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Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

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Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#41

Post by Aardappel »

quag wrote: post #29
ydant wrote: post #20

I can't find a really important detail on the website or github - and haven't been able to easily find it - how is the underlying data stored? It looks like it might be a custom format, which might make sense for the project, but is unfortunate for a broader accessible knowledge-base and programmable integration - plain text allows you "grep", sqlite allows you SQL. The discussion of this being an org-mode mindset ki…

The data is stored in a custom binary file format. Parts of the format are zlib deflated. There is documentation for the format, but it is wrong and outdated. I had to reverse engineer the format from the C++ code.

I am not aware that it is outdated. If you found inaccuracies, please open an issue, or better a yet a PR for the file https://github.com/aardappel/treesheets/blob/master/TS/docs/...

Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#42

Post by app4soft »

doodlebugging wrote: post #38

I found this application back in 2010. I was searching for a mind mapper at the time. It allows pretty high complexity but is so simple to use. It has a very short learning curve. You can be doing meaningful work with it in a matter of minutes. It has features of a spreadsheet that allow you to store related info and do math on fields but is so much more useful because you can do the math at one level and use layers…

Previous threads:

[2013] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5877145

[2016] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11247372

[2017] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15057392

Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#43

Post by Aardappel »

insomniacity wrote: post #2

I've followed this on and off for years, and I've always pined for a mobile version - to the extent I seriously considered learning mobile development in order to write my own!

TreeSheets is written with wxWidgets, which sadly has very disfunctional or even missing mobile ports. Likely you'd want to redo the whole UI anyway for this to function on a phone screen.

Then there's the matter of file storage.. it would need to hook up to some kind of cloud account etc.

In all, the amount of effort to bring this to mobile might possibly be the same as writing it from scratch.

Though.. PRs welcome! :)

Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#44

Post by Aardappel »

discreteevent wrote: post #27

"It's like an outliner, but in more than one dimension." That's what makes mind maps so good (along with the hierarchy).

I actually wrote TreeSheets after I became a heavy user of mindmaps, and found the information density and organizational abilities to be very lacking. As well as rendering/editing speed for larger maps (in freemind).

Mindmaps look very 2D, but essentially its just a left and a right tree, with no other horizontal organizational methods. TreeSheets truely lets you create any 2D hierarchy you can dream of.

Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#45

Post by Aardappel »

dorian-graph wrote: post #8

I've used this a little bit at work (as as software engineer), and I've at times found it really helpful. I think it depends on how you work through problems/information. It's also depended on what exactly I was working on to whether it was useful. A modern, extensible version of this would be amazing.

It's become a little more extensible recently with the addition of a scripting language.

But yeah, PRs welcome!

Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#46

Post by Aardappel »

tradesurplus wrote: post #9

Looks like it would be very very cool with some attention to the UX and regular updates.

It's one of my 10 or so side projects. Sadly while TreeSheets is pretty popular with users, it doesn't attract a lot of programmers to contribute (probably my ancient looking code!).. more of them would help.

Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#47

Post by tomcam »

samstave wrote: post #31
vidarh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argh. This will teach me not to write comments on my phone. "Chicken me in" is of course meant to be "chime in".

I prefer "chicken me in" and it should be a thing. So chicken me in on something, what is it, exactly, that you'd say you do around here?...

Seconded. Not sure why it works so well, but it does.

Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#48

Post by Aardappel »

taco_emoji wrote: post #40

Not sure I want to download an EXE from a non-SSL site...

The bottom download link points you to GitHub, where you can get exes straight from CI, if you trust that more.

I've looked into getting https from my site, but there's always a high cost associated, if you want a certificate that's widely accepted (which doesn't seem to hold for the free ones). And I think my host isn't even compatible with free ones.

If the web wants HTTPS everywhere, this somehow needs to be made simpler/cheaper for non-commercial entities.

Re: Treesheets: cross-platform, free-form data organizer app

#50

Post by dynm »

This project deserves huge credit for the excellent tutorial that it opens up to on first launch. It basically opens to an example sheet that you can read and then try out all the basic functionality in place. It's fun, and quickly shows you what the tool is capable of. You don't need to watch a separate video, and you don't feel overly "controlled" like so many over-engineered tutorials that force you to do A,B,C in the order someone decided was correct.

I think this is a great approach. Many people want to "just try it" and this allows you to do that and also get an explanation at the same time.

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