NoteCards Stability Poll


Questions sent: 2-3-87
File:  {QV}<NoteCards>1.3K>Doc>NoteCardsPoll.ted


1.  What is your opinion of the stability of 1.3K NoteCards?  How much do you trust it with your work?

(Dave Newman) I think that 1.3k is fairly stable for the operations that I perform regularly.  There are still a few annoying bugs, and I think that there are more major bugs in operations that I do not perform regularly. I trust 1.3k enough that I would use it because I know that NoteCardsSupport stands ready to assist if I get into a real bad situation.

(Mike Dixon) I've found it very stable, and am trusting it with a fair amount of work.

(Mark Miller) I have successfully trusted it with several papers I've written.

(Eric Tribble) Quite stable.

(Tad Hogg) Very stable for the features I use (I haven't tried cross file links, or even multiple simultaneously open notefiles). I trust it quite well -- since nothing completely bad has happened yet.

(Julian Orr) I've converted the two NoteFiles I work with most [into three NoteFiles, of course, but that's another issue], and am doing all further work with them in 1.3K.  I guess I have a high opinion of its stability, coupled with an awareness that I don't do anything very exotic and an awareness that Randy sits across the hall.

(Ramana Rao) More than I probably should if you're asking.  What I mean is that so far I've only had one bad experience with it in 8 months of use and so trust it  completely.

(Kirk Kelley) I loose a lot of work in crashes because stuff on the screen has not been written out to the notefile.

(John Tang) Let's just say that I used to trust it completely.  Now I am much wiser and more cautious.  I have found 1.3k to be quite stable, but more importantly, I have access to people who can often untangle any mess I get in.

(Lucy Suchman) In my experience 1.3K has been very reliable.  (I'm a relatively light user; that is, I use NoteCards a lot but my main notefile is very small -- only about 275 cards -- with no fancy browsers.)

2.  How often do you need to run Inspect&Repair to recover work that you would otherwise lose?

(Dave Newman) I have used I&R twice since converting to 1.3k, but since the stuff I am doing in 1.3k is not real big or intensive, this figure is misleading.

(Mike Dixon) I've never run inspect & repair (but i've only been using notecards for a few weeks).

(Mark Miller) Maybe 3 to 5 times altogether in the entire time I've used it.

(Eric Tribble) Once in 6 months.

(Tad Hogg) Only once so far.

(Julian Orr) I've never had to do so yet.

(Ramana Rao) I ran inspect and repair on that one occassion when my machine crashed while I was working.  It didn't recover anything because it so happened that I had created a lot of links and a lot of cards (embedded in this new area of the world) were open at the crash point.  Before then I didn't use to checkpoint so often.  Now I tend to checkpoint and clean up my "table top" more often.

(Kirk Kelley) Just about every crash.  The latest though was because I closed a notefile on one machine.  Brought it up on machine 2.  Had to re-boot machine 1 going back to earlier history where it was open.  Closed (again) on machine 1.  Closed on machine 2.  Machine 2 warned that the file had been modified since I opened it but went ahead and closed it.  The next open complained that there was stuff written past the checkpoint.

(John Tang) I would say fairly infrequently; once every other month maybe.

(Lucy Suchman) Haven't run Inspect&Repair in 1.3K.

3.  How often have you actually lost work?  Do you know what caused work to be lost?

(Dave Newman) I lost work once before I&R was repaired.

(Mike Dixon) Never lost work (at least not due to notecards).

(Mark Miller) The only time I ever lost work was because I tried to compact an open notefile.  I know that this bug has already been fixed though.

(Eric Tribble) Twice, once bad, once not.

(Tad Hogg) I had a problem with not being able to read image objects contained in some cards before the patch from Sketch was added to the system. I eventually just deleted the cards & redid them.

(Julian Orr) Never lost any.

(Ramana Rao) Once (as said above).   See 2 for why I think I lost work.

(Kirk Kelley) I loose work about once every two weeks.  Now that checkpoint forces output, that helps, but I still have to remember to checkpoint.

(John Tang) YES.  I believe it was due to a bug in CompactInPlace.  The other time I lost work is due to the filing in FileBox bug that was recently fixed--I have great fears about data lost there that I have little way of recovering.

(Lucy Suchman) Never.

4.  Do you regret moving to 1.3?  Do you regret using NoteCards?

(Dave Newman) No, but I have not yet used it on a big project yet. NO! (the second half of this is likely to get some interesting results)

(Mike Dixon) I've been more impressed with notecards than I anticipated.  No regrets.

(Mark Miller) Not at all.

(Eric Tribble) No. Yes, see below.

(Tad Hogg) No. No. The user interface in 1.3 is much nicer, particularly the ability to manipulate things while waiting to select cards. Eventually I think it will be useful to share info (e.g. references) between files so having the ability to open more than one file will be nice.

(Julian Orr) No and no.

(Ramana Rao) I never used anything but 1.3.   And I would miss Notecards terribly if I didn't have it.  And with each day as I create more notefiles, I get sucked in deeper.

(Kirk Kelley) No.

(John Tang) NO.  The advantages of having multiple files open and cross-file links are marvelous.  Likewise, the conceptual capability that NoteCards affords is very useful to me.  So far, the advantages far outweigh the lost work.

