I

I had then spoken of that "mesh" of mine (1) ... having previously spoken about "outlining by essence" (2a), not by your traditional notion of "time-line", of "plot"... (2) - sorry for the weird numbering, but it'll be the definite one, not only for me, but for any not-debrained person writing.

It's obvious that your - secondary - outline will be about the "presentational timeline" (or whatever you call it) will follow "what people will see", be that on screen (by their attendance), be that in your textbook (by them turning your pages), but as I had said "above", you'll need somewhat else (1) in front of your (traditional) outline (2) - call it "mesh", "the core", whatever you like, but do NOT call it "the agenda", since, as said, the "agenda" would have been the "things to do", i.e. the "realization" of your "core", and oh so sorry about that further upside-down of your traditional notions... going back to the roots - Aristote et al., or then, what language really means, beyond today's aberrations, has always been one of the very best ideas supposedly coming to you... as a base for then any "creational ideas" you might have on top of those basics...

Now, and I've said that already, my writings here are just sketches, but then, most alleged "contributers"' writings here are just dispendable as we all know, so even some serious contributor's "sketches" might then be acceptable in the end?

And my (2a) above obviously was just an intermediate "finding", since I had said, do your outline by the essence, not by the "realization" / "illustration" / whatever you call it for "what people will see / read"...

Whilst in fact, the solution is obvious:

level0 - the source item of your tool, be it displayed or not, then:

_level1 Your project's/case's/whatever "plan"'s name (and identification number/string if necessary...)

(__level1 Your outline, NO! This instead, as simple as it gets:)

__level1 (1) Essence/Core/Whatever you like to name it, but please: do NOT call it "Agenda": you'd "out" yourself as a real moron... ; with:
___level2 Some min. count of ESSENCE identifications (which more or less, yeah, form a mesh, as explained above, and:), every one as concise as possible, and be readable without "scrolling" the "item" in question; number: up to perhaps 15 at most...
____level3 those up to 15 "essence"* items

___level2 Your "agenda" as it had been originally devised, i.e. the "illustration" of your essence, the "timeline" as you will expose it to your audience, with
____level3 Up to several hundreds of "items" (i.e. "sub-subjects", whatever) here, and for convenience or any other reasons, you will probably sub-organize them in some what we call "further sub tree"...


* = I once called this "the presence", just for myself, since that "essence" has to be present to you all the time - which sometimes might prove kind of a memory / memorization challenge, but then:

It's obvious, too, that whenever you deviate, in (2) (and its descendants...), from (1), you will have to reconsider if you rather adjust (1) (with its descendants: in case your (2) work will have brought some new light into (1)) - and, obviously, sometimes (what do I say?: regularly!) re-thinking your (1), will certainly be a really bad idea...), or if then, your (2) deviation from (1) might be just have been a caprice, a "deviation" from your "essence" indeed, and that you should not follow that fad - at least here, in your current context that is (sic!), and thus you'll have to be willing to "throw away"... which obviously shows the innate interest of some "(meanwhile, or then - who knows, maybe even definitely?, discarded" format: a format that even expensive (Devonthink) or subscription-only (Ulysses App) Mac tools obviously do not offer today...

II

Now, it's obviously that in any outliner's (tree (hierarchy) or list ("siblings")) "order", the notion of "order" plays a role, at least implicitely... when in many, or even most specific, use cases, we just want to group elements / items / even sub-trees, an'thus, what to do?

From my personal experience, my (albeit more and more failing) memory helps me with making the (implicit) distinction when I see my groups-by-separator-lines (I had explained them "above", even years ago...), but yes, there currently has not been invented (or introduced into obtainable software) a clear distinction...

(And the same is true for explanation points, which currently serve TWO - very different indeed! - purposes: 1) "oh: (i.e. identified) problem!", but then, also: 2) "Do!" - and that's not the same thing indeed! (I help myself in distinguishing these by using the traditional "!" for 1), and then the double "!!" for my ToDo's, and here again, your milage might vary, but be(come) aware of your simple "!" not clearing up things...)

And so, having - very shortly indeed! - been tempted by buying "Scapple", at its incredibly low price of 21$ plus VAT minus 25 p.c., I quickly realized that "in my time", i.e. in those times, 25 years ago, I coded software (without being "on par" for also selling it: acknowledged!), I had some MUCH, VERY MUCH better at my disposal, in the form of "ABC Flowcharter" (3.0), which I had bought at a (nowadays seemingly) obscene price of several hundred bucks... and yes, it was a piece of crap: it was buggy as hell... and so, Micrografx, at the time, then sold it (with the bugs not attended...) for about 20 bucks in the end... (And yes, Scapple developers' incredibly non-intuitive "writers"' software, "Scrivener", is always available half-price, while I am not a "crimper" - I'm not an idiot, see? -, but just saying, for "crimpers", hahaha...)

