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Ecco Pro

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ECCO Pro
Developer(s)NetManage, Arabesque Software
Stable release
4.01
Operating systemWindows
TypeOutliner / Personal Information Management

Ecco Pro is an outliner, calendar, database, archive, and phone book, with fields (including dates) linkable to each parent or child item. Items can be instantly filtered (in multiple simultaneous views) by field but still displayed in their outline context.

As a personal information manager the program includes a phone book, calendar and 'notepad' sections filtered by field associations. Add-on software (MagicView) extends the program to include a RTF/HTML/PDF/DJVU/graphics pane, which acts as a second outliner pane or as an optional field assignment of any item. All items or subitems can appear in any section, depending upon the item's field assignments.

The software was originally produced by Arabesque Software, Inc., then purchased by NetManage, Inc., and subsequently abandoned.[1]

Overview

The product offers three primary types of views — phone book views, calendar views, and notepad views. Central to the program's design is an outlining structure and the ability to easily manipulate information regardless of which view it was entered. Multiple notepad, calendar, and phonebook views can be opened, and each item seen in each view can be a collapsible outline, with each line assignable to folders/categories which can themselves be their own views, text field, pulldown menu, calendar date (including repeating date), or phonebook entry.

Product functionality

File:Ecco0016.JPG
View of some columns, etc.

The active views are also the report views. Information is entered in "items," (text blocks up to 32 kilobytes, or a Windows OLE object (such as a .bmp file, Microsoft Word document, Microsoft Excel document, etc.) that can be arranged hierarchically, as an outline.

Each item can be linked to one or more "folders" (by manual assignment, basic text matching, or with a free 'addon extension' by complex regular expression, relational lookup, computational, and Lua, Perl, JavaScript, VBScript, or Python programmatic assignments) which function as a fields in a database.

Thus, a user could write a note that read "Meeting with John Smith about Generic Project" and by placing it in folders named "Calendar," (assigned to a certain date), "John Smith," and "Generic project," the user could relate nearly any item to any other. This, combined with the built-in networking ability allowing free or controlled sharing of files and parts of files (online and offline), are seen as the core of ECCO's power. Each item, and each of that item's sub-items can be assigned to thousands of different folders of various types (text, numeric, date, pull-down, or checkmark).

File:MagicView Inside ECCO.png
With MagicView pane.

Assignments to a date folder can include complex repeating date rules, alarms (including file/program execution), show until marked done options, advance notice options, advance warning, and follow-up rules and alarms. The items displayed in the Views can be filtered based on multiple criteria. Very basic auto-assign rules can be applied for each folder in native ECCO Pro, and very powerful rules can be auto-assigned by use of a free add-on extension.

With a small fix, a hot link to any file can be added anywhere to the outline.[2] When the user double clicks on the link, the item appears. Any file can be placed directly inside of the ECCO data file. OLE objects appear, can be edited, and then saved within the ECCO file. With the MagicView add-on, RTF/HTML pages can also be attached as folder values inside of the Ecco data file[3], or seamlessly linked to external data sources.[4]

Very simple example of most basic date view

The use of outlines and columns can be used to create powerful user interfaces. Outlines are compiled by collecting the items in a folder. Users can display these outlines with columns relating to other folders, very much like a spreadsheet. The use of other features such as filtering and "views" allow it to be customized to meet a wide variety of purposes such as Getting Things Done, project management, bibliography handling, contact management, project management, and printable checklists.

ECCO also provides native PDA support (for Palm and Treo devices) and sharing over a network, and 3rd party add-ons provide for pocket PC (windows) and outlook hot syncs[5].

File:Ecco0018.JPG
A Date/Time view.

Revitalization

Although the source code to ECCO is unavailable, development has resumed through the time consuming step of disassembling and modifying the binary executable. Free tutorials and information are available on-line and a new tutorial focused on some of the advanced features (such as project management with dependencies, and programming with the Lua programming language) is actively underway.[citation needed]

Thousands of pages of information about the new add-ons, free, and shareware extensions are available. The revitalization project and availability of new extensions has been the subject of technical books and publications.[6]

History

The Microsoft Windows application was released in June 1993 by Arabesque Software, Inc.[7], originally based in Kirkland, Washington, and later Bellevue, Washington. In March 1997 NetManage intruduce support for Microsoft Exchange 5.0 [8] Development by NetManage ceased in the fall of 1997 after the July 1997 release of version 4.01, however, NetManage permitted continued distribution of the final version as a free download at several user forums.

