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Re: Is outlining the best free form database organization?
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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.
Outliners.com Message ID: 1919
Posted by srdiamond15
2004-05-15 23:47:19
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blockquote>You’re flying high here….not sure I’m getting you. Would keywords function as “what if” markers, around which to build alternative forms of the same outlines? The same way you’d plug in different numbers to create different spreadsheet scenarios?
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Lastly, I’m still thinking about the question you pose at the top of this thread. Suppose we completely ignore the existence of all the software tools discussed so thoroughly here. What if we just concentrate on the work we do, and how we do it. We outline to write coherent and organized documents, and deploy information (retrieved from databases?) to flesh out our writing. So outlining (hieracrhy) *must* come first. Secondarily, keywords inside the outline can link to other information and turn those skeletal outline elements into full sentences/thoughts. So when you say “Hierarchy doesn’t exclude key words” you’re absolutely right. I just think that the outline (hierarchy) must always come first.
Organizing thoughts for writing and storing/retrieving information are different activities, and I think these deliberations (and all that powerful, confusing software) confirm that. Fun to think about, though!
JP
The unremarkable method I use doesn’t start with an outline. Typically, 1) I write down a lot of ideas and related research notes; 2) inter-relate them; 3) outline; 4) do more research;5) revise the outline; and then 6) write.
For big projects or a related series of smaller ones, it seems to me keywords would help primarily at stage 2, where I try to discover relationships. Those relationships form the basis for an outline; hence, keywords, if useful for relating ideas, form the basis for alternative outlines.
To group related kinds of activities, I would put stages 2, 3, 4, and 5 together as essentially similar activities. One distinct stage is generating and collecting hunches, another going from seeing relationship to linearizing them in an outline, could be called structuring; and then there’s writing and revising. I don’t expect to use the same tool for the three major stages, but I definitely would prefer to have a single major tool for each of the major stages. I think the systematic collection of information and organizing it are basically a single process, because they both involve structuring information. There’s reason to hope that the tool that is good for one aspect is good for the other.