Tools for working with the Thesaurus

[lnh]

I'm in the midst of cleaning up my thesaurus and doing some basic reorganization. I started a while back with one of the free controlled vocabularies, and over time added my own entries. I've come to realize it has gotten out of hand and even the original starting point had some significant differences from my evolved set of useful categories and structure. The thesaurus module itself has some capability to search and add entries, but I'm looking for a more full featured "outlining" capability where I could import my thesaurus and then easily move entries around until I get it right for me. I do not expect the IMatch thesaurus module itself to have this level of organizational tool, but it's ability to easily export and import should allow me to work in a 3rd party outliner.

Does anyone else use a 3rd party outliner or other tool to massage their thesaurus? Also wondering if one of the development text editors like Atom or Sublime might have outlining modules which would work. Haven't uncovered much activity for outliners on Windows (the Mac has several with active development).

[Mario]

The native format for the Thesaurus is XML, which means you can open and edit the exported file with any XML-capable editor. You may need to configure the .imths file extension as "XML" in your editor or change the extension of the file to .xml.

Most code editors support plug-ins and there are usually many plug-ins dealing with XML.

[jch2103]

Does anyone else use a 3rd party outliner or other tool to massage their thesaurus? Also wondering if one of the development text editors like Atom or Sublime might have outlining modules which would work. Haven't uncovered much activity for outliners on Windows (the Mac has several with active development).

I also need to do some work on my thesaurus. I did a quick search for XML outliners and came up with the following possibilities, which I haven't checked out yet:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/xmltreeeditor/   A stand-alone xml tree editor.
https://github.com/joaoasrosa/nppxmltreeview   A plugin for Notepad++.

I think SourceForge is more careful these days about bundling junk apps with downloads, but it's always a good idea to be careful with installs.
If/when I check these out, I'll update this.

After a quick review of the above, I think the better course would be using an outliner that works on text files (tab indents). Still looking - @lnh: As you suggested, one would think there would be more interest among Windows users in outliner programs...!

[lnh]

After a quick review of the above, I think the better course would be using an outliner that works on text files (tab indents). Still looking - @lnh: As you suggested, one would think there would be more interest among Windows users in outliner programs...!

The lack of a highly functional outliner on Windows is frustrating. Got hooked on outlining with ThinkTank and More (developed by Dave Winer) on Mac many years ago. He doesn't sell or support them anymore, but other good options are still available on Mac like OmniOutliner (haven't had a Mac for years so can't test it). Winer has done some on-line outliners like Fargo, but doubt they could handle a large controlled vocabulary. Last year used Atom with markdown add-on modules to try to edit some very large docs in markdown. Once the size got pretty big, Atom just choked. Other editors might do better. From demos I remember Lexis/Nexis sold a pretty decent Windows based outliner called NoteMap, but it's no longer for sale. I agree that taking the exported tabbed text file from IMatch into an outliner would be the most simple approach, but I'm still searching for a good outliner.

[jch2103]

@lnh:

I found something that might be useful to you. Long ago (in computer years), a company developed a program called Ecco Pro, a personal information manager (PIM) program. I used it extensively once upon a time, but lost track after a number of computer upgrades. The program was ultimately abandoned and finally released (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecco_Pro).

A Yahoo! group currently provides copies of the program and extensions https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ecco_pro/info.
The program can be downloaded from http://gettingstarted.eccomagic.com/ and http://forums.eccomagic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1193820851

The program works under Windows 10. It provides a number of PIM tools, including a calendar, phonebook, etc. What's pertinent to this thread is the built-in outliner, which I've found to be very flexible and useful, despite the old-fashioned UI.

Starting a new Ecco document creates the above tools, but to work with a text thesaurus, you can ignore those and use View/Notepads/New Notepad to create a blank workspace. From there you can import an existing tab-delimited thesaurus via File/Database/Import. Double-clicking an item folds and hides all children, and it's easy to move items with a mouse and promote/demote with tab or shift-tab. See screenshots. Once you're happy with your revised thesaurus, you can export it back to tab-delimited text via File/Database/Export.

Not perfect, but it works better as an outliner than any other Windows program I've seen lately. Not sure how this would do with a very large controlled vocabulary; I've only tried it with a 15KB tab-delimited file that didn't pose any issues.

Anyway, at least one possible option.

[sinus]

This is interesting.

John, thanks for your links.
I did not know about "outliners", nor did I know, what it is.

But your attachment looks quite interesting.
Can I say, this program (or other outliners) is a kind of a place, where I can store all my ideas, text, sketches and so on? And even some photos?

