From: James Levine <levinejames@me.com>
To: Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: would take more than an org-mode strip-down.
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:04:23 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <92B42F15-B849-473D-9E4C-F513A5DD80E8@me.com> (raw)
Greetings,
As an expert end-user but outside the computer science field, I’ve felt there to be a high cost of entry for working in org-mode. I like the idea very much, as I am trying to strip down to an Autofocus system and take a more intuitive, frictionless approach. Because I’m not following the play-by-play on the gnu boards, I thought I’d zoom out and tell you what a consumer experience is like:
1) It’s not that there isn’t enough documentation, it’s that there’s too much of it.
Imagine that setting up a wordpress database is probably too much for the average person. You go to wordpress.org (and at this point you’d already need to read the fine print or you’d probably point to wordpress.com) and the button simply tells you to download “here”. Now what?
In other words, if you want to expand popularity among end-users, not coders, there needs to be a middle ground: the visual step-by-step needs to be uncluttered by additional description. Org-mode is further obscured by the fact that other services, a text editor and such need to be pointed to as well in the “getting started process." I need to know why I’m being forwarded to an external web page or why I need to read on between each download link, or how to keep track of each link if each one is taking me to a separate page. You wouldn’t want someone telling you the history of every landmark that you passed if they were giving you driving instructions, would you? The verbose approach doesn’t actually help retention, it floods it. The gnu support community, like this email, is very heavily text-based.
2) Some things are just better with a gui.
I’m referring specifically to the more popularized use of tags or “keywords.” Most all the file management clients fail at this somewhere. You are requiring people to be literate, as in secondary school spelling-NOT culture, not just in a single instance of clarity, but in a manner that can be consistently repeated, while you’re catering to an audience that probably has a higher than average proportion of dyslexics, autistics, and college drop-outs in its midst.
Furthermore, tagging conventions are easy to break, and most End-Users won’t know to instill them to begin with. “Have I been using the plural of my common and collective nouns? What about that time I hashtagged a task to myself in my email and I put the tag in the Subject heading? Did I spell it the same way my tags were set up back on my desktop?” It’s too easy to orphan tags, spell them wrong, flip a p with a q. Without a pull up, cash-register-like cheat sheet that lets you touch the tags that you already made, one will leave a trail of junk mark-up. Not to mention, free tagging does not endorse a constrained vocabulary as it would, say, if you were trying to figure out what kind of lettuce someone was buying and you worked the register. I’m also inclined to believe that crossing something out with my finger, or putting a check in a checkbox is more intuitive and less prone to error than managing "[x]”s in a document.
3) the 2nd problem ties in with this. Without a constrained tagging vocabulary and other conventions, an org-mode task system is not that easy to subscribe to when trying to encourage a team to get on board. The list is not inherently intuitive to all end-users. What is logic to one person is not logic to the next. (This may come as a surprise to many coders).
4) The master org-mode file will get lost in the shuffle. My litmus test for a good file management system is “if I’m sick or thankfully on a beach that day, can everyone else to whom my work pertains, understand for themselves how to incorporate what they need from me?” Are my naming conventions clear? Are my directory structures clear? Can people find them on their own, or are they going to call me while I’m trying to enjoy the beach? Can I effectively be a “ghost in the machine” for my institution? Or have I made people dependent upon me for the petty fact that my workflows are not understood by anyone else?
Again, feeding off point 3, org-mode does little to instill good file management habits. I do appreciate that the plain text approach builds off simplicity rather than the adhered complexity of a database. Nonetheless, if I open up “Things”, for example (I don’t use it myself), as an app to keep my tasks, I know there’s a central repository for these stray little database entry “tasks”. If I’m out of the office, I can tell whoever is working on my assignments to open up “Things,” or I can share this with them. Because org-mode doesn’t reinforce where files are saved to or how many files are accessed for my various projects, there’s plenty of wiggle room for bad file management habits to come into play. Instead of telling my colleague to open “Things”, I need to tell them, "look in my documents folder, open this file with this app. When you’re done with this by 1p, I saved the task list for the catering event this evening in my dropbox. Look under documents, Jim’s stuff." You see where this is going.
An org-mode text document is just too flimsy to stand alone in the sea of files on a computer. That’s why evernote is successful-it’s a more orderly place for scraps. People used to muck up folders and drag stuff to their desktop with the same caliber of content. If you held your desktop as sacred, or your Emacs platform, what then happens when these other “temporary” odds and ends nonetheless compete with your focus?
5) I don’t subscribe to the notion that all ideas begin to take form through an Outline. Outlines were something pounded into lots of heads as kids, and they work for some and not for others. To me, they are far too linear of an invention to trust with germinating ideas and projects. My outline skills are epically good, but I still don’t find the outline as the key tool for repurposing and leveraging divergent ideas (or for note-taking for that matter). And again, with an awareness management system like org-mode, how would you effectively create an Outline for Everything? Would that be any easier to navigate than the index card that I made just for today in my back pocket? Then to play the provocateur, if I can’t create an Outline for Everything how many little baskets of Anythings do I want to enforce in my life? Or should I just start with my work? (then what happens to the rest of my life? Should I use refrigerator magnets?) Where do I put these separate Outlines if I can’t look in the same place at any time for them? How do they fit in with each other? The mobile implementation of org-mode thus far further confuses the matter-it places these divergent files in a file browser. How does that actually help me work the system? What about a front end?
Perhaps some instruction on bridging the free-association, brain storming, linear thinking, mind-mapping, UML, media files and inspiration, concepts directly into an Org-mode file would be of help. If I understood org-mode, I might even be the person to do it. Many ideas will never see a formal outline first (even if the concept of an outline latently exists)-only my software design documents or other specification sheets would show through with such formality.
Please tell me if and where these points will be addressed, as their a slim chance of my renavigating to the live thread where I found your email (see point 1). Hope this message is in the right hands. I’m incredibly grateful for this line of communication and for the work you are doing, and I want to make this work.
James Levine-East Village, NYC
next reply other threads:[~2011-09-27 17:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-09-27 17:04 James Levine [this message]
2011-09-28 9:28 ` would take more than an org-mode strip-down Jude DaShiell
2011-09-28 9:39 ` Eric S Fraga
2011-09-28 13:27 ` Jambunathan K
2011-09-28 14:18 ` Jambunathan K
2011-09-28 14:47 ` James Levine
2011-09-28 14:58 ` Jude DaShiell
2011-09-28 15:33 ` Russell Adams
2011-09-28 18:34 ` Rasmus
2011-09-28 14:54 ` James Levine
2011-09-30 6:00 ` Carsten Dominik
2011-09-30 9:38 ` Jambunathan K
2011-09-30 16:59 ` Thomas S. Dye
2011-10-04 0:13 ` suvayu ali
2011-10-03 20:44 ` Allen S. Rout
2011-10-04 13:28 ` Carson Chittom
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2011-09-29 7:46 Rustom Mody
2011-09-29 7:57 ` Rustom Mody
2011-09-29 8:01 ` Rainer M Krug
2011-10-04 6:33 ` Rustom Mody
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