Are there any plans to expand the export functionality so that the cached page with highlights can be saved?
Diigo's cache feature is useful in that you store the original data at the time you found it -- perfect for research, as you know the data you found is always there. But if the cache isn't exported, exports are useless for any changed pages. And even on pages that haven't changed, any highlighting you did of any information is gone. For people that tend to highlight very often (perhaps because they read very "busy" pages, like many research articles tend to be, so they need to highlight the useful bits), this is a big drawback.
No changes in a year? I've been waiting for this functionality forever... It would be incredibly useful to be able to export my cached pages.... please!
I am having sporadic results on this. I have pulled up a cached file that had prior annotations.. and it actually showed the annotations. Moreover, it let me add new annotations to the Cached file and it remembered them. But then I tried this on another page, and it wouldn't show the annotations on the page, nor would it allow me to add a new one. It told me that I was not allowed to highlight this page.
Oddly enough, the server knew there were annotations associated with this second page, because they showed up in the "This URL" tab of my Diigo Sidebar, but it wouldn't place the annotations in context on the actual page.
I think the caching process they use strips out some of the elements of the web page to conserve space on the Diigo server. So on pages that it strips out a lot, it can't sync up the old annotations with the newly presented web page.
Perhaps, Diigo could give the user the option to Cache the file locally, thereby caching the entire contents and lessening the burden on their server or offer this as a service.
3. If your annotations don't comprise what you want, then what (in Diigo, or added to Diigo) might encourage you to annotate things in a way that's more useful to you?
4. Are you aware of the recent discussions re: on-line and off-line?
@ Graham Perrin: > 1. Do you wish for your export from Diigo to include your Diigo annotations?
Not necessarily - I have to admit I am not using annotations so much... I usually save pages more often than I retrieve them, so I prefer faster storage and slower lookup :o)
> 2. How often do you extract annotations?
It's the pages I'm after, not the annotations.
> 3. If your annotations don't comprise what you want, then what (in Diigo, or added to Diigo) might encourage you to annotate things in a way that's more useful to you?
No specific thoughts...
> 4. Are you aware of the recent discussions re: on-line and off-line?
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, it seems that I was only unable to guess the right keywords when searching for an appropriate topic to look at :o)
> 1. use Diigolet in the normal way > 2. File menu > 3. Save As…
That solution does not really add so much value... I could do points 2 and 3 without Diigo as well, and I would have the same huge heap of files saved on my hard disk that would not be tagged and therefore easily categorized and searchable. Besides, what people want is probably simplicity, not clicking the special button, then going to the menu, saving the file, finding the location and inventing an appropriate filename :o(
> huge heap of files saved on my hard disk … would not be tagged
> easily categorized and searchable.
Thanks :)
Paraphrasing -- please, correct me if I'm wrong:
* you would like your export, your local cache of Diigo bookmarked pages, to be a 'collection' of some sort
* you'd like the collection to _not_ be formed of separate files
* you'd like the collection to include the tags that you applied whilst using Diigo
* within this collection, you'd find no need for your few annotations.
Extending those points, focusing on annotations within a notional export:
* Jim, if the collection (the export) included, in addition to your tags (in which you're more interested) your few annotations (in which you're less interested) would the inclusion of your annotations be acceptable to you?
>> We plan to make read it later feature more easy to use and >> better than before. Any feature request and suggestion are >> welcome
and within the discussions that followed, off-line features were considered.
Confession: I was heavy-handed (and somewhat off-topic) there so Jim, if what you have in mind can mesh within (or sit tidily alongside) a 'read later' or 'off-line' feature, do please add to that topic.
Dan Howard wrote: > I want to be able to get **my own copy** of **my data**. And with Furl, I would do exactly that from time to time.
Well put.
As the OP from a year and a half ago, I'd like to add one thing:
At the time, I was selecting between online bookmarking/data archival/annotation services. My choice, ironically, came down to Diigo and Furl. Diigo had the better feature set, which I actually noted on the Furl forums. The *only* advantage that Furl had was the ability to export my data.
The decision was easy. I didn't use Diigo again. That functionality was more than enough for me to choose Furl. Writing this post, I signed into Diigo for the first time since that day.
I value the data I put into these services. It is *my* work on *my* data that makes it valuable to *me*. The concept that somehow I would not be able to possess or access my data without being forced to use a specific brand of tool is unacceptable. Even Microsoft, proprietary behemoth that it is, is now using XML for its Office documents. Data availability in an industry-standard format is beyond optional these days.