PC Magazine selected ECCO Professional for their Best of 93 issue[9] and in their May 17, 1994, issue awarded ECCO their Editor’s Choice. PC Laptop Magazine named ECCO Professional the Top Software Application of the Year. These were but a few of the awards that the product received.

Peter (Pete) Polash co-founded Arabesque Software, Inc., with Robert (Bob) Perez in 1990. As an independent developer, Polash wrote Adobe Persuasion, a business presentation software application for the Apple Macintosh. He sold its marketing rights to Aldus Corporation in 1988. Perez, a 1977 Harvard Law School graduate, joined Apple Computer in the 1980s as a software engineer and eventually managed the Macintosh Software Evangelism Group at Apple[10].

On August 19, 1994, NetManage announced that it had agreed to acquire Arabesque Software for up to $6 million cash, with $3 million payable upon closing and the balance subject to the achievement of certain revenue levels and technical milestones. In addition to obtaining ECCO, the Arabesque acquisition provided NetManage an entry into the retail marketplace established by ECCO. NetManage's product line at the time, primarily the Chameleon suite of internetworking applications, were primarily sold by a direct sales team.

Netmanage's release of Ecco Pro version 3 was at the time, major industry news.[11]

Since that time, Ecco Pro Software has become an icon of good ideas not embraced by the mass market.[12] Insiders saw the failure of Ecco as the handiwork of Microsoft's global domination in all things PC in the mid to late 1990[13] and [14]. Others saw the fall as a failure of product support and not of the product itself.[15]

Still, a decade after NetManage acquired Arabesque, Ecco Pro was still the 'insiders outliner of choice'.[16] Even as the 2000s drew to a close, new entrants to the PIM/Outliner market compare themselves to, and offer themselves as the 'next' Ecco Pro.[17]

Around 2006/2007 some free-lance programmers started updating Ecco's feature set, and technology editors declared Ecco Pro 'back from the dead'.[18] Currently, Ecco Pro while far from its historical significance and #1 ranking in 1996, is still ranked within the two thousand best applications by technical sites such as CodeWeavers.[19]

In 2005 a 'manual-install' version was made available on several user groups for installation in Windows 7 and 64bit operating systems.[citation needed]

Version History

Versions of ECCO include[20]:

  • ECCO Professional 1.0, June 1993
  • ECCO Professional 1.1, Fall 1993
  • ECCO Simplicity 1.1, Fall 1993
  • ECCO Professional 2.0, April 1994
  • ECCO Simplicity 2.0, April 1994
  • ECCO Lite 2.0
  • ECCO Pro 3.0
  • ECCO Pro 4.0
  • ECCO Pro 4.01, July 1997

ECCO Lite:

  • For standalone users
  • Calendar, PhoneBook, and Outlines
  • No networking or synchronization

ECCO Internet address book

  • ECCO Lite with an ECCO file of more than 2,000 Internet URLs

ECCO Simplicity

  • For network or standalone
  • Calendar, PhoneBook, Outlines
  • Cusotmizable PhoneBook forms
  • Group scheduling, synchronization
  • Shared Calendars, PhoneBooks, and Outlines
  • Integration with Delrina WinFax PRO

ECCO Professional

  • For network or standalone
  • Calendar, PhoneBook, Outlines
  • Cusotmizable PhoneBook forms
  • Group scheduling, synchronization
  • Shared Calendars, PhoneBooks, and Outlines
  • Integration with Delrina WinFax PRO
  • Customizable folders, and columns for categorizing and organizing info
  • Filters and sorts for selective viewing of info

ECCO Pro was marketed as the world's first SuperPIM[21]. ECCO competed in the PIM space against several formidable competitors[22]. These included Polaris Packrat, Symantec ACT! (now Sage ACT!), Lotus Organizer, and Microsoft Schedule+ (predecssor to Microsoft Outlook).[citation needed] Also in this product space at the time was GoldMine, Starfish Sidekick, and Jana Contact.[citation needed]

The marketing budget for ECCO languished under NetManage's tenure. NetManage closed the acquired Bellevue, Washington office and disbanded the ECCO development team in fall 1997 after the release of version 4.01[23].

When the Bellevue office of NetManage was closed, the principal software development engineers for ECCO formed their own non-related software company in Bellevue, Washington named Accumen Associates.[citation needed] That company continues today under the branding name metrohispeed.com with no ties to ECCO.[citation needed]

Although ECCO development by NetManage ceased in 1997, the program is available as a free download, and development continues by 3rd party vendors[24].

