Aug 21 Sat (11 AM)

Recently there's been a sudden interest from part of the Net in antique software. I started with the release of Visicalc 1.0 and has recently stretched to encompass a number of pieces of Mac software. Macintouch had a great report and listing of the software:

http://www.macintouch.com/earlymac.html

..."Feel the leather, Sunny!!!"...

-ahem-

As I was saying, after picking through the various pieces of software, and not finding anything of more than curiosity, I came across Acta.

http://a-sharp.com

Acta is an outliner. It's escentially a very simple text editor with the ability to group pieces of text, generally in hierarchies. Now here was something useful that fit in well with my needs and my philosophy towards software.

I've got tons of projects and as readers who have been with me for a while know, a couple of months ago I got on this kick of making single large To Do list that listed every single thing that I'm working on outside of work. I had been keeping this list in Stickies, a 'virtual' stickie note program that ships with Macs. It's just a very small and colorfull text window, with very little adornment.

But by moving this To Do list to Acta, I can now go into more detail about my projects without sacrificing readability of the document. For instance when it comes to the car, I have this set of entries:

* The Honda
  * Fix Brakes
  * Decide to Repair/Sell
    * Find another car
  * Replace Dashboard lights
  * Install New Antenna
  * Front Right wheel berrings
  * Patch Windshield
  * Fix A/C
  * Fix Cruise Control
  * Replace Carborator

As you can see, the car is in poor shape, but the To Do list looks beautiful. :)

This software has also found it's way to my machine at work. I'm now the toast of the department because I can very quickly paste my most recent issues/to do list from Acta into an e-mail, and quickly update everyone on every project I'm involved with.

This method of organization is just one in a long series of attempts, but it looks very promising. I might download and install the now free version of WordPerfect 3.5 that Corel has released to the public.

http://www.macintouch.com/wperfect.html

Off to Swagat we go!

Ross : Link : Discussion Board