Diigo still has the better feature set. But if it doesn't get some sort of export functionality, I'm taking my Furl export and moving my stuff to Evernote.
I have also come to Diigo by way of furl.com, and am adding my "well put" to this topic. So far this cache issue is the only significantly negative thing that I have found in my conversion to Diigo, but it is a big negative.
I agree. Following the abrupt demise of Furl, the ability to export my data in its entirety has been a big comfort.
slinkygn wrote: >It is *my* work on *my* data that makes it valuable to *me*. The concept that somehow I would not be able to possess or access my data without being forced to use a specific brand of tool is unacceptable.
http://www.diigo.com/05fmc for highlights from Release Notes for Evernote; a little of what's 'new' there (March 2009) has been in another product for more than five years.
There's much to like about Evernote, but when I last tried it (version 1.2.1 for Mac OS X) Evernote fell short in some key areas. http://www.diigo.com/05fmh for a highlighted view of http://n2.nabble.com/The-troublesome-%27Remove%27-word%3A-alternatives--tp2153098p2161388.html where I observed (without actually naming Evernote at the time) that its winning qualities were not enough to make me switch from Diigo. Not really fair for me to criticise Evernote, as I don't recall feeding back to them at the time.
Well, I'm glad that others clearly agreed that having individual access to a copy of the data outside of the system, for whatever reason, is a good thing. (Wish I never brought up Evernote! Obviously a touchy subject here. Yes, some think it falls short in some features. Obviously from this thread, some think Diigo does too. The discussion of EN's shortfalls I'm happy to discuss in their forums -- but they, and for that matter discussion of comparison between the two, have NOTHING to do with the point at hand! We're discussing a perceived shortfall in Diigo that would be true whether EN existed or not.)
That being said, I'm not sure the "related questions" are very germane either, are they? I mean, my apologies if I'm wrong, but whether you want the data export for backup or for actual external use -- how does that change that for either case, export is necessary? Export as XML and anybody can write a processor for it if they want to somehow "use" it externally.
> Defocusing from Diigo: backup is always a great idea.
*That's* the point. Export -- *any* sort of export -- is a fundamental necessity. And when I'm investing so much time in creating this data, to say I can have no assurance of its permanence save "trust that Diigo will remain forever" is enough reason for me not to use it. I'm sure GM employees felt really good about their retirement pensions until a month ago or so... Security by faith alone is silly.
> That being said, I'm not sure the "related questions" are very > germane either, are they?
There are a few Diigo Community discussions of remote (Diigo) and local caching, performance etc..
It's useful to dig a little deeper when people wish for stuff to be in the cloud, and/or available 24/7, and/or available online/offline in other places (not limited to a single cloud).
Answers to the two related questions above, a simple yes or no to either one, might help to shape future approaches to delivery of services.
> *any* sort of export -- is a fundamental necessity.
Some discussions of API at http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/tag/api and FWIW, the reliability of export from Diigo was one of the reasons that I found myself here (around three years ago) after winding down my use of Furl.
Still, I'm not missing a key point: that bookmarked pages are not being cached! Please, don't imagine that I don't care about this; I do care very much ... about the consequences: http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/topic/42959
I think they're better than when I first looked at the service a year and a half ago, but not quite there. The one major thing they lack is the ability to export the cached page along with the sticky notes, etc. Those things don't mean much outside of the context in which they were created. And a good bit of the usefulness of services like this, I think, is the ability to retrieve information you've previously seen even if it's no longer on the Web. It's why I used offline archiving for a while (eg. Firefox's Scrapbook extension), before realizing I'd much prefer that sort of thing in the cloud.
2) starting at a bookmark, then focusing on the earliest cached copy:
- an export of that one cached copy, with annotations (inseparable)
then moving on to the next cached copy of the same bookmark:
- an export of the second cached copy, with the same annotations
and so on, for each cached copy
3) starting at your bookmarks, then making a selection of bookmarks, a single export of that selection, to include
- all cached copies of selected pages
- for each page: the single set of annotations
or
- the annotations combined with (inseparable from) each cached copy?
More generally:
* what would you do with your export from Diigo?
(I can visualise what you want to view within the Diigo service context, but I can not visualise how you want it delivered as an export. Nor can I guess the starting point from which you want to export.)
Well, it would seem to me that for *all* cases, you'd only want one cached page per bookmark - the cached page from the date and time that you created the bookmark itself.
With that modification, I'll say I was picturing #1. #3 sounds pretty darn cool, but much more complicated. If I had #1, I'd be fine.