Some years later, I had been able to get "Micrografx 2000" for somewhat of a pittance, on Ebay, and that version, at last, worked as expected - so, the rule of "you get what you pay for" had seemed to not apply here, considering my 500 Deutschmarks or some expenditure for their previous 3.0 crap... but then, it's NOT possible to get "Micrografix Whatever" of whatever they now call their Flowcharter now... if even it's available anymore... since it's been sold to Corel, and which seem to have made even quite a biz model out of buying other people's software, and then let it more or less die - and then, WinDVD, anyone? -, or then, rent it just out?

III

Fact is: ABC Flowcharter / Micrografx 2000 (and some later, again very expensive version of that tool I then refrained of from buying again...) came with what they had called a "Notes" field, and into which you then could, e.g. put "developments" of any sort, e.g. your "scenes" (' markup or rtf text, or is it called "markdown"? whatever...), or your code... when writing Windows tools... and then, "export" was your friend...

Now compare with (cheap indeed, but not being worth much more...) "Scapple", or then other "flow charters" of today's, "online" or otherwise "by subscription only": NO "Notes" field or whatever you, or then they, might call it, as far as my research goes...

(And I own MS Visio, while it isn't included anymore in more recent MS subscriptions / buys, and there, I haven't found that functionality either...)

And thus, with Scapple and the(ir) like, you are NOT able anymore to also really PUT INTO ACTION (= (2) above) your conceptional thinking (= (1) above, as it had been possible, 25, even 30 years ago, with ABC Flowcharter (buggy, as said), and then Micrografx-whatever-they-called-it-then in the early 2000's...

BUT you have to find another, some even-nowadays-viable, solution for your task-at-hand, and that will has been UR for the last 2 years now in my case, and will be my solution for my final years I suppose - and that's for all of the reasons given above, and despite the fact that...

whilst a flowcharter of the time - i.e. a real good one as Micrografix' in the early 2000's - had been able to much better realize what I call the "mesh" ((1)), because of its "graphical" = two-dimensional character, did NOT mix up order and vicinity - BOTH concepts are immensely valuable, within their own respective range of application, and then their conceptional mix with each other, in all (?) current outliners, is much more than just annoying indeed -

And no, "tightbeam" and others of the(ir) like: I give a SHIT about YOUR consideration, but I - with the implicit approval of our landlord, Chris Murtland - use this forum for publishing current's conception's best of outlining insights - or then, I dare anybody: give the URLs...

IV

Let's face it, fellows, for our scope of (more or less personal) IM:

- "Framework" was fantastic (and so, it's not understandable that its main developer - i.e.: conceptionalist?! - hasn't then got to be one of our now-times' conceptionalists-of-choice...)

- askSam was fantastic (and so, it's not understandable that their owners couldn't - = weren't willing to, that is?! - hire the necessary "coding-power" (to replace those now-obsolete notions of "man-power" or even "person-power", once and for all...)

- my "Manuscript" at its time (i.e. 1996/97) hadn't been THAT abysmally poor, considering, since it came with transclusion (avoiding (!) ) and many more so-called "features" which even nowadays have not become "standard"

- coding's for coders, while conceptioning is for people like Framework's, askSam's, Manuscript's (= I, yeah) conceptionalists, and there's no, and there never has been any, coder, willing to code for 50:50 (of the proceeds then) for any-of-us, since those coders, those technicians, those (2)-people, dare seriously think they could do the (1)-thing accessorarily - oh my, what fools those technicians are...

(And see how bad today's MindJet/MindManager continues to be (for conception, i.e. not speaking of just presentational uses here...), after 2 (or more?) decades of (so-called:) "development"?!)

Go to hell, "tightbeam" and similar: Some real people are able to listen, and to take profit from conceptional thinking.

V

At the end of the day, and, as IM / "computing" in general anyway, "outlining"'s a tool... and to say it all: Yes, in some good 2-pane outliner, or then, any as-good 3-pane outliner (of which's kind currently none exists, it seems to me...), it's the possibility to ADD NOTES to my initial thoughts, and that, together with the IMMEDIATE AVAILABILITY of those "notes", i.e. developments, of my thoughts, makes the attraction of any pc, or then Mac, tool, which promises to separate "initial thought", and then, its "development", which, obviously, no "loo paper" paradigm is able to convey, notwithstanding their possible "outlining" add-ons...

