TreeSheets: Free-Form Data Organizer | Hacker News Reader

TreeSheets: Free-Form Data Organizer

strlen.com

76 pointsvmorgulis28 comments

I really like these sorts of tools, but the file format[1] is a bit of a con for me. Being binary/proprietary, it makes it difficult to integrate other tools or feed the data into other systems.

[1] https://github.com/aardappel/treesheets/tree/master/TS/examp...

(disclaimer: I wrote the program).

The binary format is open source and documented, that doesn't fit the term "proprietary" to me.

It exports to text, html, xml, csv and more.

The reason it doesn't use any of that as its main storage format is that it tracks a lot of attributes that do not fit those formats naturally (I suppose you can store it all in xml, but I went for speed of loading/saving and smaller storage sizes).

I strongly suspected it was a performance and necessity thing. Not many text-based formats would have easily supported e.g. embedding images, as this tool does.

I do think it looks pretty great, though, and congratulations on the open source launch!

Thanks! It was open sourced.. 2.5 years ago? I'm not sure what motivated this HN post, but it is all good to me :)

I rediscovered TreeSheets from another thread about visual programming:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11244558

http://blog.interfacevision.com/design/design-visual-progarm...

http://strlen.com/aardappel-language

Thanks, hadn't spotted that thread yet :)

Thanks to you!

Your languages are great (aardappel, Amiga E...).

Thanks, that would've been my first question. How am I suppose to use this on another platform that's not supported? Back to markdown & nvALT for me.

This whole thing is 1) open source (under ZLIB which is incredibly open), and 2) written against the wxWidgets UI set which compiles on basically every platform (it was the cross-platform choice before QT was LGPL'd -- which I presume had something to do with the decision to use it, as TreeSheets has been around for nearly a decade).

I for one applaud this author on 1: making it free rather than freeium-SaaS - locally I can run my own instance and if the developer decides to abandon it via an Apple Acquire-Hire-Shutdown (FoundationDB where are you now?) my data and workflow aren't lost, 2: exploring a new paradigm (PIM keeps on being re-invented because no one has sufficiently solved the problem-- this was one of the few actually innovative takes on PIM), and 3: specifically because of how open it is and even if I want to use this on a VAXstation from 1993 I can easily compile it myself.

TreeSheets and Leo[1] are the only two PIM's other than Emacs Orgmode[2] that have genuinely been flexible enough to capture information in a flexible enough way for me to 'brainstorm', while concurrently allowing ease of recall (though the new KDE Suite of QT apps are decent enough)

[1] http://leoeditor.com/ [2] And even org-mode tends to be a bit lacking out of the box, though the healthy elisp ecosystem around it + your own ability to hack it into whatever you want makes it versatile enough any workflow.

I have been using this for the last 6 months or so. It is clean, efficient, and flexible. The UI is spartan, but it is also orthogonal.

Can I ask a few questions?

* Do you share the data with others?

* Can you give an example how you use this as a "go to" tool?

* Do you keep separate files for the data you are using or most things in one file?

The tool looks pretty interesting, but I'm look at the friction to move from other tools.

Thanks for your time

(disclaimer: I wrote the program).

* It's a traditional desktop app, so to share you'd save your files in dropbox or similar. It detects when the file has changed outside the app.

* Not sure what you mean by "go to" tool.

* Whichever you prefer. It can certainly handle large amounts of data in a single file efficiently.

* Importing from other tools: if the other tool (mindmapper/outliner) can save as indented text, this can then import that same structure. It can also read .csv files from excel etc.

I was hoping from a response from the poster that said he worked with the program for the last 6 months.

* The question about sharing wasn't really directed at how to share, but if he used this program to share with other users. So rather than it being a group of one, there were others passing data around.

* "Go to Tool" is along the line of my tool chest has all of these tools, and I pull out what the best one is. Since this is a multi purpose tool it get's pulled out more often, it becomes your "go to tool". Like people's leathermen tools become their "go to tool" for everything but fine dining.

The first may answer the need to be able to import in and out. If the group is using it, then less data transformations are needed.

The go to answers how useful it really is. In it all day doing things is a bonus, only using it for mind mapping not as helpful.

Thanks!

Startup idea: make same app controlled by voice and sell to tech & consulting businesses as a whiteboard that you talk to.

Over time it learns not about your business and it's processes so can correct itself & so on.

This is really cool, and very similar to a hierarchical note taking app idea I've been kicking around. Kudos to Aardappel.

Great work! I've been looking for something like this for ages.

the idea is interesting, but I guess it need to be better designed. the ui does not look that good

(disclaimer: I wrote the program).

This has been a hobby open source project for a long time. It is built on the aging wxWidgets UI toolkit. I don't make money with it (this is not a startup, like everything else on HN ;), so, yeah, contributions to make it prettier welcome :)

It's not a new project. History starts in 2009:

http://strlen.com/treesheets/docs/history.txt

Can a child node have multiple parents?

(disclaimer: I wrote the program).

No, it is strictly a tree, it derives its compact representation, automatic layout and quick manipulation from that limitation. There's a few ways around that, by tagging cells you can easily hop around cross-links.

Cell tags is exactly what I did to solve the lack of 'multiple inheritance' issue. Thanks for this product, I've been using it for almost a decade and it's all kinds of brilliant.

Thanks!

Why build this as a desktop app instead of a SaaS? Not a snark, seriously why this design decision?

(disclaimer: I wrote the program). I started this in 2008 initially simply to scratch an itch I had myself. I guess back then desktop apps still ruled? I also wanted it be very fast on large documents, which back then didn't seem possible with web-apps yet. Today that's maybe different, but a SaaS version is almost starting from scratch given the tech it is built on (C++ and wxWidgets with only local file storage).

This is just my personal opinion, but I really appreciate it when things like this are desktop apps.

I like having my data stored locally and having full control over what's going on and who has what. I don't want to have to worry about whether or not someone's service will be there a few years down the line, or what their uptime is.

I also like that older desktop apps feel really snappy on modern hardware. Usually, depending on the file format, it's not too hard to work out my own sync'ing setup. If I'm the only one using it, dropbox or something like that normally works.

Of course there are also online apps I really like, such as trello etc. I realize I'm giving those short shrift, with my quick list, and that there are really established apps out there with great guarantees that sure don't look like they're going anywhere, but I think you can get a vague idea as to my preference from it.

I'll definitely check out TreeSheets tonight. Appreciate the work you've done on it.

SaaS has a huge overhead, and would've required a lot more programming effort. User account management, revenue generation, security, etc.

Sometimes, a desktop app is just simpler.

This really is a great app IMHO, a compact mind map.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com