I have since years created a simple .txt - file, where I can write down all ideas, text and so on. The reason for a txt-file was, that I thought, this will be readable quite long.
If I have a program with a not open format, I feared, if the producer one day will abandoned, then my text is lost.
A computer file, where I simply can add all stuff, would really make sense, finally.

That is why I love IMatch: it is quite open and I can export and import a lot of stuff.
And btw, I even do put some text into Attributes (or Metadata) of a file, then it is quite safe (well, as safe as computer datas are  ).
I do even add the numbers for the bill to a jpg, so I can simply select it in IMatch and see, how much this event (take an event and create a master for a stack and this master is the super-info-master with all information) has got money, phone numbers and so on.

[jch2103]

This is interesting.

John, thanks for your links.
I did not know about "outliners", nor did I know, what it is.

But your attachment looks quite interesting.
Can I say, this program (or other outliners) is a kind of a place, where I can store all my ideas, text, sketches and so on? And even some photos?

Outliner programs are mostly designed to help organize ideas; if they work well, they lend themselves to restructuring (moving things around, moving items up and down, showing them as more or less important, etc.). This particular program also incorporates calendars (e.g., for to-do items) and phone book (for making calls about specific things easier.) So in that sense, yes. But many of them don't provide for attaching things like sketches or photos. I pointed out this program because I think the outliner feature works especially well, even though it's quite old.

Current programs like One Note https://www.onenote.com/ (Microsoft; part of Office) are another take on this idea of organizing ideas and things. I use One Note, but the outline part doesn't work as well as I'd like. (To clarify: you can do 'outliney' things with it, but you have to use the mouse not the keyboard, and it doesn't seem to include tab-delimited text files as an export format, so not as good as I'd like for reorganizing my thesaurus.) There are lots of available choices; picking one (or more) depends on your needs.

[P.Jones]

Heres a couple more for you to try

https://sourceforge.net/projects/keynote-newfeat/?source=navbar
http://treeline.bellz.org/index.html

[lnh]

This is interesting.

John, thanks for your links.
I did not know about "outliners", nor did I know, what it is.

But your attachment looks quite interesting.
Can I say, this program (or other outliners) is a kind of a place, where I can store all my ideas, text, sketches and so on? And even some photos?

I have since years created a simple .txt - file, where I can write down all ideas, text and so on. The reason for a txt-file was, that I thought, this will be readable quite long.
If I have a program with a not open format, I feared, if the producer one day will abandoned, then my text is lost.
A computer file, where I simply can add all stuff, would really make sense, finally.

That is why I love IMatch: it is quite open and I can export and import a lot of stuff.
And btw, I even do put some text into Attributes (or Metadata) of a file, then it is quite safe (well, as safe as computer datas are  ).
I do even add the numbers for the bill to a jpg, so I can simply select it in IMatch and see, how much this event (take an event and create a master for a stack and this master is the super-info-master with all information) has got money, phone numbers and so on.

I agree with your approach of going with plain text when possible. I'd like a good private note capability with some of the basic features of something like Evernote, but within my total control. Haven't gotten very far other than to realize that basing it off plain text with optional use of markdown might be the best approach. TagSpaces is a product which might work for me, but haven't really explored it in detail. I sync between systems/mobile using Resilio Sync (formerly BitTorrent Sync) so the propagation of updates between databases can be done without a "cloud".

On the thesaurus outline front... Been playing around with Sublime Text. It's primarily used as a code editor, but it can handle regular text tasks as well. It has a basic capability to fold/hide text based on tab levels (see the little caret expansion/hide marks alongside the line numbers). Reorganizing elements is via a highlight and drag or cut/paste type mechanism rather than a simple mouse move like a dedicated outliner. Not so bad once you get use to it. It's a current product supported on Windows/Mac/Linux. Has lots of add-ons (called packages) mostly for code editing, but also to use it as a markdown editor and some other tasks. I think if you can get familiar with it's capabilities in detail and know the shortcuts it could serve as an OK outliner. Beyond outline use, for documents where you need some simple formatting, learning a little bit of markdown can go a long ways.

Atom is a similar type editor based off of Chrome which hasn't handled large markdown documents when I've tried it in the past.

[Lincoln]

I like to keep it simple  using a spreadsheet in OpenOffice works for me.

[sinus]

Thanks for all comments and links. Really helpful.

I will think about it.
I like the idea to have all in my control and hold it easy.
Because I work every day with Imatch, I even thought about a possibility to do it with IM.
Would give me some interesting new possibilities. If I could create with JS a kind of mask (metadata, attributes, collections). it would be cool.

But at the moment JS is stii far too complicated for me  . with WinWrap it would be quite easy.
I vwork on it