And for pane-outliners' mixing up "grouping" and "sorting": I don't know yet, for some "final solution"... but then, except for my advice, "multiply separator-lines" (i.e. items which just contain some 10 or 20 "underlines", even in combination (sic!)), and then, "whenever you see such separator-lines in your outline, consider they just group, and even, suppose that even that group-of-groups isn't ordered but just assembled"...

Any list implies order... but then, any real third-dimension by far outshines our mind's capabilies... so we have to find intermediate solutions to our brains' limits... and any formatting, preliminary solution remains oh so welcome... whilst on the hand, TheBrain pseudo-solutions ain't but just expensive dead-ends...

(Not edited: Say, 'thank you' to tightbeam and their likes... - my motivation's just to confer the message... but then, for its molding: tightbeam and his pack have destroyed any motivation to also observe guidelines of "form"...)

VI

That "mesh" then, and since "ABC Flowcharter" et al. would now ask for a some (incredibly complicated-to-set-up) Win-Hyper-V-or-similar-and-then...: You would have to organize it in some (1) outline, on top of your (2) outline, considering that any "list order" in (1), contradictory to any such sequence of items in (2), would just be "assembly", not "order", here in (1)...

But at the end of the day, conceptionalists like myself have to live with tightbeams, AND their followers, and that's the innate reason why, 30, 40 years from now even here in the (i.e. "enlighetened"?: hahahah!) "West" nobody, really nobody, just believe me, will be surprised by our (then) having got down to the standards of... you know what I mean: A.H. and his epigones of ANY standards of lowness...

Interesting. But I stopped reading when you started insulting an honorable member of this club.

(To clarify: I meant recursion above; I'm losing my vocabulary, and then again, outline hierarchies help over not-so-helpful search functionalities. In fact, while it's all in the (enhanced, with transclusion) "tree" (form), no problem, but upon export into some "flat" format (i.e. not only print-out), you will have to find a way to do away with the transclusion; in my 1996/97 effort, I resolved the problem by doing a (transferable) "natural" (i.e. "original") "parent", adjoined by any number of "adoptive" parents - it seems that in Ultra Recall e.g., on the other hand, and once you will have done a "logical (parent) link" to some item, there is no (?) way anymore to distinguish the "very first" parent from "adjacent, additional" ones... - I might be mistaken here though, but, e.g., even the respective IDs will not inform you, since (simplified here:) item id 8 might have been created as a child item of item id 6, but then might have "logically linked" to item id 4, which obviously had been created before the creation of item id 6 had occurred, and then, when the db, even internally, SORTS children by id, e.g., instead of maintaining the "first come, first listed" paradigm, there will indeed be NO means left to distinguish "blood" parentage from adaptive one, available creation dates just indicating the creation of the item itself, not of parentage.

This being said, it's obvious that in different export tasks, even the parentage(s) within the tree-to-be-exported should be selectable in the end; in other words: for every impending recursion upon export, a dialog should open up, asking for the user's decision in every such case / junction: "decision tree" here again... or then, your "export" will become unmanageable in case.)

(And no, in fact it was, and is, more complicated than that. I remember that at the time, for every such "logical linking" - let's call it "adoption" since that term is best to make clear what I had in mind then and now -, I had a subroutine triggered which checked if the intended "adoptive parent" was independent from, i.e. outside of the current hierarchy, so I prevented recursion from even being created - probably, such a feature is absent nowadays in other developer's offerings; I don't see such restrictions in UR, e.g., and I remember I.Q.'s developer having said here, some years ago, that he didn't see the necessity for such a function.

On the other hand, even when you avoid recursion then, as I had done, and as I would ever do - recursion is a valid concept for looping, but not for IM, as far as I know, your mileage might vary as usual here -, you will need that above-mentioned "decision tree" upon export, since even when "sibling", "nephew" sub trees then contain further-down (i.e. common-by-adoption) descendancy sub trees, you will, whenever starting your export from "higher up", want to decide which "line" to follow - otherwise, you will not create total havoc, in my, recursion-avoiding, system, as in yours which gives a heck, but you will get, in case virtually "endless", unwanted results, together with the data you're after, just as in non-directed search.

And, finally, as a remark re your file system (Windows, don't know about Mac, etc.): Some of the dedicated search tools - see my earlier thread here - now (! so there has been real development over the years in that field at least!) come with options to follow file system junctions or not, and clicking "Yes" to that will multiply your file system IM organization's paradigm indeed... IF you did that well, on your side that is.)

