Uneasy Rhetoric

Recomendation: I chose Bonsai. However, if these programs are to do what they are meant to do — be an all-purpose outliner, note taker, to-do lister, etc. — then the user has to be comfortable using them. Unfortunately the only way to be sure is to test them all yourself and chose the one that provides the most utility. I may not have chosen Bonsai if my focus were different.

The long version:

I am obsessed with note taking applications and outliners. Worse, I am obsessed with making them compatible with my Handspring Visor. My search for the perfect note taker/outliner led me to Tranglos Software’s KeyNote, not to be confused with the Apple program of the same name.

KeyNote is nearly everything one could want in a notetaker/outliner program. It has multi-level trees, the ability to keep a to-do list, the ability to write or save notes in Rich Text format, and the Mozilla Public License. Its closest competitor is TreePad, also an excellent program with a freeware version; unfortunately, it costs to get much of the same functionality with TreePad as one can find with KeyNote (actually TreePad’s paid versions may have a bit more functionality than KeyNote).

I prefer KeyNote. Others prefer TreePad. Because of the nature of these programs (they’re the kind of program you will always have running on your computer, the kind of program you will use day in and day out) personal preference counts for a lot. I would pay quite a bit for an outliner that does exactly what I want it to do and that has an interface that makes me feel comfortable.

The problem with both KeyNote and Treepad, however, is that neither one syncs to the Palm. Both have minor workarounds. Keynote allows you to convert a Rich Text note to a Palm Doc Format. TreePad claims to have an interface with Progect (see below) but I wasn’t able to get it from the link on TreePad’s site; when I did get it, it didn’t work very well and required a lot of babying.

Strictly speaking I don’t really require the ability to Sync to my Visor. Probably 90% of my note taking happens at my desk, and what little note taking does happen directly to my Visor is likely restricted to titles of books I want to read, links I want to remember, or the occassional quip. Nevertheless, I bought my Visor, I like my Visor, I want to use my Visor.

I went in search of a program that was PalmOS compatible and shared with KeyNote the primary features I liked. What I found, not surprisingly, was a set of applications strong on project management but weak on true outlining. Worse, they were almost all written primarily for the Palm user and had cursory (and often downright nasty) desktop applications.

I tested six different applications which at some level claim to be outliners for the Palm OS: Wikiworld, Shadow Plan, Brain Forest, PDesk/Progect, Bonsai, and Thought Manager. Only PDesk/Progect is free. The others have trial periods that are adequate to test the programs. Because I was in a hurry, I spent probably half an hour on each. I figured that, if I wasn’t comfortable with a program quickly, I probably wasn’t going to be happy with it in the long-haul. I needed something that I could use almost “out of the box.” I didn’t need something with Franklin Planner-like complexity.

Wikiworld took itself out of the running because it crashed my Visor. At that point, I didn’t even bother trying the desktop application. I am running Palm OS 3.0.1; I just realized it requires Palm OS 3.5. Also, the latest version of BrainForest, according to the website, requires Palm 4.0; however, I was able to get a version, maybe not the latest, to work on my device.

If your goal were simply to have a hierarchical to-do list for project management, any of the remaining five programs is up to the task. If that were my only goal, I probably would stick with Progect because it is free.

My goal, however, was to have something that would allow me to keep track of my notes (like a virtual filing cabinet), maintain a hierarchical to-do list, maintain my other lists, track daily notes, and, when necessary, function as an outliner for writing. Any of the remaining five programs claims to be able to do this, but the quality of their desktop interfaces varies (in general I found all of their Palm interfaces to be good enough to be useful), and all but Bonsai’s require that you open another window in order to enter an extended memo.

For example, lets say you have a tree called “Daily Notes.” A node on that tree is named “2003-09-02.” You have several pages of notes from that day. To enter those notes in most of the programs, you would have to open a new “memo” window. In Bonsai, there is a second pane in the window that displays the notes for each branch of your tree. In other words, Bonsai functions most like Keynote or Treepad.

Bonsai has a few drawbacks. First, I’d like to be able to export only certain nodes. Currently Bonsai only exports the entire outline you’re working on. It’s an easy work around: copy the node (its child nodes will come along) and paste it in a new outline. It’s an extra step and not a deal breaker. Being able to have text formatting (Rich Text) within each note would be a real plus (although that might not be practical since the RTF formatting might have to be stripped for the Palm version), esecially if the goal is to use the outliner to outline a written document and not just a project. I could see myself using Keynote to compose long texts. I’m just not sure Bonsai is up to the task. I’ll try it, but I see myself going right back to NoteTab for long document creation (yes, I do prefer to draft out documents in a text editor).

For now, I’ve decided to try using Bonsai in the same way I would use KeyNote. I will use it until my trial is up, and then, if I’m still enamored of it, I will register it (Bonsai costs $24.95).

A basic Google search shows that all of the programs I tried have loyal followings. Shadow Plan especially seems to have a dedicated fan base — I even found a few pages where people mentioned switching from Bonsai to Shadow Plan. Shadow is too complicated for me; however, for some people the sheer complication may be just what they need to get organized!

The ultimate test though will be whether Bonsai helps me to do what so many Palm users claim their Palm OS devices do for them: replace the thousand random bits of paper-based data. When it comes to maintaining the bits and pieces, the ephemera, of life, I’m sure Bonsai will pass. But can it replace the simplicity of paper and pencil notetaking? I doubt it. I doubt KeyNote or Treepad or any of the other robust notetakers will either. Not even Microsoft’s “Notes” program will do it, although once Microsoft is in the game, like so many lemmings, a lot of people will try to make Notes work. Worse, they will probably change the way they work in order to fit it more closely with “Notes.” There is precendent: for years now people have been changing the way they do presentations to conform to PowerPoint. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?