Re: ndxCards v. 1.92 Re: Lessons from the World of Clip Mana

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2750

Posted by ckester
2005-02-15 14:58:33

> What I meant by “interferes less in a database” was this. In an outliner intended for organizing a writing, the two pane form
at inferes with continuity. In a database continuity is less important

Got it, thanks. The mental break or discontinuity in moving from pane to pane maps neatly to the cleavage lines implicit in the record-based structure of the database. Database records are discrete, independent blocks of information. This is true even though relationships can be drawn between the records in two or more database tables.

Both types of outliner capture the hierarchical sense of containment or collection.

But a document in a single-pane outliner presents itself as a whole with continuous parts—- where the continuity is primarily captured by the sequence of nodes. A single-pane outliner suggests this-follows-that more strongly than a multi-pane outliner. I think that’s because juxtaposition within the same window creates a stronger connection between two nodes.

In most multipane outliners, you can’t view two nodes simultaneously or in a way that visually emphasizes their connection. Or to put this a different way, the UI distance between two nodes is greater than in a single-paned outliner. It isn’t just that there’s more space between the nodes, there’s also more UI “clutter”.

—Charlie

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