Thoughtful and detailed response to Bill - jwbaumann
Bill,
Thanks for the response. Here is my detailed followup, with suggestions.
Regarding wastefulness of screen real estate and the limited travel of the vertical pane divider - I am running at 1024 X 768. Even if I enlarge Parsnips to fill the entire screen, I can slide the divider less than a third of the window width, and at that window size, Parsnips is definitely hogging screen real estate. Beyond that, usually I do not want to simultaneously look at my list of records (results pane) and a specific record, yet each side is always consuming at least a third of the Parsnips window. I would like to be able to completely collapse either side at will (I'm smart enough to enlarge the window to access the buttons I need), or better still, find a way to have each side contextually collapse. Critiquing further, using the window resize widget (the standard one at the lower right), I can almost completely collapse the window, but when I re-enlarge it, the right field stays fully collapsed. All in all, awkward, unintuitive behavior. I would allow either side to be fully collapsed. Even if the panes are not fully collapsible, it seems wrong to along inactive controls (ie. the dimmed controls) to prevent the window pane from being resized. Also, read below where I discuss editable vs. non editable view modes.
Regarding the relevance being purely eye candy - if I create an item with a title of "fruit", keyword of "apple", and content of "macintosh", save it, then search on "apple", the relevance is only 38%. In order to make the relevance 100%, I must change all 3 words (title, keyword, and content) to "apple". This is just plain silly.
Regarding a "Show All" feature, you are correct in that searching for a blank string finds all records. This is completely unintuitive yet fully logical and functional (ie. Unixy, not Mac-like ; ) But thank you for solving a vexing problem I've had using Mulberry, an otherwise excellent e-mail program. Nevertheless, I would add a "Show All" button.
Regarding searching for substrings, this is probably more a philosophical issue than a technical or interface question. If the string "Now is the time for all..." exists in the database, and I search on "me fo", I expect to find a match. I don't want to even have to think about using wildcards and other geeky technical unixy terminology. It's great to have the advanced features available, but 98% of the time, I just want to search and find. I consider whole word matches to be an advanced feature, not a default. Perhaps you could have radio buttons as follows:
o search like Google
o search like AppleWorks
Or this could be a preference (I see you have barely touched the potential of the Preferences dialog).
Regarding "stop words" - this would be solved by the above suggestion. I was going to say that since the Parsnips database presumably contains only my files and info, I don't want to be "stopped" by my own stuff, but I see now that Parsnips can be used to index very large amounts of data, so this is not strictly a fair statement, more an expectations asymmetry.
Regarding two completely different search paradigms in the same app - I think this is just plain bad design - sorry. Again, the above radio button suggestion or preferences suggestion might obviate this. I would also suggest that when you search, then select a found item, the search words be highlighted (or bolded?) in the found item until you enter edit mode.
Regarding drag and drop - maybe expected too much, but I tried the following behaviors and all failed:
1) Drag a text file onto the Parsnips icon in the Finder
2) Drag a text file onto the Parsnips icon in the dock
3) Drag text onto the Parsnips icon in the Finder
4) Drag text onto the Parsnips icon in the dock
5) Drag a text clipping onto the Parsnips icon in the Finder
6) Drag a text clipping onto the Parsnips icon in the dock
7) Drag a text file onto the item side of Parsnips when not in an editable state
8) Drag text onto the item side of Parsnips when not in an editable state
9) Drag a text clipping onto the item side of Parsnips when not in an editable state
10) Drag a text file onto the item side of Parsnips when in an editable state.
Dragging must happen onto the list (left) side of the window (and yes, this is clearly noted in the documentation, but remember, Mac users don't, as a rule, RTFM). But if the window is expanded to fill the screen, it is very difficult to position things to allow drag and drop to occur. Also, the documentation mentions the "Drop Window," but I cannot seem to find it. Another problem is that Parsnips will allow me to import the same directory twice, without checking for duplicates and warning me, thus bloating the database with duplicates. This makes it difficult to keep Parsnips and a directory in sync. All in all, this is an incompletely implemented and sometimes difficult to use feature, yet I can now see it has incredible potential, and is pretty darn fast too.
It also appears that Parsnips will not import subfolders. Perhaps a preference, popup dialog, or different target in the Parsnips window would allow this functionality.
I see that when I go to a specific item, it is non-editable. I can see the benefits for some people, but I would like the item to be immediately editable, especially if it is an item I manually created inside Parsnips. This would definitely be something for a preferences window, as follows:
Make found items immediately editable
o Always
o Never
o Only for items I created in Parsnips
Now that I have spent more time with Parsnips, I can more clearly see the "expectations asymmetry" I referred to above. In the first paragraph describing Parsnips on VT, you use the phrases "useful bits of information" and "bits of useful text". I went into Parsnips expecting more of a personal notetaker, but it appears Parsnips real strength might be more as a file/web site indexer, yet it does have considerable potential to be both.
I apologize for the harsh criticism, but I have found that criticism often has the spark which allows me to create a much better final product. Please note that I did not give a star rating (giving a 1 or 2 would have been just plain mean), nor did I tell people not to use or try Parsnips. I thank you for your timely and thoughtful response and do hope to continue this dialog.
