From notes to outlines to text using iPad

Posted by Dr Andus
Sep 6, 2011 at 11:37 AM

Just to share what I’ve been doing so far, here is my process of trying to turn the iPad into a writer’s tool. First, I started using the native Notes app for capturing ideas on the go (both in iPad and iPod Touch), which - as I accidentally found out - syncs with Gmail’s Notes tag. For this these devices and the Notes app are excellent. However, once I had more than 90 notes, it became difficult to navigate the notes on the devices. Originally I thought that I will just organise the notes by importing them from Gmail into Surfulater or Ultra Recall, however that would restrict me to the PC.

Then I discovered CarbonFin Outliner on the iPad, which is a superb outliner and syncs with its cloud and exports as OPML, so I can import outlines straight into Natara Bonsai, my favourite outliner. The only problem is that for taking notes and organising them CarbonFin is not that flexible, as notes can only be moved around within their own “files” (which would be a “book” in Notebooks for iPad), they can’t be easily moved across the files. Also, the notetaking process slows down if first you have to make up your mind which outline you put the thought into at which hierarchy level. So in the end I just kept using the native Notes app instead, restricting CarbonFin for outlining specific texts.

Then I found out about Notebooks for iPad, which just seemed perfect as it is basically a super-charged Notes app. It allows you to capture notes on the fly and then slot them into a “book”, basically a folder, which can contain additional “books.” In this sense it could serve as an outliner as well, as it allows the structuring of notes into complex hierarchies. Moreover, it also allows you to import notes from the native Notes app, by using the nifty (but pricey) iPhone Backup Extractor (http://www.iphonebackupextractor.com/). I was ecstatic when I managed to import all my notes into Notebooks for iPads and then organise them into complex outlines. However, now I hit a wall (as I’ve just described it in the “iPad software (upcoming): LiquidText” thread), as I can’t export these complex outlines as a single file, which this prevents me from using Notebooks as an effective outliner.

The only workaround I can imagine so far is to keep the hierarchies one level deep, as within one level (or “book” or folder) Notebooks does have a function to combine all notes into a single text file, which then can be exported via Dropbox etc. Fortunately Notebooks allows for the manual ordering of notes within a book, so some structuring of the notes into an outline is possible. This is where I am at with trying to use iPad and iPod for notetaking and outlining…