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Heptabase - Crimp cured?
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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Oct 3, 2023 at 03:01 PM
Hi Dormouse - I am interested in what you wrote about using Mindomo in your writing process. I had not really thought much about using a mind mapping program in writing although I have used Mindomo for years in terms of brainstorming and planning activities. How are you using Mindomo? Thanks.
Dormouse wrote:
I find Tangent has the features I need for notes and doesn’t intrude on
>my thinking or writing. Simple and quite elegant.
>I find that I spend 99% of my time in it thinking and writing - where in
>Obsidian it sometimes felt I was doing well to hit 50%. And Obsidian is
>always available if I need an extra feature, though I haven’t so far.
>
>I’ve relatively recently switched my long-form writing to Mindomo and
>Word. Very smooth integrated workflow, and everything had to end up in
>Word anyway. And it’s easy to import .md notes into Mindomo if that
>should ever be needed. In some ways I always felt that HB was better for
>working with sources, but the evidence never quite backed that up.
Posted by satis
Oct 3, 2023 at 05:37 PM
mkasu wrote:
> I think Tangent Notes and Tangent Works are not related. (And yes I
> believe Tangent Notes is a one-person operation.)
My error. Sorry.
Posted by Dormouse
Oct 3, 2023 at 07:50 PM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
Hi Dormouse - I am interested in what you wrote about using Mindomo in
>your writing process. I had not really thought much about using a mind
>mapping program in writing although I have used Mindomo for years in
>terms of brainstorming and planning activities. How are you using
>Mindomo? Thanks.
>
I was pretty much like you with Mindomo. Had even given up my subscription because I wasn’t using it enough. But when I decided that Heptabase and Scrintal, or even Canvas, weren’t going to cut it for me in the near term, I wondered whether it might be an alternative option for the same need. Instead of a ‘whiteboard’ with notes on it, it has nodes with attached notes (though I’d never used them much before). I remembered the little Hepta mindmap being surprisingly useful. Being usable as a concept mapper, there was no need for all nodes(+notes) to be connected as in a mindmap, which made it more similar to Hepta et al. What sold me into giving it a real try was the discovery that the docx export put the notes into body text with comments as comments. I’d never tested that previously because I’ve done all my writing in txt/md for a very long time. But since discovering that Word had overcome the deficiencies I hated it for and was very practical for long-form writing in a single document (always my preference when practical), I had started writing in Word and so this was now very interesting.
So, I’m not sure how well my system works if you write in single sections/chapters. And I don’t think the Mindomo export options are particularly advantageous for markdown.
But fwiw my basic system is to construct and organise the MSS as an outline or mindmap. I might write body text in a note, I might write comments, I might write a summary (usually this will be in a sub-node). When I think it’s ready, I export it to Word and continue from there. There’s an option for a table of contents at the start of the docx. Any coloured text in the note is exported (highlighted text coming soon). The advantage of Mindomo, for the preparatory work is that I can play out different options away from the outline, draw links, use colour and pictures & etc. - but I can, at the same time, in the same place also write text and note comments. It is, for me, a better system for working through the narrative structure than simply writing in an editor.
I’m not sure it would work at all well if you don’t write in Word, which works well in its outline views, and has a very effective comments system. And even then it’s a question of what suits your writing flow.
Posted by Dormouse
Oct 3, 2023 at 07:54 PM
I can’t find an edit option for posts.
I always seem to need to edit something - and above it was my response being tacked on to the quoted text.
Posted by mkasu
Oct 4, 2023 at 01:12 AM
Tangent Notes seems very interesting. It’s also almost fascinating how niche it is. I couldn’t find virtually any materials on it except their own website and Discord channel.
I played around with it for a bit and it seems kind of interesting, but it’s also a workflow I wouldn’t want to grow too accustomed to because I’d worry the app might be discontinued at some point. As a user, I think it would make more sense to have this kind of idea as an open source Obsidian plugin as it could integrate well into the rest of the Obsidian eco system. Also, then the author wouldn’t need to make a whole new editor nor need to worry about features like sync or mobile clients.. But well, if it is a passion project I can definitely see the appeal.
Personally, I used to use TheBrain 13 until recently but I’m a bit annoyed by their recent focus on AI tools in v14 (there’s so many issues and requests which should be fixed first, but it seems to make more business sense to jump on the AI hype…). I went back to Obsidian and use it extensively in combination with the ExcaliBrain plugin which is essentially reimplementing some ideas from TheBrain in Obsidian. You can make similar maps as in TangentNote with “previous note” “next note” relationships. It is also more structured than Obsidian’s standard graph view because you can have different link types and then automatically have them appear in a certain direction (“parent links” always above, “child links” always below, previous/next to left/right etc.) Of course, it’s much more manual because you need to define links and their types to get most out of it..