Re: Orbis-like program

[Joseph Carrabis <seoseadh-net.com>]

I have used AskSam since it's early days back in mumbly-mumbly-mumbly (my
god, was it that long ago?).
Anyway, it's a wonderful program. I wouldn't have thought of it as an
Orbis substitute because I find Orbis works fine, but since the suggestion
was made, it would do a tremendous job. Come to think of it, you could
even design AskSam templates to further organize your Orbis-like searches
and results.
Just my two cents thrown in.
JDC

John E Haynes wrote:

> My thanks for the suggestions of ask-sam and info-tree.  I'll look at
> both.
>
> I've used NB since the original version, and found NB DOS
> near-perfect for my need for dense scholarly writing and archival
> research in which I need to consult thousands of pages of notes made
> over many years.  The ability to integrate Orbis and its predecessors
> closely with the wp function was ideal for my purposes.   I never had
> serious problems with NB DOS and don't remember ever calling technical
> support for NB DOS.   I would have been content to stay in NB DOS but
> with most other people moving to Windows-based systems and so much new
> material in a non-DOS format, staying in DOS was getting increasingly
> awkward.  Thus I welcomed NBW.
>
> But the instability has been very difficult.  5.004 is more stable
> that the original but it is still too unstable.  Not a week goes by
> without multiple freezes, and some days, such as yesterday, are agony.
>  Yesterday, spell checking a 35 page draft essay produced more than a
> dozen crashes.  When a doubled word showed up, and I hit "keep both"
> one of two things happened.  Either the program went into a continuous
> loop, dropping back and requestioning the last word questioned before
> the double, moving to the double, and when "keep both" was hit once
> more, repeating forever.  Or the program simply announced an error and
> forced a close.  (Why the difference?  I don't know.)  I had to close
> the spell checker, move the cursor beyond the doubled words, and
> restart the spell checker with every doubled word.   Also, not always,
> but often correcting a spelling error in a footnote produced a error
> message and then a forced close of the program and a crash of the
> system.  The spell check, that should have taken less than 5 minutes,
> consumed an hour.
>
> This, alas, was not a singular occurrence.   Freezes and crashes
> occur with such frequency for no identifiable reason I've got the
> autosave set for one minute and rarely compose more than a paragraph
> without saving.  Find and replace also produces a high number of
> freezes and crashes, so I've developed the habit of saving after every
> replace action, but that is time-consuming and while data is not lost
> when a freeze happens, time is lost.
>
> The sound prompt for spelling errors works irregularly.  Currently it
> doesn't work.  I have no notion why it comes and goes.
>
> With any document that gets long, I can only open a footnote with f3
> because clicking with the mouse pointer on the note produces a note
> window with most of the window opaque with gray and only a few words
> of the note readable.   At irregular intervals the pointer also
> disappears when it passes over notes, making clicking on a note a
> matter of guesswork anyway.
>
> The spell checker refuses to accept "McCarthy" as an acceptable
> spelling and insists that only "Mccarthy" will do despite following
> directions for making "McCarthy" acceptable.
>
> Orbis still does the very vital job of keeping control of and quick
> access to thousands of pages of historical research notes, but the
> instability and flawed working of the wp program takes up too much
> time.  I'll stick with NBW for a period, but unless it becomes more
> stable, at some point I'll have to move to an alternative wp and
> textbase program. I'll look at the two suggestions, and I'm also going
> to consider using NBW only for the Orbis function and using Word or
> WordPerfect for the wp platform.
>
> John Earl Haynes, 20th Century Political Historian
> Manuscript Division, LM-102
> Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540-4689
> Ph: 202-707-1089; fax: 202-707-6336; e-mail: jhay