Orbis (was Re: Xy4)

["Anne Putnam" aputnam@xxxxxxxx]

Jordan Fox writes:

>
> I tried to purchase a copy of ORBIS from them [TTG] more than a year
ago, and
> they declined to sell it to me.
>

In response, please note that Orbis is a Nota Bene product, not a TTG
product. TTG sold it (and Nota Bene) briefly during the mid-90's.
However, Nota Bene Associates Inc., is now an independent company with
full ownership of Orbis. We (Nota Bene Associates, Inc.) would be happy
to sell Orbis to you as part of Scholar's Workstation ($249 for registered
XyWrite users).

For more information on Orbis, see the following:

General description and screen shots:
http://www.notabene.com/brochure/orbis.html
Comments from scholars and writers who are using Orbis:
http://www.notabene.com/comments_Orbis.html
Downloadable demo of Scholar's Workstation
http://www.notabene.com/winsws_demo.html

I have also reproduced a description of Orbis that we used in a recent
promotion. It consists primarily of Steve Siebert's reasons for
developing the program, and his view of its usefulness in academic
writing. This description of Orbis is below my signature, so that those
who are not interested can stop here.

Anne Putnam
President, Nota Bene Associates, Inc.
aputnam@xxxxxxxx
www.notabene.com
1-800-4NB-ORDER (1-800-462-6733)
212-334-0445
212-334-0845 (fax)

ORBIS is the perfect tool for managing a career's worth of unstructured
information (lecture notes, reading notes, papers you've written, random
jottings, documents you've imported). Search for "agriculture" and
"Guyana," and Orbis will simultaneously search up to one million files and
find every paragraph that contains both words. Use search results for
reference, expand to see the context, and/or import text into an open Nota
Bene document.

NB program designer Steve Siebert developed the first version of Nota Bene
over 18 years ago and Orbis has always been an integral part of the
program. If you have never used a program like Orbis, you may not fully
understand the value it can bring to your writing and research. We asked
Steve to write a brief "History of Orbis" describing his vision for Orbis.
Here's what he wrote.

Back in 1981, when I was a graduate student at Yale, I purchased an IBM PC
rather than an Apple II for one simple reason -- the IBM had a great
detachable keyboard, perfect for exactly what I liked to do. Bad bosture
notwithstanding, I would lean back in my desk chair, put my feet up on the
desk, and, with keyboard in lap, read. And read some more. When I found
something interesting -- a quote, an argument -- or had a thought of my
own that I didn't want to forget, I'd type the quote verbatim or
paraphrase the argument, or just jot down notes, ideas, reactions,
critical reflections, etc.

In those early pre-dissertation days, I wasn't sure exactly what I was
going to write about, still less where the argument would take me, but I
knew that what I was reading then was somehow relevant to the cluster of
themes in philosophical and theological hermeneutics that stirred my
interest.

By the time I decided on a dissertation topic, engaged in discussions with
my adviser (the much beloved and much missed Hans Frei), obtained the
necessary approval from my larger committee (which brought together
philosophers and theologians who then seldom talked to each other), and
started writing the introduction...I couldn't remember anything!

I had hundreds of pages of totally unstructured notes, with all sorts of
provocative quotations (that either buttressed my argument or demanded
critique) along with arguments in various stages of development. But the
one I wanted now -- the perfect dissertation-beginning quotation or the
argument from Ricoeur or Gadamer or Wittgenstein that related to the
paragraph I had just written -- was nowhere to be found.

There had to be a better way of bringing my past forward with me, of
recapitulating and reworking ideas, so that the work I'd done to reach the
present could be expanded and developed in new directions, rather than
just remaining a vague memory. I needed a way of searching through pages
and pages of notes to find the material that I needed when I needed it.
But more importantly, I wanted to find new relationships and connections.
For example, seeing how an image or metaphor was implicit or tangential in
half a dozen treatments of the same topic by different individuals might
suddenly suggest a new perspective on the topic as a whole or a new line
of argument.

Orbis -- a program that would automate the mundane (by finding what I knew
I had written) and also stimulate creativity (by letting me discover new
connections and relationships) -- was central to my vision for Nota Bene
from the very beginning.