Thread by @SarahJamieLewis

Does anyone know of any software that could be described as "problem-documentation"/"problem-specification". Ideally I'd like something that I could define a problem, break it down into sub problems, attach references/partial-solutions, connect related subproblems etc.

This is something I keep coming back to. There are lots of solutions for managing progress/breaking down tasks etc. But I think the biggest missing tool in my toolbox is a way to specify and manage long-term large scale problems.

I've started a few little side-projects recently attacking this from various angles - a wiki, a static site generator etc. But all come up very short.

Coming from the perspective that every piece in a system should be there to solve a problem, that perfection is when there is nothing left to take away, and that the best way to solve something is to meticulously describe the problem.

Mindmapping software comes kinda close to the kind of system I'm imagining, I think. Maybe if it was scriptable? Ideas?

But then again, not really: it's more of a wiki + concept graph. I want to be able to document things like "This is Problem X, it has sub problems A,B & C. A and B are concrete instantiations of problem Y, here are some references and a link to solution S."

And the inverse: "This is solution S, it solves problem Y, it has 3 parts D,E,F each necessary to solve part of problem Y"

Since we are in dream-land, I'd then like to be able to analyze solutions to see if sub-solutions solve overlapping problems, assess what happens when parts of the solution are removed/what problems are re-introduced etc. But, just being able to document/explore would be great.

Some additional requirements:

* The ability to write / store large amount of text efficiently (i.e everything is no confined to a cell / table
* Ideally I'd like to be able to paste in web pages and have it parse out structured data (e.g. pulling down image / data sheets)