ndxCards – the Shoe Box of index cards

Many who come to using ndxCards after using other PC software, look for the equivalent of File/Save because they want to name and save files of note cards. The software does not provide for that.  On the contrary, the software operates on the principle of a giant ‘shoe box’ for index cards. Now, the idea of  index cards and shoe box do go together ( here are some examples – Nabokov writing ,  saving coupons , organizing research), and it is only natural that an electronic index card software stores the cards in an electronic shoe box.

The idea of asking the user to name and save files of notes was not even considered.  That action asks the user in effect to organize notes on the fly – come up with a name that makes sense at the moment and at a later time when you want to recall the note; it also means that a note organized in one file cannot conveniently be recalled as part of a set of notes from another file.  To make things more complicated, when you are taking notes as ideas and information come up, you end up having to recall the correct file to open and save the different notes. All of this is not needed. Computers now can handle large files easily, and notes are mostly just text. Early release of ndxCards had project files stored separately, but now they are also part of the one data file. This has the added advantage of making backup easy.

In fact, even with the archiving capability that release 2.0 will have, we are still debating one data file or two. ( It should be noted that picture cards are designed to link to your picture files and not store them in the notes data file).

So, those of you who want to have multiple data files, speak up now and make your case.