JimmyGee

I don't think there's such a thing as 'off topic'. Well, there is, but the joy in life is finding connections between things that seem unrelated. You're lucky that you know what you want to do. Hunter S. Thompson says something that touches on this... 'A man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is fulfilling a need (giving himself identity by functioning in a set pattern toward a set goal), he avoids frustrating his potential (choosing a path which puts no limit on his self-development), and he avoids the terror of seeing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws closer to it (rather than bending himself to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to conform to his own abilities and desires)... No one HAS to do something he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means convince yourself that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of company...' I've cut that into an excerpt that now makes no sense at all, and it probably illustrates the very opposite of what I wanted to show. It's like with drawing -- if I draw an eye in the wrong place, I spend the rest of the drawing trying to make it look like I meant to do that. I suppose that's why it's good to know what you want to do first, and then look for the tools to do it. You are not being tool-led. Others may find a saw, so they become a carpenter. I suppose it's quite wonderful to be able to do that. I liked Pong, and would still play it if it were here.

This is a great list. You forgot to say shovel for digging potatoes out! I'm going to look up Freeplane. I know all the others. I liked MindManager years ago, but it became very expensive for just doing mind mapping, and it wasn't crucial to how I work. But if a mind mapping software isn't intuitive and effortless, it's not worth using (for me) OR -- and this is a big one too -- if it doesn't look good. Mind Manager looked good. There was another I used to use which had loads of functionality but it didn't look nice, so I got out of the habit of using it. This is another one of my issues, aesthetics -- if something looks too cartoony or childlike, I'm not a fan.You know, bouncy paperclips with constant cheerfulness.

Aren't you kind. Thank you so much. I did experiment, and I discovered exactly what you say -- so I'm less forlorn than I was about Evernote. Still, nothing's perfect -- Evernote, Devonthink, Google Keep -- none of their web clippers is flawless. Devonthink is very quirky and probably has the steepest learning curve of any consumer software -- still, it appeals to my almost-Linux personality. Keep It is nice but also flawed, and it doesn't do much. Evernote is, I suppose, the best of the bunch, in the broad view. Google starts to make suggestions which are just a little too accurate. You need to set a place for it at dinner. I feel like Microsoft and Google are best avoided, and the loyalty given to smaller developers, like the guy who makes Scrivener, which is about the greatest software I've ever used (for writing) and you can still, just about, exchange emails with the creator. Do you use anything besides Evernote for your research/storage?

Thanks man. I'm on a Mac. Anyway yours and DTLow's messages inspired me to experiment and yes I discovered what you already knew -- that in Evernote, the files are called 'attachments'. I'm assuming that the bit that becomes HTML is the 'note', i.e., a section that, if you were to leave it blank, is really more of an envelope. Saving attachments means pulling down your original files. I see now. I just looked up TL; DR and thanks, that's useful. I've never posted anything online before so I'm not au fait with the protocol. I didn't know length was frowned upon. I thought to write something longer might be considered convivial. Poorly judged on my part. It's my first day, and I guess I'm Charles Bovary, getting an ink bottle thrown at the back of his head. Yes it's a beautiful programme. I do pay for it, but I have another, more expensive account, for which the log in is my real name. It never occurred to me to write to Evernote themselves. It wasn't a bug, after all, it was a choice they made. Or rather, that I thought they had made, wrongly, it turns out. But the TL;DR thing is great, because it's a good discipline to be able to allow people to see your main question, especially if it's floating in a sea of dangling modifiers and modal particles. Thanks for the help. You said a lot in a very short space of time, a skill I lack. Perhaps you heard what Pascal once wrote to a friend -- 'I'm sorry for the long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one'. Perhaps he had the same impairment that I have.