Coppice

Posted by Amontillado
Nov 28, 2020 at 01:42 PM

Coppice does something nice, if I understand the paradigm. I haven’t downloaded the free trial yet, for fear of buying it.

Coppice has pages, which can be notes or attached files.

Pages can optionally appear on canvasses, and any page can appear on multiple canvasses.

You could have pages for character notes and canvasses for chapters or scenes.

If you update a character’s notes, either by modifying it on a canvas where it appears or by going to the page, every canvas shows the current version of the character’s notes.

Sort of like what Scapple could produce after a wild night with Curio.

Curio supports aliases in its Organizer (option-command-drag), but doesn’t support aliased figures, at least not as far as I know.

I suspect, but do not at this point know, that Curio’s tagging and cross-referencing may outdistance what Coppice offers. The jury should ignore that remark, speculation, objection sustained…

For comparison, consider a bunch of notes as an inventory of ideas. These would go in pages in Coppice, each note or related group of notes would go in a Curio Idea space.

In Coppice, you could create a canvas for an aggregation, like a chapter with character, location, and plot device notes. Drag and drop the notes of interest into the canvas.

In Curio, I believe I would create a section for my inventory of ideas, one Idea space per idea. Each of these Idea spaces would have all related info - file attachments, multiple notes, etc.

Then I would create a folder in a brainstorming section for the chapter or scene. Component Idea spaces would be option-command-dragged into the folder.

The downside in Curio is that aliases are not like replicants in Devonthink. If you delete the source for an alias Curio will warn you evil things are about to happen. If you proceed, nothing is broken until the trash is emptied, typically at file close time. Then, aliases to the Idea space you deleted will appear as invalid links.

I think I’m weakening. I may have to try Coppice. A canvas could be like a mind map constructed from a reusable stockpile of ideas. Could be addictive.

Hugh wrote:
Hmm, yes it looks tempting. As you say, it appears to be a sort of Curio
>very-lite, but of course significantly less expensive.