Graham Perrin wrote: > Which of the following do you imagine?
Graham Perrin wrote: > In less technical terms, and in fewer words, Joel has outlined what Diigo are working on: > http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/topic/how-does-caching-work-41728#3 > > - Joel's points 1, 2 and 3 relate to copies that will cached and served by Diigo > - think: remote, the cloud. > > Back to this topic, focused on export: > > - export of cached copies, from Diigo service > - export of Diigo annotations, from Diigo service > - think: local, your computer.
Right -- the former is already, on the whole, available. It's the latter that I'd like added.
I read through that thread before, but it seems like it hasn't been updated recently -- are there any others that detail any developments in the past couple of months?
Off-topic from export features: don't trust my guesses of what's forthcoming, current or old ;)
(For five months, I imagined that Watchlist was quietly deprecated. Last week I discovered that I had broken my own list, through my own botched attempt to add a dual-tag watch, with a multiple word tag as one of the two. In fairness I should revisit the other topics in which I mumbled "…watchlist … broken…" but hey I'm gonna be a ilttle lazy and assume that people will (a) not botch things with similar experiments, and (b) manage to find answers in the forum. Eventually!)
That said, my guess is that more advanced export features may not come as soon as Joel's 1-2-3. I'd treat his point 3 reference to Amazon (S3, presumably) as an indication that Diigo remains primarily a service in the cloud, with S3 as Diigo's backup for user file storage purposes.
I shouldn't treat a service provider's use of S3 as equivalent to a personal use of a backup service.
Now, you have me thinking about treatment of files before and after upload to Diigo! Could be interesting. There's some stuff going on in areas disconnected from Diigo, that might ultimately be good for readers of this topic. My thoughts in these ares are a bit fuzzy at the moment so please be (very) patient until my head is clearer …
… and if Diigo devlopers surprise us with something crystal clear in the meantime, even better!
started by slinkygn on 09 Dec 07
Diigo's cache feature is useful in that you store the original data at the time you found it -- perfect for research, as you know the data you found is always there. But if the cache isn't exported, exports are useless for any changed pages. And even on pages that haven't changed, any highlighting you did of any information is gone. For people that tend to highlight very often (perhaps because they read very "busy" pages, like many research articles tend to be, so they need to highlight the useful bits), this is a big drawback.
Oddly enough, the server knew there were annotations associated with this second page, because they showed up in the "This URL" tab of my Diigo Sidebar, but it wouldn't place the annotations in context on the actual page.
I think the caching process they use strips out some of the elements of the web page to conserve space on the Diigo server. So on pages that it strips out a lot, it can't sync up the old annotations with the newly presented web page.
Perhaps, Diigo could give the user the option to Cache the file locally, thereby caching the entire contents and lessening the burden on their server or offer this as a service.
@ Jim
1. Do you wish for your export from Diigo to include your Diigo annotations?
2. How often do you extract annotations?
3. If your annotations don't comprise what you want, then what (in Diigo, or added to Diigo) might encourage you to annotate things in a way that's more useful to you?
4. Are you aware of the recent discussions re: on-line and off-line?
http://groups.diigo.com/search_topics?group_name=Diigo_HQ&what=online+offline
> No changes in a year?
There is, at least, plenty of discussion re: off-line :)
Within off-line work: caching, or something more useful, is implicit.
----
If you use Safari:
1. use Diigolet in the normal way
2. File menu
3. Save As…
If I'm not mistaken: the file saved by Safari includes not only the page's content, but also your Diigo annotations. Neat.
http://www.diigo.com/annotated/d6cef8bc74b4e469625980ad105169b3 for more context.
Regards
Graham
Postscript: corrected the broken reference to Diigo Help.
> 1. Do you wish for your export from Diigo to include your Diigo annotations?
Not necessarily - I have to admit I am not using annotations so much... I usually save pages more often than I retrieve them, so I prefer faster storage and slower lookup :o)
> 2. How often do you extract annotations?
It's the pages I'm after, not the annotations.
> 3. If your annotations don't comprise what you want, then what (in Diigo, or added to Diigo) might encourage you to annotate things in a way that's more useful to you?
No specific thoughts...
> 4. Are you aware of the recent discussions re: on-line and off-line?
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, it seems that I was only unable to guess the right keywords when searching for an appropriate topic to look at :o)
> 1. use Diigolet in the normal way
> 2. File menu
> 3. Save As…
That solution does not really add so much value... I could do points 2 and 3 without Diigo as well, and I would have the same huge heap of files saved on my hard disk that would not be tagged and therefore easily categorized and searchable. Besides, what people want is probably simplicity, not clicking the special button, then going to the menu, saving the file, finding the location and inventing an appropriate filename :o(
But in any case, thanks for your suggestions!
