I agree with most of the findings from Peter Blaise. Overall I like the program but don’t see it fitting my needs just yet. Sheet Preview isn’t helpful since it only shows straight text, not bold or undeline or heading sizes or even a placeholder for pictures.
Things I like:
Clean appearance, ability to quickly hide or show the list of groups and sheets. Use of “standard” keystrokes like Ctrl-B for Bold. The Navigate menu to let you quickly jump to different headings within a sheet. Drop down menu of all markups (but why does that same list appear again under the View menu?). Simple multiple levels of headers. I like being able to see a timestamp on sheets, and to sort by time to quickly get to the sheets I mosts recently worked on. I tried exporting to Chrome as HTML and Libre Office Writer as DOCX, very nice to be able to open the other program and export the sheet into it in one step. Search is VERY NICE in the way it immediately hides all the sheets that don’t match. I can see Inspire as a helpful way to start projects — get ideas captured and organized — that would later be exported into another program for final cleanup, as well as a way to organize free-form information to be kept for a longer time.
What I would like to see
I think I’m trying to push your program beyond your intentions, and maybe I should just use Evernote or something similar, but this is stuff I would find useful:
1. A way to have subgroups within a group, to at least 5 or 6 levels deep but why not unlimited levels. Unless I’m doing something very simple, it won’t work to have all my ideas for a project in one long list. I would like to be able to group them by areas and areas within areas and areas within those areas. I think the Groups panel would be a good place to manage that. A Groups Tree instead of a single list. Need a way to hide and unhide subgroups so I can keep focused, like an outline that can be expanded or collapsed at any level. But I need to be able select the levels that are visible, because it’s helpful to have some context when I’m writing. So maybe show a “+” on any group that has subgroups, and change it to a “-” once it’s expanded (subgroups shown). Clicking the “-” would hide the subgroups and “-” would change to “+”. Need to be able to copy and move subgroups anywhere within the Groups tree. All this is because I like to manage the structure of a document in big chunks. Start out by getting simple statements organized (groups, subgroups), then add details (sheets) as needed. Reorganize by moving groups around. Right now, if I sort
2. Like Peter, I would like a way to rotate, crop and resize images. Very nice to have them at all, it’s a good addition. Being able to add circles and lines and arrows and text notes on images would help, but not critical. An option to keep original image and export it would be nice, again not critical, IF there would be a way to see the images path and filename or URL so I can find it again. Even a quick way to paste it as text under the image would be helpful.
3. I didn’t test this but would like to see a new backup created each time the program is closed, in case I only work for 45 minutes and have backups set to hourly. I know I can go into Preferences and Backups and click Backup Now, but I want to focus on writing, remember? Best would be to have a Create Backup button on the screen. That way my writing is in more of a sandbox mode. I can save what I have and try some different things, and if I’m not happy I know I can reset back to my last save. A workaround is to make a duplicate of a sheet and edit that – not a bad approach at all.
4. A theme setting would be nice. Sometimes I like light, sometimes dark, sometimes green or blue. Would like to be able to define up to 5 or 6 themes and pick them quickly from a dropdown list, or at least cycle through them with a keypress (would need keys to add, delete, change, use previous/next). Or just give us a few preset choices.
5. I used a similar program a while back, that would let me play music when the program was loaded. Would be great to create playlists and pick one that is used until I change it. Really helps me to get back into the mood of that particular project, and I don’t need to start Inspire, start a music player, pick a playlist, go back to Inspire. It’s just there, part of the environment for that document. A playlist could be assigned to any Group, and if the group you select doesn’t have one then the playlist for it’s parent group could be used, all the way up to the Library level if needed.
6. The Inbox is an odd way to handle things. It appears to be a place where duplicates are created. I don’t see the point. If a duplicate is created immediately below the sheet being copied, you can always move it somewhere else. I see a duplicate as a good way to make a temporary copy, to try a new way to express an idea. I can keep original and duplicate and decide later which one to use, or delete one of them right away. Also helpful to add comments in a duplicate about related ideas to add to another point in the document. Easier to delete that duplicate later than to make sure I got all the comments out before exporting.
7. Export: right now it’s limited to one sheet at a time. While export by sheet is good, I also need a way to export an entire group (would include all its subgroups, see point 1 above). Otherwise, a document made of 30 sheets would require 30 export operations to export.
8. A way to create a list of tags or keywords than can be quickly added to any sheet. I could use a sheet to record tags, then copy/paste to another sheet, but navigating back and forth is too distracting and time-consuming. I find if don’t work from a list of tags, that I use different tags or spellings or abbreviations so there’s no consistent way to find them all again. The list of tags should be a hierarchical list also so I can group tags as needed to make it easier to find things. Imagine writing Lord of the Rings with tags for locations, characters, events, etc., with additional tags like “finish this later”.
9. A way to search across all Groups, or within a group but across all its subgroups (see item 1).
Overall, I’d say Inspire is pretty good for the right purpose. I’m looking for a bit more!