Treepad export

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:03 am

I have reaised this earlier in ePIM's life, apologies for the repetition:

In the world of "traditional" outliners, Treepad has a pretty large market share. I have also been using its free version for years, and have accumulated a pretty big tree of information over time.

The only thing that keeps me from using ePIM exclusively is the thought of having to manually copy/paste hundreds of notes from Treepad into ePIM. Since ePIM offers everything Treepad does, and a lot more, ePIM could easily gain quite a few more customers by providing an easy conversion path.

Treepad's file format is publicly accessible, so it shouldn't be too difficult to implement an import function.

testerh · Post by **testerh** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:05 am

The site timed out on me, causing my suggestion to appear as written by a Guest.

Max · Post by **Max** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:09 am

But we made multiple RTF import feature, specifically for TreePad users! You can export all the notes in Treepad into RTFs, right? Then you can all import them at once into EPIM. You will only have to re-compose a tree of that, which should not take more then 15 minutes for hundred notes.
I would appreciate your feedback on this transition!

Max · Post by **Max** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 11:12 am

If I understand it right, from this document:
http://www.treepad.com/docs/manual/docu ... EFBF6.html

there is no public format available for "TreePad 7.x .tpd database type"

testerh · Post by **testerh** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:06 pm

Hi Max,

1. Format:
You are right. Since I am using the free version, I lost sight of later development. The database format is not public. What is public is the file format for v3.x - 6.x: http://www.treepad.com/docs/fileformat.txt

2. RTF export:
Does not exist in the freeware version. It only has Text, Treepad, or HTML, so no easy way out.

Maybe I should download a trial version of Treepad, import everything, and export from there. I'll check it out.

Max · Post by **Max** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:34 pm

You can also import multiple TXTs at the time into EPIM. Formatting will be lost, though...

testerh · Post by **testerh** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 4:31 pm

I just tested Treepad import, and the results are not too good (unless I have overlooked something):

1. Loaded Treepad database into TreePad X Enterprise 7.4.1 (plain ASCII strings, no formatting)

2. Exported
- to text
- to multiple RTFs (not an option, there are too many nodes in my tree to sew them together manually)
- to one RTF (about 2.5 MB) - this yields the following recursive folder structure:

- text in node goes into index.rtf in folder NameOfNode
- contents of subnodes that do not have children go into files called NameOfSubnode[j].rtf under NameOfNode
- subnodes that do have children go into subfolders called NameOfSubnode[j] under NameOfNode.

Findings:

1. ePIM takes surprisingly little time (2-3 s) to import (text or RTF), but clicking on the imported tree takes quite some time (about 15s) to display, and does this every time I click out of it and back in it again.

2. The exported RTF had Times New Roman for node names and Arial for text in them. ePIM imported all Times as Wingdings (I had to format everything to Arial before importing to make it readable).

3. Most importantly, the import is useless - it is one large bag of unstructured text (a flat file imported into a single node). The only structure in it is that node names are larger and bold, but the entire hierarchy is lost.

4. Text import is even more useless, since it doesn't even have the node name formatting that RTF has.

All in all:
The current import functionality is OK for importing single nodes.
However, it is not suitable for importing a Treepad tree hierarchy (the whole point in using an outliner).

I still hope that ePIM will have proper Treepad import...

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 6:23 pm

Hi all,

I agree with testerh, a more efficient import function is required. I recently copy/pased(ed) 20+ mb of data from TreeDbnotes, so I'm OK. But it was not an easy process. I still have 2-3 years of data entries to copy/paste from another diary I used.

I'm happy for what EPIM does for me as a diary and a notes storage are.

But, I feel that perhaps some more focus is required about what market EPIm wants to share in.

I appreciate all the functionality and sharing that EPIM has invested into tapping into the Outlook and the various Palm devices market out there, but I feel that a more useful direction is to make EPIM a damn good PIM in its own right. I sincerely believe that that's where the future lies.

The Palm market is too violitile and uncertain. It might be a case of throwing good money after bad.

So much for my view.

Anyone have anything to add?

Regards, Toni

Max · Post by **Max** » Fri Oct 28, 2005 7:37 pm

guys, there are 100s of applications users would want to import from- shall we just drop the development of new features and start implementing better import functions?
After all, there is no use in importing into EPIM, unless there are features that you need.

cstern · Post by **cstern** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 12:20 am

Max,

With each version of the EPIM Pro there should be a certain number of new features and a handful of functions which have been updated.

There is no need for critisizing someone for wanting a certain feature. You have the ability to respond to posts which are of interest to you and think the features would beneficial.

We all value your opionions Max but give respect to your users as they are the ones pushing your products to others who might become big advocates for your software.

Enough said...hope you understand where I am coming from.

cstern

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 5:59 am

Max: guys, there are 100s of applications users would want to import from- shall we just drop the development of new features and start implementing better import functions?

I haven't said you should. It is your sole decision what to implement from he many suggestions that you receive. Obviously quite a few of them are about specific tasks people want to solve with ePIM in their own environments.
But yes, I think you should provide an easy migration path for the user segments you target. Just think of how Outlook users would scream if their import support would be as meagre as Treepad's currently is.

Max: After all, there is no use in importing into EPIM, unless there are features that you need.

Exactly, but at this point is it worth considering where your potential users come from. I think they can be divided into two broad categories:

A) People who have never used a structured text storage application before
B) Those who are using one

Group A) is a non-issue, since they have nothing to import
The question is, what applications Group B people are using, and whether they are numerous enough to make helping their transition worth your time.
I have not conducted a market analysis, but Treepad was the first widespread outliner in the Windows world, has been developed intensively, and also has a free version.
By the way, googling for "Treepad" and "essentialPIM" yileded this result:
Treepad: 184,000
essentialPIM: 217,000 (congratulations!)

If Google hits reflect users base (I am not sure they do), then we are talking of a sizable number of potential customers.

Why would a Treepad user want to migrate to ePIM?
Own experience: because Treepad is just an outliner (however excellent), while ePIM provides all of Treepad's functionality plus an already very complete PIM (and attachments are one of its big aces, as Toni pointed out).

Do you want these people to switch to become ePIM customers? Up to you to decide.

testerh · Post by **testerh** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:00 am

Please read "testerh" instead of "Guest"...

And I just saw that the subject title is wrong: it should be Treepad import, not export.

nomad · Post by **nomad** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 12:33 pm

I would like to second what was said about import/export facilities. For me it's one of the crucial features when deciding which application to use. See the earlier (ongoing?) discussion on ical-support. Most users have used other apllications with lots of data. Export/Import is important for synchronising with other applications or PCs or websites. So there is no either - or: Development of new features must be parallel with development of import/export possibilities.

Max · Post by **Max** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 12:36 pm

iCal import/export is already implemented in 1.7 Beta 1.
As what goes to Treepad import- we will what we can do, but since there is no open format, I am afraid there is not much we can do. If only to tweak RTF import.

testerh · Post by **testerh** » Sat Oct 29, 2005 1:35 pm

What is not public is their database format. Their RTF export format is very straightforward (described in a previous post in this thread).
Tweaking the ePIM's RTF import wouldn't bring much; the problem is the loss of structure, but that could be solved based on Treepad's RTF export format.

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Treepad export

Treepad export