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Thoughtful and detailed response to Bill - jwbaumann
Bill,Thanks for the response. Here is my detailed followup, with suggestions.
Regarding wastefulness of screen real estate and the limited travel of the vertical pane divider - I am running at 1024 X 768. Even if I enlarge Parsnips to fill the entire screen, I can slide the divider less than a third of the window width, and at that window size, Parsnips is definitely hogging screen real estate. Beyond that, usually I do not want to simultaneously look at my list of records (results pane) and a specific record, yet each side is always consuming at least a third of the Parsnips window. I would like to be able to completely collapse either side at will (I'm smart enough to enlarge the window to access the buttons I need), or better still, find a way to have each side contextually collapse. Critiquing further, using the window resize widget (the standard one at the lower right), I can almost completely collapse the window, but when I re-enlarge it, the right field stays fully collapsed. All in all, awkward, unintuitive behavior. I would allow either side to be fully collapsed. Even if the panes are not fully collapsible, it seems wrong to along inactive controls (ie. the dimmed controls) to prevent the window pane from being resized. Also, read below where I discuss editable vs. non editable view modes.
Regarding the relevance being purely eye candy - if I create an item with a title of "fruit", keyword of "apple", and content of "macintosh", save it, then search on "apple", the relevance is only 38%. In order to make the relevance 100%, I must change all 3 words (title, keyword, and content) to "apple". This is just plain silly.
Regarding a "Show All" feature, you are correct in that searching for a blank string finds all records. This is completely unintuitive yet fully logical and functional (ie. Unixy, not Mac-like ; ) But thank you for solving a vexing problem I've had using Mulberry, an otherwise excellent e-mail program. Nevertheless, I would add a "Show All" button.
Regarding searching for substrings, this is probably more a philosophical issue than a technical or interface question. If the string "Now is the time for all..." exists in the database, and I search on "me fo", I expect to find a match. I don't want to even have to think about using wildcards and other geeky technical unixy terminology. It's great to have the advanced features available, but 98% of the time, I just want to search and find. I consider whole word matches to be an advanced feature, not a default. Perhaps you could have radio buttons as follows:
o search like Google
o search like AppleWorks
Or this could be a preference (I see you have barely touched the potential of the Preferences dialog).
Regarding "stop words" - this would be solved by the above suggestion. I was going to say that since the Parsnips database presumably contains only my files and info, I don't want to be "stopped" by my own stuff, but I see now that Parsnips can be used to index very large amounts of data, so this is not strictly a fair statement, more an expectations asymmetry.
Regarding two completely different search paradigms in the same app - I think this is just plain bad design - sorry. Again, the above radio button suggestion or preferences suggestion might obviate this. I would also suggest that when you search, then select a found item, the search words be highlighted (or bolded?) in the found item until you enter edit mode.
Regarding drag and drop - maybe expected too much, but I tried the following behaviors and all failed:
1) Drag a text file onto the Parsnips icon in the Finder
2) Drag a text file onto the Parsnips icon in the dock
3) Drag text onto the Parsnips icon in the Finder
4) Drag text onto the Parsnips icon in the dock
5) Drag a text clipping onto the Parsnips icon in the Finder
6) Drag a text clipping onto the Parsnips icon in the dock
7) Drag a text file onto the item side of Parsnips when not in an editable state
8) Drag text onto the item side of Parsnips when not in an editable state
9) Drag a text clipping onto the item side of Parsnips when not in an editable state
10) Drag a text file onto the item side of Parsnips when in an editable state.
Dragging must happen onto the list (left) side of the window (and yes, this is clearly noted in the documentation, but remember, Mac users don't, as a rule, RTFM). But if the window is expanded to fill the screen, it is very difficult to position things to allow drag and drop to occur. Also, the documentation mentions the "Drop Window," but I cannot seem to find it. Another problem is that Parsnips will allow me to import the same directory twice, without checking for duplicates and warning me, thus bloating the database with duplicates. This makes it difficult to keep Parsnips and a directory in sync. All in all, this is an incompletely implemented and sometimes difficult to use feature, yet I can now see it has incredible potential, and is pretty darn fast too.
It also appears that Parsnips will not import subfolders. Perhaps a preference, popup dialog, or different target in the Parsnips window would allow this functionality.
I see that when I go to a specific item, it is non-editable. I can see the benefits for some people, but I would like the item to be immediately editable, especially if it is an item I manually created inside Parsnips. This would definitely be something for a preferences window, as follows:
Make found items immediately editable
o Always
o Never
o Only for items I created in Parsnips
Now that I have spent more time with Parsnips, I can more clearly see the "expectations asymmetry" I referred to above. In the first paragraph describing Parsnips on VT, you use the phrases "useful bits of information" and "bits of useful text". I went into Parsnips expecting more of a personal notetaker, but it appears Parsnips real strength might be more as a file/web site indexer, yet it does have considerable potential to be both.
I apologize for the harsh criticism, but I have found that criticism often has the spark which allows me to create a much better final product. Please note that I did not give a star rating (giving a 1 or 2 would have been just plain mean), nor did I tell people not to use or try Parsnips. I thank you for your timely and thoughtful response and do hope to continue this dialog.
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Friday, October 22 2004 @ 08:40 AM PDT