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MaxThink Special Offer
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I was not expecting such a high volume of replies concerning
MaxThink! Though, it sure seems like the product was designed
with RPG'ers in mind.
I haven't seen Neil Larson, the author of MaxThink, since he
stayed at my home as my guest back in 1990, when he flew up to
speak to my computer club at the time (I was the newsletter
editor for the Pacific Northwest IBM PC Users Group). We
hobnobbed about hypertext and MaxThink for 3 days straight, while
a friend of mine and I showed him around the Puget Sound. This
was quite a treat, since I consider Neil Larson one of the
foremost experts on the subject. His products are unequalled in
the industry.
I was no less than thrilled to have him sit by at my computer
station, while I gave him a tour of his own program, pointing out
bugs and making suggestions for its improvement. I was a bit
nervous at first, but once you get me talking about hypertext,
it's hard to get me to stop. I was in good company, and we
swapped many hyper-tips.
He also spoke to my Hypertext Special Interest Group, and
explained some of the finer points of hypernet construction, idea
generation, and knowledge organization.
Since then, I've spoken to him a couple times on the phone, but
for the most part have kept up to date through his customer
newsletter. I no longer run the SIG, but compute almost
exclusively with hypertext programs (which I use to generate and
organize my ideas and notes on every subject), and have converted
a few friends over to hypertext in the past couple years.
Your queries got me to thinking. I figured it was about time I
gave Neil a call, to catch up on old times. TML's own James
Perkins made the comment in regards to my initial MaxThink
posting that I should become a salesman for the TML (and if he
hadn't been joking I would have taken him up on it!), and that
got me wondering whether or not I should actually sell MaxThink
rather than just spout off about it. Heck, I've relied on the
program continuously for years and know it cold. So, I called
Neil Larson, figuring I might be able to work out some kind of
discount for my friends on the TML.
Yep, Neil still talks a mile a minute and it is quite hard to
keep up with him unless you run! However, when it comes to
Traveller or hypertext, I manage quite well, since I eat and
breath these two subjects. The end results of the conversation
were as follows:
1) I am now a distributor of MaxThink, and have been
authorized to pass on a 10% discount to you. MaxThink
is a DOS application and works on IBM compatibles (sorry,
there is no Mac version), and its price is $89.00 plus
shipping. After the 10% discount, that comes to $80 plus
shipping. (Don't let the low price fool you, the program
does run circles around conventional wordprocessors, as
it has many commands simply not available in any other
program. It does not have the sophisticated WYSIWYG
formatting of Word or WordPerfect, instead, it is
designed for the manipulating of text rather than the
fancy displaying of it).
2) I may be working on the help system for the next
version of MaxThink, but discussions on this topic were
rather vague. Neil is planning something far more
sophisticated than I had in mind, so I'm not sure if
there will be textual help in it at all! What he
mentioned almost blew my mind. More on this at a later
date.
I guess the next step is for me to write up a more specific
account of how MaxThink can be used to organize Traveller
material and how it can help in the design of Traveller
adventures, background, rules, and components (NPC's, equipment,
technology briefs, etc.). Expect something in the next few days.
For those of you who already know you want the product, send a
check or money order for $80 plus $6 shipping to:
Roger Sanger
[address removed]
For future reference, my physical address is 1021 NE
[address removed]
My voice phone is: [phone removed]
Be sure to include your mailing address and voice phone just in
case.
And yes, I'd be glad to help anyone who purchases the product
from me to get started. I'm in the process of working on a
Traveller-related MaxThink outline for that very purpose, and
shall have it ready to include with orders by the time I ship.
It shall be based on my own Traveller hypernet's organization,
and will include subject categories in an outline's tree
structure to help you organize your Traveller writings.
A companion product to MaxThink is Transtext, a hypertext
wordprocessor which can be called from within MaxThink, or
seperately from the DOS command line. From within any text file
that includes jump referencing filenames in angle brackets
<likethis>, Transtext will view those files with but the press of
a single key, and can view files referenced within those files,
and within those files, etc., while keeping track of the path
taken from file to file so that you can backtrack. When you find
a text file in your hypernet that you want to edit, another key
allows you to pull that file into Transtext, which has six
editing windows. Transtext comes with a runtime hypertext viewer
that you can package with your hypernet creations, while MaxThink
has a utility that can convert MaxThink outlines into
hyperlinkied file-nets. MaxThink has the same file viewer built
into it so that it can view any file that you write using
Transtext. (Both file formats are strictly ASCII, and can be
edited with other programs if you desire).
I prefer to use MaxThink outlines as the core to my hypernet,
with text files linked to it via angle brackets included in the
topic (paragraph) nodes. Thus I've attached to my personal
Traveller campaign outlines every single text file I've
downloaded from sunbane, many of which I've converted to MaxThink
outline format (a matter of spacing and placement of carriage
returns and line feeds within the file).
Transtext is available for the same price as MaxThink, and the
10% discount applies to anything from MaxThink, Inc. that you
purchase from me.
Feel free to email me your questions.
It's time for me to burn some midnight oil!
Sincerely,
A hypertext freak,
Roger Sanger.