Was thinking (always a dangerous thing) more about hiding/unhiding tabbles and how my use of the program has changed and will continue to change. (erf. after writing that I see it’s just a long winded way of saying "hey! I thought of another feature I want" 😆 )

Someone mentioned Profiles a bit back. Can’t recall who at the moment, but just want to note that it’s not originally my idea. The idea, as I recall it, was to allow profiles to be loaded that hid and unhid particular tabbles. It’s kind of like adding a link to a file, except it works at the tabble level. I don’t know how difficult it would be to add this feature to a hide/unhide window.

The more I use Tabbles in my current project (tracking and writing on political subjects) I’m finding other uses I can put the program to; Filing and organization of monthly bills, automobile records, personal papers, creative writing ideas and projects, you get the idea…

Currently the only way to delineate each of these without pooling them into the single Tabbles desktop is to create unique databases. Don’t get me wrong, separate databases for well-defined sets of information is a Good Thing. If the cat walks across the keyboard and somehow corrupts my monthly bill database then I still have the pet info database so I can find out if the cat can be neutered again… My thinking is of the uses Profiles would have in the more creative aspects of info processing within a single database.

I sent Andrea a screenshot of my Tabbles set-up and it shows over 100 tabbles, and this is after I hid about half of them the other night. Why do I keep so many tabbles on the desktop? Because of the way I think through and process information. I call it ‘mulling’ where I’ll take an idea or subject, see what info I have, mull it over and see where I can find connections within that group of info and then look for possible connections outside my current pool of info. Not a particularly unique way to process info, I know, I think everyone pretty much thinks this way.

Tabbles has been a big help in giving me a graphical method to work through ideas and send me in pursuit of new connections. Basically I’ll clear a spot on the desktop and drag tabbles into and out of that area as I think. The issue I’m running into now is the sheer number of tabbles I have, and more importantly to me, want to have graphical access to during the mulling.

In essence; While I want good access to a large number of tabbles during the mulling process, having too many tabbles visible is distracting. The problem is that while working on a piece about monetary policy I do want to see (for example) tabbles on Geithner, Treasury, CBO, Legislation, and Data, but don’t feel the need to see the Healthcare, Bachmann, and CIA tabbles. When I go to work on a piece about Healthcare, however, I still want to see the CBO tabble, but the Geithner tabble would offer little to the thinking process. I haven’t begun to create a database to support my fiction and humor writing, but I can see Profiles benefiting that process even more!

I hope I haven’t completely confused you. I can probably boil it down a bit if you need more clarity. 😕

(while writing this I realized I may be also making a good case for Tabbles within Tabbles. Will think on that for a while as I know you guys have been thinking about it as well and have a post on the dev-blog about that very thing.)

regards,
jay

(wowza! didn’t realize how much I wrote! sorry guys)