OK, I know, DTP2 is almost here, and it’ll be what it’ll be. Still, here’s a crazy request: What if DTPx had a Stickies-like component to its interface, so that I could view my data objects visually, like index cards on a bulletin board?
I love Stickies. I love that I can pull data–from Safari, Mail, wherever–into a Sticky with a simple ⇧ ⌘ Y, and boom, there it is visible on my desktop. I can maximize and minimize my Stickies with a click, move them around, arrange dozens on my desktop at once, kind of like a mindmap, but without the hassle (IMHO) of all those connector lines. I also love that I can reach through my Stickies array to grab stuff on the desktop beneath.
I just want … a little more. The ability to put my Stickies into categories, so I don’t have to see them all at once (unless I want to). The ability to create and save multiple arrays. And critically, the ability to seamlessly integrate my Stickied data into a larger digital database. In short, I want a kind of Sticky Data Organizer, a smart corkboard for my MacBook.
I’ve tried everything, from Sketchbox to Curio to Mindjet, but I don’t want to have to move my Stickies around within some non-transparent, proprietary-database app window. (Again, the ability to reach through an array to the desktop below is really key; Geoffrey Alexander’s new Diamond app offers something like this for individual text files, but it’s not a robust system.) I write in Scrivener, but its corkboard isn’t free-form enough for my creative-thinking needs. Because I like punishment, I occasionally revisit Tinderbox, but ugh! $230 for an interface so ugly and unintuitive that they encourage you to spend another $300 on a get-to-know-Tinderbox weekend – thanks but no thanks.
Still, Tinderbox is on to something, and it makes me realize that what I really want is … a corkboard interface, with the simplicity of Stickies, for DTP. My data objects (PDFs, rtf notes, etc) already live in DTP in a file structure – folders, smart folders, etc. I’m asking for the additional ability to pop every file out of its box to swim as a separate, resizable (and re-colorable, etc) window on my desktop; I can move them all around, yet continue to track them from within the DTP interface. Sorta like PadsX, but way smarter and more elegant. As it stands, I’ve got this crazy workflow that involves typing notes onto a 4x6 index card .rtf template, which I both print out and dump into DTP for storage and (soon) tagging. But once they’re in DTP, the whole index-card motif (and flexibility) is lost. I’d like to get it back.
What do you think? Anyone for DTP 5.0?