It is a great start, congrats on the release. Out of all the categories offered, I'm missing "Invertory" category. A place where I could ask AI to remember something and to retrieve it later on. For example :) "Honey, where do keep the measuring tape?" - "Living room, white chest, first drawer.". That's what I'm missing in my life. On the other hand, all of my contacts originate from the phone address book, so unless there is some special synchronization, I don't see how I would manage them in Ontoplano.
I implemented inventory management in /shopping: I hated crossing shopping lists in the market and having to think about it all again later. Much better to keep a pre-determined list of stuff you want to always have at home (with the option to snooze it if you are not feeling like buying that for now, but may be in the future) and only say if you do have it or if you need to buy it.
But you're asking to have a list of non-consumable stuff you have being able to record where it lives; I'd just use shopping, mark as something that I have, and put it's location on the description. You could create a category there: "House stuff" or something.
The challenge with an inventory, as opposed to shopping is classification. With shopping lists, I don't need much classification, milk is milk, lettuce is lettuce. But, for an inventory, I need a tree of parent-child relationships as well as tags, with freely configurable destination fields, like, for example, KeePassXC/KeePassDX. Not all objects have same data attributes, like, for example, that measuring tape, is it a 3m or 5m tape, is it a construction tape or tailor tape. My USB cables in the drawer, are they USB2 or USB3, USB-C or USB-A. In my brain, a shopping list is a flat array, while home inventory is a file system with tags.
Makes sense. I will put that on the ROADMAP, maybe /shopping can be reworked into /inventory and made way more detailed and powerful. Thanks a lot for your input!
It can run from any path so long as your plugin host or DAW is happy to load it from there (the plugin APIs define standard folders plugins should be installed to, but lots of host allow other paths).
That's unfortunate. That means that in a multi room studio synchronization can't happen and each instance will drift and has to be set again and again. Here's a way how to resolve this (as implemented by Surge XT or any of the U-He): the software should infer its own runtime path and then test for the existence of a subdirectory "data" (for example). If the directory doesn't exist, then settings files are read and written to operating system's well known paths. But, if the directory does exist then all runtime files should be read and written from there.
Interesting, I'll take a look at the Surge source, they're a clever bunch. If you have a moment - I'd like to understand this use-case more. What do you mean multi room studio? Does a per-user installation help, vs an all-users installation?
Historically, early VST plug-ins were fully portable. They were rarely communicating with the underlying file system and were leaving all state management to the host. This made a DAW and a VST library a single unit which could run from anywhere, including network attached shared drives. So, in a multi room studio of yesteryear or in a distributed band studio of modern times, only one setup was needed for all of the nodes. A studio engineer would prepare a DAW+VST directory, share it via network, and all studios would have exactly the same setup with exactly the same plug-ins, with exactly the same configuration without having to repeat the whole setup N times. Therefore, a musician/producer/engineer could work in any studio room without limitations or distractions. The leader in this field is Cockos Reaper which supports fully portable operation, plus full relative path expansion everywhere. In my experience, there are about ~3000 VST2/VST3/CLAP plug-ins in existence, running flawlessly for decades now. So, by saving the plug-in state to operating system's semi-hardcoded directories, your plugin stays non-portable, and instead of being a full part of the DAW setup, becomes an unmanageable mess that nobody wants to deal with.
Interesting! Thank you for the explanation. I wonder what file permission issues we might face trying to write adjacent to the plugin file. I'll see what Surge does.
Sure. Just make sure to bubble the error up to the UI and no problemo. Recent portable software even includes a toggle in settings to dynamically let users decide which state store to use, like, for example, the excellent LinkLever.
Even though the idea is noble, and the cause is sound, I don't really see, from a technical standpoint, how would this help? After witnessing the rise of cyberspace from the very beginning, it is clear by now that it can never foster healthy human relationships. That's a failed experiment. Real people around you are the real treasure in your life, and only spending time with your friends can bring something meaningful to your life. But, most people rely on their phones to keep them organized nowadays. Hence, a simple website is not enough. Not even a PWA. To have people really reminded you need native apps, in order to be able to send notifications. That brings the costs up significantly, unless you can piggy back on top of NTFY or Pushover or similar. On the other hand, all modern messaging apps like, for example, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, already support the necessary features, like: organize a group, invite people to join, set a topic, set a custom notification sound, and finally schedule a message/reminder for the group. I'm not saying that there is no room for something like ToSynch, but given how hard it is to get everyone to start using a new app, it looks to me like it needs more work, more features, more platforms, more apps.
Appreciate your thoughtful response. Your point on technology having failed to foster human relationships so far has lot of truth in it. But if we don't do anything, it is about get even worse. Hence primary design of the app is not to keep you hooked in the app. More features are in the works. One about group meetings, I have got several requests for. What you laid out is a tough challenge. Most people are so taken up by the constant dopamine hit of getting something from phone every few minutes that anything less than a native app is not even a starter. Yet, here I am. I don't want perfect to be enemy of good. Do what I can. I have been using it, and few of other friends, and it is has definitely facilitated meetings which would not have happened otherwise.
Good. Keep pushing forward, of course. I read everything published on the site and I'm still not sure how does this work. The site sends emails with icl files attached?
Correct. It sends email reminders, with Add to calendar link(ics can be downloaded and added to favorite calendar on phone/device). The thing about Whatsapp etc having the ability - none of these make recurring reminder easy. Focus of these apps is either in monetization or selling ads. Of course a calendar app can be used but then calendar does not initiate nudges. The friction is in the initiation. Each party thinks other should initiate.
Hmm, I'm not sure I would be able to persuade + educate all of my friends to open the email and consume the calendar event each and every time. Consider NTFY or Pushover or similar, those are at least set once - reuse indefinitely. Plus, they would enable users to set a unique notification sound which would then always be something special in their life.
Noted. Definitely worth considering. Also as chats have taken over the world, people don't open email for long time, and so much junk in email. I did have that at the back on the mind. I just did not want to the app to become too noisy, with text/SMS pings. Will look into NTFY/Pushover. Thanks for the feedback.
More or less the same, just not yet with cal integrations. The main tweak is a more modern interface and with a denser level of abilities around customisation with layouts/colours/folders.
My main gripe with TB is that it’s limited in how much you can change the display visually, which can be quite cluttered and same-y.
Thanks. Besides the main UI dark mode, does Mainly have email-render-dark-mode, with quick and easy toggle back to original? How about printing? Does it have email-push-to-printer in both original and colour-inverted mode?
Thanks for considering. Many times shops or banks send out receipts that are in the body, not in the attachment. The only way to save such a receipt is to print it to PDF. All modern browsers handle conversion-to-PDF part, the software or webapp just needs to push it to print, making sure to leave out email software chrome, and to use paper-friendly colours: black ink on white background.
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