 8:16 AM, "Dennis Brown" <see3d at writeme.com> wrote:

> 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