("will multiply your file system IM organization’s paradigm" read: will "multiply your file system IM organization’s paradigm's utility")

Good advice.



Franz Grieser wrote:

Interesting. But I stopped reading when you started insulting an
honorable member of this club.

GPT 0.9

The personal references to Tightbeam are offensive, and have no place in this group. I am sure the "implicit approval" you speak of having from Chris Murtland does not extend to your insults directed toward Tightbeam and others.

22111 is not, alas, reading your comments on his splurges. He's simply using the forum as a platform for thoughts.

If they were more coherent and presented without the Tourettes-like need to insult, do down or dismiss members of the forum (or indeed anyone else), they would be quite interesting and no doubt give rise to useful discussions.

As it is, I'm afraid many of us don't bother to read them, simply because they are so self-indulgent.

I

Re short outline/list (1) vs. development outline (2) above:

So, instead of linking from 1 into 2 (as I had said in a thread before), you much better might link from 2 into 1

(technically, both those links are implicitely directed (sic!), since in both cases, it's a "foreign body" (and clearly recognizable as such), either from (1) in (2), or, obviously much better indeed, from (2) in (1))

i.e. you might (as said above) italicize (or "red" or "orange"...) the (2) item, in order to indicate even in (2) that there is / might be a coherence problem, AND you might additionally link the (2) item to the (1) element which currently is affected by the (2) element's character: this will, in practice,

considering that (1) should ideally only have 1 or, at the very most, 2 levels per se,

introduce a further level into (1), or then at least create additional (but specifically formatted) siblings on the second level, indicating "problems";

and whilst in "creative" writing, this could enhance selling chances, in "factual" or "fake-factual" writing (remember: even in propaganda, it's all about coherence...), it will at least very much please your editor...

there is always a risk of "over-engineering" here indeed, so perhaps instead of multiplying those (implicitely) directed links, you might reconsider, at that moment in time, to reallocate some of your efforts / time you currently - prematurely? - dedicate to (2), to (1) again instead... but that's just my suggestion then...

As for the creating the link, your tool should provide it with / by just 2 keys in total; with UR, and if you organize your things well, that's the case (remember: you link 1 element of many to 1 element of just few elements here): F-key, 1 key between a..z or 0...9, and then you can even spare yourself the {enter}: makes 2 keys in all and indeed (takes 1s incl. the link creation).


II

Re F = flowcharters (M=Micrografix 2000 incl. ABC Flowcharter) vs Scapple (incl. similar)

(After M2000, there were others from M, and especially for process management, with lanes and other goodies, different version at different prices; current state of affairs unknown to me, didn't get thru their now-Corel chaos (and mostly subscription now anyway), and for process management, I had mentioned some alternative tool above.

Writing from memory, from more than ten years ago, so I might be mistaken, but I think I'm not:)

1) M (20, 25, 30 years ago) much better than Scapple (today):

In F, you have, in some "canvas", a) symbols, "shapes", and b) "connectors", "vectors", "arrows", directed (by arrow head) or not (no head) or even doubly directed (heads on both ends); not speaking here of "lanes" and such.

All (or almost all) such shapes, in all these tools, allow some text within, or overlayed, to those shapes, you might call that the shape('s) text, since it's more than just a "title", and e.g. Scapple's available screenshots come with LOTS of text within the canvas, and no wonder, since, as said, "no Notes pane here"...

(Btw, I remember that M's shape texts even allowed partial formatting, i.e. and e.g. "Just SOME bold text within", with just "some" being bolded - Scapple may allow for that, too, I don't remember; on the other, I don't know any 2- or 3-pane outliner even today which allows for such, partial, "item title" formatting, probably since the available components for which that would be no problem, would cost the developers some 4-digit subscriptions, and most of them refrain from spending that...)

M, on the other hand, additionally to that "canvas", also had such a "Notes" pane, as said. A toggle key displayed / hid it, and you could position and resize it (persistent for the session, perhaps also between sessions; for example you could use 3/4 or your screen width for the canvas, and the remaining 1/4 for the Notes pane, in full screen height).

You had another toggle to switch focus between canvas (i.e. current shape or connector there) and the "Notes" pane; the "Notes" pane could contain rtf (i.e. formatted) text (and as said, ABC was extremely buggy with that (i.e. it regularly crashed), with M2000 then being stable at last).

