Re: Wiki notetaking in ConnectedText, & wiki Brainstorm?

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 4481

Posted by sub
2005-10-30 07:33:50

> above it, such that the namesake is the parent, and the information the child, i understand

That’s the most obvious way to do it, of course; however, namesakes don’t require the information to be subsidiary. They can be placed in the same level as the main text. By writing “above/beyond” I didn’t mean hierarchically.

For example, a text can be subsidiary to its title and be followed—at the same level- by a list of keywords. Whenever a keyword is recognised as a Namesake, you’ll be able to move back and forth between the various texts that use it. This is often referred to as “sliding sideways” in Brainstorm speak.

Another example is “bookmarking”; you can use a Namesake such as “Important” or “Review” to mark various points within a document that need your attention; you’d place the word above/below the relevant point and then simply jump from one to the other.

> why hyperlinks from a term to another full entry would break this structure

I personally find it “bad practice”, like parentheses in a flowing text. In marketing, when you want to test a text, you read it aloud. Try reading a text full of parentheses and notice how difficult it is to understand.

Anyway, personal opinions aside, the “philosophy” point is this: in Brainstorm, the “brick”, the _unit_of_information_ used to build structures is the paragraph entry, even if it is comprised by a single word.

If one structures their text observing paragraph entries, then Namesakes will complement that structure; one moves “vertically” through the various levels and “sideways” through Namesakes.
Namesakes therefore represent information that is part of the structure, being paragraph entries themselves.

If a hyperlink from _within_ a paragraph entry is required, then that paragraph entry is not a proper “brick”. Perhaps it should be split in two or more parts.

In allowing total freedom in linking, WIKIs don’t enforce structure.

alx

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