Problems which had been an irritation for users, such as a Year 2000 (Y2K) bug requiring manually fixing the ending period of recurring dates, have been solved with add-on 'eccotools' and a new 'eccoextension'.[citation needed] There is a still a per-file limit to the number of total outline items count (64k items, which can be up to 32k of text per item or an OLE object, and which can additionally have tens of thousands of text, numerica, pulldown, and date 'folders' (fields) attached to each item), but the EccoMV extension allows up to 100 Gigs of data to be included in each ecco file by linking to externally stored data.[citation needed] Ecco allows for the development of extensions utilizing a DDE interface, and ECCO still works in the 32-bit environment of Windows XP and 64-bit environment of Windows7x64, however, system upgrades since Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) have resulted in the normal installation process to fail for some users.[citation needed] An alternate install procedure from a .zip file is available for free that enables a successful install[25][verification needed].

Attempts to Duplicate Ecco Pro

Over the years, many plans were laid, and many attempts begun to capture the market of devoted uses who find the outline/data/calendar integrated structure of Ecco to be uniquely powerful and useful.[citation needed] NetManage promised numerous times to release Ecco Pro as an open-source project[26], but did not materialize.[citation needed] NetManage was bought out by MicroFocus, and the Ecco Pro open-source project has not yet been heard of again. Chandler seemed initially to be going on the Ecco path, but it is clear now that it will not (as Chandler development has reached its own termination point).[citation needed]

The following list previous aborted attempts to rewrite an outliner/PIM Ecco Pro like program:[citation needed]

  • ADM21 - promised 4.0 version was beta since 2007
  • PIMFlash - Company defunct. It had Ecco-like GUI features.

The following list the latest outliners/PIM being developed as 'EccoPro like':[citation needed]

Ongoing Ecco Pro Software community support

File:Ecco0019.JPG
Another Date/Time view.

Ten years after Netmanage's development ceased, ECCO continues to have a growing and dedicated following, still supported by community-based support groups.[citation needed]

A couple of downloadable archives of reference material from the ECCO Pro forums are available providing reference material.[citation needed]

Older information and discussions are also available on several Web sites:

An older program called Ecco Helpers now released as freeware,[citation needed] provides a minimal interface for adding notes and tracking time.[citation needed] The functions have been superseded by the modern add-ons and extension.[citation needed]

There is still at least one known active developer, eccomagic.com, who provides information, tools, fixes, and freeware utilities for ECCO.[citation needed]

Ecco Pro also contains a DDE API which exposes many elements of the database to external manipulation. The API can be accessed directly via DDE, and there are several bindings with functions specific for Ecco Pro.[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ http://www.compusol.org/ecco/eccohistory.html
  2. ^ http://ecco.empowers.us
  3. ^ http://EccoMV.com
  4. ^ http://eccortf.srules.com
  5. ^ http://www.compusol.org/ecco/hotsync.html
  6. ^ Scott Rosenberg, Dreaming in Code; http://orcmid.com/blog/2008/04/dreaming-in-code-long-tail-to-my-little.asp
  7. ^ Keizer, Gregg, PC Magazine, September 4, 1993, p. 50
  8. ^ March 11, 1997 - NetManage's ECCO(R) Pro Provides Support for Microsoft Exchange 5.0, PRnewswire, retrieved 2009-10-11
  9. ^ Seymour, Jim; PC Magazine; January 11, 1994; pp. 110-111
  10. ^ http://www.compusol.org/ecco/arabesquefacts.html
  11. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1995_June_20/ai_17093574/
  12. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/26/comment.guardianweeklytechnologysection
  13. ^ http://www.compusol.org/ecco/eccocase.html
  14. ^ http://lists.essential.org/1998/info-policy-notes/msg00002.html
  15. ^ http://www.organizationquest.com/organization_quest/2008/10/pdas-and-organi.html
  16. ^ http://john.redmood.com/organizers.html
  17. ^ http://sqlnotes.wikispaces.com/
  18. ^ See Wordyard "Ecco Pro" Sept 4, 2007 article, supra.
  19. ^ http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=966
  20. ^ Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance Volume 14 Issue 5, Pages 41 - 47.
  21. ^ http://www.compusol.org/ecco/arabesquevision.html
  22. ^ PC Magazine, August 1997, pp. 222-223, 237
  23. ^ http://www.compusol.org/ecco/eccohistory.html
  24. ^ http://www.compusol.org/ecco/
  25. ^ http://forum.eccomagic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?board=FILES2
  26. ^ http://www.compusol.org/cgi-bin/ecprwcki/ksepw.pl?EccoOpenSource
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