(Lucy Suchman) No.  I like NoteCards very much.

5.  Would you recommend using NoteCards 1.3 to your colleagues, or would you suggest that they wait for it to become more stable?

(Dave Newman) I would recommend 1.3k for Lisp-competent colleagues, but not yet for lisp novices.

(Mike Dixon) I've recommended notecards to several people.

(Mark Miller) I have been recommending it.

(Eric Tribble) Stability is not the problem.  See 6.

(Tad Hogg) I dont think stability is the issue. Instead, I would point out that it is difficult to use links  (e.g. to cite references, sections, etc.) when I also want to make hardcopy papers in which the links are replaced with appropriate numbers, etc. The code I put together to do this w/ the prog. interface is nice but not very general. Also current browsers don't easily capture all that I want in an outline -- e.g. to see some file boxes (e.g. sections of the paper) but not others. In short, a lot of the basic functionality is there but still requires a lot of user effort to use in a natural way for organizing ideas into completed documents.

(Julian Orr) I have recommended it to Dana, who's interested in putting some of the information about ISL into a NoteFile, and will be pushing Becky Burwell into using it.  As she takes over the IFS world, I think she will want my NoteFiles. 

(Ramana Rao) My god, I didn't realize at all that it was considered unstable.   But then some people think Lyric is stable and others wont think it stable even 2 years from now.  Yes, I would recommend it, but note that I'm recommending Notecards and don't know about the 1.3 vs previous versions.

(Kirk Kelley) I have recommended the AIS test team use NoteCards but only because I am a vailable to trouble shoot.

(John Tang) I think 1.3 is sufficiently stable to recommend to others at this time.

(Lucy Suchman) I would recommend it.

6.  Other comments?

(Dave Newman) I would like to hear the results of this survey summarized.

(Mike Dixon) Nice program.

(Mark Miller) I'm happy.  (I've got lots of feature requests, but I take it that's not what you're looking for here)  Altogether, I consider Notecards to be more reliable than the average for the Interlisp environment.

(Eric Tribble) The hierarchichal structure of notecards is often nice, but when attempting to change or view the whole document, it is quite annoying;  enough so that I would prefer using TEdit in the first place.  When the paper has sections right next to each other, I expect my interface to allow equal ease of access.  The separation of notecards without a means to view and edit them together interferes with writing flow and leads to jerky transitions.

(Tad Hogg) You've all been very helpful & responsive to suggestions. I appreciate your efforts!

(Julian Orr) I think it would be nice if NoteCards generated a NoteCards Profile, which remembers your different NoteFiles, so that a new sysout doesn't present you with a blank menu when you request Open NoteFile.  Similarly, it would be nice if it preserved your set of Session Parameters.  I'm aware that most if not all of those can be set in your Init, and I do set some of the NCGlobalInitialParams.  It would be nice if it didn't require programming to accomplish these; after all, Lafite remembers all my mail files without a hint of parentheses.  Similarly, it shouldn't be necessary to place NoteCards or NoteFile icons each time, nor should the alternative be learning how to specify window positions in my Init.  If there's no alternative to doing this in the Init, the documentation might provide a template for specifying position for both types of icon, such that all the user has to supply is a pair of coordinates and a name for the NoteFile.

These are issues of refinement, of course, and are only prompted by the fact that I'm basically happy with the rest of the system.

(Kirk Kelley) We need an auto-checkpoint option a la savevm.
We need better checks on notefiles that get modified out from under a session.

Large cards make notefiles grow too fast.  Seems like we could ease the problem a little with a new rule: there is at most only one version of a card part per checkpoint.  This would allow us to write down card parts above a certain size in contiguous fixed increment chunks and overwrite / reuse them until the next checkpoint.

For Lyric, I&R needs to deal with font change codes (255 0) appearing at the beginning of the notefile.  This is symptomatic of the fragile nature of the NoteFile format.

(John Tang) The contact with you guys (the implementors) is really the key to making NC1.3 work for me.  Frankly, I'm not very troubled by the unstability of 1.3, but I think it's because I know enough about what's going on with it AND I keep getting fed these hints and tidbits for playing it safe based on your experiences.  I think it's valuable to get those hints published and disseminated to the users somehow, and I realize that's problematic (my initial attempt at accumulating my own user group hints have not been dramatically successful), but I think it makes a big difference for me.

(Lucy Suchman) There are disadvantages to the relatively hard boundaries between NoteCards and the rest of the Interlisp environment -- for example, there are times when opening my notefile to get at a single card feels like a bother.   But I find that the added facilities for managing my workspace make it more than worthwhile, and multiple open notefiles is a great improvement on that score.

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(Dan Brotsky) I'm not using notecards these days.  I don't regret having used it, but I am in the process of looking at all of the available document options around, and so I have been trying a number of them over time.  When I start using NoteCards again (if I do) I will be happy to answer any questions you have.

(Jock Mackinlay) I'm actually using 1.3L and I haven't had any problems yet.

(Stan Lanning) Sorry, but I really haven't used Notecards in quite a while.  I have no comments.((

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