Now, the shapes had a tiny "-N-" symbol if for that shape there was additional "Notes" text; the symbol then disappeared if you deleted that "Notes" text, and whilst technically, that text was another attribute (db column, xml tag, whatever) of the shape, whenever you switched focus from one shape to another, and with the Notes pane being displayed, the text in there switched, just the same way as it does in your usual 2- or 3-pane outliner's (or in TB's) content pane when you switch from one element to another within your "tree" / graph.

At the time (with ABC), I tried to extensively use that "Notes" pane, since, in theory, it was a wonderful tool, but in practical use, with constantly crashing, that was not realistic... (stable, as said) M2000 then came too late for me, since at the time, I had already created my own tool, and since that got unstable beyond 6- or 7,000 items, due to very bad work memory management of the underlying scripting tool (by Billyboy's "pal" Allen...), I had switched to askSam at the time (bought / upgraded to several versions), not needing a conceptional tool anymore, but a stable repository for masses of text at the time.

2) Even M was not really good enough

From the above, you "learned" that M came with a wonderful, integrated (sic!) "further development" feature, for... the shapes...

But that Notes pane was NOT also available for the connectors, too, whilst it's clear as day though that the relationships between the elements (=shapes here, or "items" in outliners) are often even more important than those, and in case will need lots of "Notes" on their own indeed...

So, at the time, I "helped" myself by putting, within the connectors, special shapes, just big dots with no text, and which then served as containers for the "Notes" attribute I needed for the underlying connector, but then, whenever I moved the shapes

(and flexibility of your "arrangements" is one of the core purposes of an F... I'm not sure if TB-paid now offers an F-mode with manual (!) and then persistent (!) arrangement of your elements...),

and whilst the connectors themselves "followed fine" (when in Scapple e.g. though, connectors are very poorly implemented currently), their corresponding "Notes Dots" were systematically left behind (as expected of course), and that made a somewhat "less than optimal UX", to put it mildly (and Scapple users, not even having "Notes" for their shapes, create chaos on the canvas instead, or then constantly switch between two tools...).

Btw, nowadays, with our 2- and 3-pane outliners, you have a similar problem: You will need additional, correctly named elements between the "shape" elements, in order to get the necessary content pane for the relationship(s) between the two: "Some A", then "Some A - Some B", or even "Some A - relationship a - Some B" (and ditto for their relationship b, etc.) - then only "Some B":

It's obvious that this is far from "elegant", to say the very least, whilst in M, you even had several (or multiple in case) connectors between two shapes instead, just, as explained, without the necessary "Notes" attribute, except then by (multiple, in case), not-connected "Notes Dots" - it's evident, that technically, it's easy to apply the same attribute to connectors, in Fs, as to Fs' shapes - you just have to think about it...

whilst "connection management" in 2- and 3- (or multiple-) pane outliners remains, for the time being, an unresolved problem.


@Mad (if not dozed off): reactionary... oops: reactionally, of course!

Quite so.

MadaboutDana wrote:

As it is, I'm afraid many of us don't bother to read them, simply
because they are so self-indulgent.

This forum's "contributors" whose intellectual level strives beyond just stupid invective, might be interested in that thread: https://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?p=22874#post22874 - and yes, I could have been added over there that "beneath", i.e. application made of "-2", any other, further-down display "layout" should be preserved... but then, people are basic, and 90 p.c. of UR users wouldn't understand anyway...

I'm still convinced that 1211 is a ChatGPT-like field experiment, testing the extremes of what can be done with pushing some parameters to the max. The devs must be laughing hard at our reactions to it.

That could be one rational explanation. In which case, as in other such experiments, our figuring it out should make its continuation futile, and it should therefore cease:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokester


Skywatcher wrote:

I'm still convinced that 1211 is a ChatGPT-like field experiment,
testing the extremes of what can be done with pushing some parameters to
the max. The devs must be laughing hard at our reactions to it.

That's a really interesting theory. Considerable work clearly still needs to be done on the more interactive aspects of the app – finding the right (in the sense of consistent, conversation-friendly tone of voice, providing coherent responses to external user input rather than simply ignoring it, etc.) – and of course there's the sheer length of the contributions, which also clearly needs some algorithmic adjustments. The logical flow isn't always clear, either, but that's presumably a problem intrinsic to the black-box concept.

We look forward to the next iteration... :-}

Skywatcher wrote:

I'm still convinced that 1211 is a ChatGPT-like field experiment,
testing the extremes of what can be done with pushing some parameters to
the max. The devs must be laughing hard at our reactions to it.