> I am not using annotations so much
> It's the pages I'm after, not the annotations.
> huge heap of files saved on my hard disk … would not be tagged
> easily categorized and searchable.
Thanks :)
Paraphrasing -- please, correct me if I'm wrong:
* you would like your export, your local cache of Diigo bookmarked pages, to be a 'collection' of some sort
* you'd like the collection to _not_ be formed of separate files
* you'd like the collection to include the tags that you applied whilst using Diigo
* within this collection, you'd find no need for your few annotations.
Extending those points, focusing on annotations within a notional export:
* Jim, if the collection (the export) included, in addition to your tags (in which you're more interested) your few annotations (in which you're less interested) would the inclusion of your annotations be acceptable to you?
----
I continue to *assume* that for each bookmark, Diigo will store (server-side) no more than one cached copy. http://www.diigo.com/annotated/d6cef8bc74b4e469625980ad105169b3 envisaged a situation that might have required multiple caches.
----
At http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/topic/what-happened-to-the-read-later-button-5766#15 we have an inviation from Diigo:
>> We plan to make read it later feature more easy to use and
>> better than before. Any feature request and suggestion are
>> welcome
and within the discussions that followed, off-line features were considered.
Confession: I was heavy-handed (and somewhat off-topic) there so Jim, if what you have in mind can mesh within (or sit tidily alongside) a 'read later' or 'off-line' feature, do please add to that topic.
Regards
Graham
> I want to be able to get **my own copy** of **my data**. And with Furl, I would do exactly that from time to time.
Well put.
As the OP from a year and a half ago, I'd like to add one thing:
At the time, I was selecting between online bookmarking/data archival/annotation services. My choice, ironically, came down to Diigo and Furl. Diigo had the better feature set, which I actually noted on the Furl forums. The *only* advantage that Furl had was the ability to export my data.
The decision was easy. I didn't use Diigo again. That functionality was more than enough for me to choose Furl. Writing this post, I signed into Diigo for the first time since that day.
I value the data I put into these services. It is *my* work on *my* data that makes it valuable to *me*. The concept that somehow I would not be able to possess or access my data without being forced to use a specific brand of tool is unacceptable. Even Microsoft, proprietary behemoth that it is, is now using XML for its Office documents. Data availability in an industry-standard format is beyond optional these days.
Diigo still has the better feature set. But if it doesn't get some sort of export functionality, I'm taking my Furl export and moving my stuff to Evernote.
slinkygn wrote:
>It is *my* work on *my* data that makes it valuable to *me*. The concept that somehow I would not be able to possess or access my data without being forced to use a specific brand of tool is unacceptable.
> moving my stuff to Evernote.
http://www.diigo.com/05fmc for highlights from Release Notes for Evernote; a little of what's 'new' there (March 2009) has been in another product for more than five years.
There's much to like about Evernote, but when I last tried it (version 1.2.1 for Mac OS X) Evernote fell short in some key areas. http://www.diigo.com/05fmh for a highlighted view of http://n2.nabble.com/The-troublesome-%27Remove%27-word%3A-alternatives--tp2153098p2161388.html where I observed (without actually naming Evernote at the time) that its winning qualities were not enough to make me switch from Diigo. Not really fair for me to criticise Evernote, as I don't recall feeding back to them at the time.
That being said, I'm not sure the "related questions" are very germane either, are they? I mean, my apologies if I'm wrong, but whether you want the data export for backup or for actual external use -- how does that change that for either case, export is necessary? Export as XML and anybody can write a processor for it if they want to somehow "use" it externally.
> Defocusing from Diigo: backup is always a great idea.
*That's* the point. Export -- *any* sort of export -- is a fundamental necessity. And when I'm investing so much time in creating this data, to say I can have no assurance of its permanence save "trust that Diigo will remain forever" is enough reason for me not to use it. I'm sure GM employees felt really good about their retirement pensions until a month ago or so... Security by faith alone is silly.
> Wish I never brought up Evernote! Obviously a touchy subject here.
Not at all :) it's an interesting software/service combination and comments at http://groups.diigo.com/Web2/bookmark/tag/Evernote are incomplete. Watch that space, join us there if you like …
> That being said, I'm not sure the "related questions" are very
> germane either, are they?
