Home Forums Feature requests Tabble management, etc

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    • mrdna
      Participant
      Post count: 220

      -With a growing gaggle of tabbles I’ve been trying to decide which tabbles to hide. I’ve hidden a few already, but with 150 or so still visible I’m gonna want to hide a good bunch. Basically I’m hoping for a window that will list ALL my tabbles, denotes which are hidden, and allow me to hide or un-hide them and manage properties in a central place. As it stands now, it’s really rather clunky and tough to get to a spot where you can un-hide or manage any other aspect of a hidden tabble.

      -On the Quick-Link window – Add the selected file name somewhere. If multiple files selected it can just say "multiple files" or whatever. (or whatever text your evil little hearts may desire to taunt the poor user. 😉 ) To make it even better put a Rename button on there that grays out if multiple files are selected.

      Playing with 1.1.7 full release now and looking good. Nice work, folks!

    • Andrea
      Keymaster
      Post count: 961

      Hello there,

      we’ve been talking about this for a while already… we know that there is an issue there. We are now prioritizing new features (like the auto-tagging rules based on folder/filename/extension and) and then some on the same tune… we need to think of a smart solution, and has to be "one size fits all" to solve this.

      I know this is not what you want to hear, but you could try and arrange them manually in order to separate the ones you use more often by the others… one think you could try is to draw a desktop background with some circled areas (with names on top) and you could manually arrange your tabbles into those, in a mind-mapping-like style.
      Maybe you don’t know it but you can scale the size of the background, you access it by Misc > Resize wallpaper. I hope this helps… please don’t hate me if it doesn’t 😐

    • mrdna
      Participant
      Post count: 220

      Keeping tabbles arranged isn’t a problem since you guys put in the alignment feature (a most excellent feature, thanks much again!) though I hadn’t even thought of using a specialized background. A great idea! I was just hoping a centralized tabble management window could be put together some time down the road. I admit, though, I am hoping to get an upgrade on the quick-link window a bit higher on the to-do list. 😀

      Appreciate your thoughts, Andrea.

    • mrdna
      Participant
      Post count: 220

      Just bumping this thread as I hit over 200 Tabbles and went on a spree of hiding tabbles last night.

      To be clear, Andrea, you guys have put in alot of stuff that helps me organize my tabbles wonderfully, my request here is simply a window that lists ALL tabbles with the hide/unhide checkbox next to each so I can go in and hide/unhide easily. As it stands, unhiding tabbles, especially if I want to unhide several of them, is a real pain.

      And the ability to change the filename in the quick-link box would still be a Good Thing as would combining the unlink into it… 🙂 (both only active when dealing with a single file of course)

      cheers guys, nice work!

    • Maurizio
      Participant
      Post count: 196

      Hi, you are right: a faster way is needed to unhide tabbles from the quick-open dialog… a checkbox looks like a natural way to do it. But I have to think more about it. I am adding this to the TODO list.

    • mrdna
      Participant
      Post count: 220

      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)

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