Markdown vs WSYWYG

Posted by 22111
Sep 11, 2013 at 08:01 PM

“You can overlay multiple real outlines on your CT data, but the “drill down” effect is mostly gained by “outlining” in the content pane with bullet lists and having topic links within those lists. I believe the end effect is essentially the same as outlining (and ultimately more flexible), but the fact remains that it doesn’t necessarily feel the same as outlining. (My favorite is one-pane outlining, so even two-pane outliners like UR never really feel truly like outlining to me).”

Reading this, I’m quite “happy” (no, not really) that CT is “out” for me, for the time being, for its missing wysiwyg, since if it had this, I would perhaps very heavily complain about its inability to fake a “real” outliner. This being said, if the developer wanted to do this, he would certainly be able to realize this in a more outliner way, by option. Let’s put it this way: Most developers say “I leave this and that out because I want my software to stay simple and easy in use for most users, don’t want to frighten them off”. Now we all convene CT is so complicated any additional complication will certainly put nobody off who without would come to this software, so adding some other complications to CT would be perfectly acceptable for its potential user base, AND could even enlarge it.

“that really means you need an arsenal of tools rather than just one”

This triggered lots of comments, and in fact it’s the recurrent problem. WHERE is the problem? Two things: Most of the time, it’s not really smooth to get your data forth and back; and this would be needed because of the basic problem: What is reference material now, becomes writing material later, and vice versa, which means, so many consultants in office management and all this claim you must divide your things into “material, data, and so on” and “what you write/create”, and this distinction is simply not possible, so you need tools for both, and that’s why you then need better transition, and especially forth and back, and this interaction between tools is not smooth enough, so in the end, you would need “something better for both”: A UR with a better editor, or a Scrivener with better data repository/management - and both will not bring the respective missing parts to their game.

And so most people work with Word, Excel and so on, and endless cascades of sub-directories.