There are a few Diigo Community discussions of remote (Diigo) and local caching, performance etc..
It's useful to dig a little deeper when people wish for stuff to be in the cloud, and/or available 24/7, and/or available online/offline in other places (not limited to a single cloud).
Answers to the two related questions above, a simple yes or no to either one, might help to shape future approaches to delivery of services.
> *any* sort of export -- is a fundamental necessity.
Some discussions of API at http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/tag/api and FWIW, the reliability of export from Diigo was one of the reasons that I found myself here (around three years ago) after winding down my use of Furl.
How do you find the five export options and API at http://www.diigo.com/tools/export ?
Still, I'm not missing a key point: that bookmarked pages are not being cached! Please, don't imagine that I don't care about this; I do care very much ... about the consequences: http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/topic/42959
Sorry I missed your reply for so long! Must've overlooked my email notification.
> How do you find the five export options and API at http://www.diigo.com/tools/export ?
>
I think they're better than when I first looked at the service a year and a half ago, but not quite there. The one major thing they lack is the ability to export the cached page along with the sticky notes, etc. Those things don't mean much outside of the context in which they were created. And a good bit of the usefulness of services like this, I think, is the ability to retrieve information you've previously seen even if it's no longer on the Web. It's why I used offline archiving for a while (eg. Firefox's Scrapbook extension), before realizing I'd much prefer that sort of thing in the cloud.
1) starting at http://www.diigo.com/tools/export a single export, to include
- all cached copies of all pages
- for each page: the single set of annontations
2) starting at a bookmark, then focusing on the earliest cached copy:
- an export of that one cached copy, with annotations (inseparable)
then moving on to the next cached copy of the same bookmark:
- an export of the second cached copy, with the same annotations
and so on, for each cached copy
3) starting at your bookmarks, then making a selection of bookmarks, a single export of that selection, to include
- all cached copies of selected pages
- for each page: the single set of annotations
or
- the annotations combined with (inseparable from) each cached copy?
More generally:
* what would you do with your export from Diigo?
(I can visualise what you want to view within the Diigo service context, but I can not visualise how you want it delivered as an export. Nor can I guess the starting point from which you want to export.)
With that modification, I'll say I was picturing #1. #3 sounds pretty darn cool, but much more complicated. If I had #1, I'd be fine.
Graham Perrin wrote:
> Which of the following do you imagine?
> In less technical terms, and in fewer words, Joel has outlined what Diigo are working on:
> http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/topic/how-does-caching-work-41728#3
>
> - Joel's points 1, 2 and 3 relate to copies that will cached and served by Diigo
> - think: remote, the cloud.
>
> Back to this topic, focused on export:
>
> - export of cached copies, from Diigo service
> - export of Diigo annotations, from Diigo service
> - think: local, your computer.
Right -- the former is already, on the whole, available. It's the latter that I'd like added.
I read through that thread before, but it seems like it hasn't been updated recently -- are there any others that detail any developments in the past couple of months?
In no particular order, and not in detail:
http://www.diigo.com/06eho
http://www.diigo.com/06ehq
http://groups.diigo.com/Diigo_HQ/forum/topic/group-rss-feed-displaying-nodes-out-of-order-missing-46718#8
Off-topic from export features: don't trust my guesses of what's forthcoming, current or old ;)
(For five months, I imagined that Watchlist was quietly deprecated. Last week I discovered that I had broken my own list, through my own botched attempt to add a dual-tag watch, with a multiple word tag as one of the two. In fairness I should revisit the other topics in which I mumbled "…watchlist … broken…" but hey I'm gonna be a ilttle lazy and assume that people will (a) not botch things with similar experiments, and (b) manage to find answers in the forum. Eventually!)
That said, my guess is that more advanced export features may not come as soon as Joel's 1-2-3. I'd treat his point 3 reference to Amazon (S3, presumably) as an indication that Diigo remains primarily a service in the cloud, with S3 as Diigo's backup for user file storage purposes.
I shouldn't treat a service provider's use of S3 as equivalent to a personal use of a backup service.
Now, you have me thinking about treatment of files before and after upload to Diigo! Could be interesting. There's some stuff going on in areas disconnected from Diigo, that might ultimately be good for readers of this topic. My thoughts in these ares are a bit fuzzy at the moment so please be (very) patient until my head is clearer …
… and if Diigo devlopers surprise us with something crystal clear in the meantime, even better!
Regards
Graham
http://feedback.diigo.com/forums/76211-ideas/suggestions/1170543-offer-an-export-feature-that-includes-images-and-c