Hello,

I'm looking for a outliner for my (fiction) writing works. I need a very accurate feature, I've tested dozens of outliners and they all lack it, so I'm afraid I'm doomed to CRIMT ("T" because I Test all, I don't Purchase all... yet). I always read the posts of the great experts on this forum, and I would be very happy to get their help on this specific question.

A foreword : I use Treepad to gather data and ideas, SuperNoteCard for structuring the story and Word for the final text (on Windows).

What I would love is an outliner able to propose me *associations* on the fly. Indeed, when I write, I constantly gather some keywords out of my new text and use them to do a manual search in Treepad to discover which ideas, snippets and notes could be used to complete and improve this new text.

I simply think that this part of the writing process could be automated in the outliner : an outliner which would scan my notes constantly, while I type a new note, and show me all the notes that could be linked to this new note (the scan algorithm is a full-text search of all the words of the new note being typed) would be heaven.

I know Treepad doesn't do this, does anyone know a tool which would do this ?
Thanks in advance,

Sebastien

Sebastien

What I would love is an outliner able to propose me *associations* on the
fly. Indeed, when I write, I constantly gather some keywords out of my new text and use
them to do a manual search in Treepad to discover which ideas, snippets and notes could
be used to complete and improve this new text.

I simply think that this part of the
writing process could be automated in the outliner : an outliner which would scan my
notes constantly, while I type a new note, and show me all the notes that could be linked
to this new note (the scan algorithm is a full-text search of all the words of the new
note being typed) would be heaven.

The only tool I know that does something in that direction is Devonthink - but that is a Macintosh application.

What I mean by "in that direction" is: As far as I know, DT does not pop up a window suggesting links when you type a new note. After you save a new note, a button called "See also" appears that lets you find related notes. The "Classify" feature allows you to have DT automatically add the new note to an existing group of notes. Both features use keywords inside the note(s).

On the Windows side, I haven't seen anything comparable (but I do not know ADM later than vs2 and Zoot).

Bye, Franz

Sabastien,

Unfortunately, I am afraid that you are right, that you will not find what you are looking for... though it does sound like it would be a wonderful feature to have.

I wonder if this is a facility that Tinderbox (for the Mac) has... if so, they are planning to introduce a PC version... although that's been in the works for ages. Anyway, that's the only possible glimmer of hope that I can give you.

Steve Z.

Sebastien,

This really intrigued me, I still haven't figured out what terms to use in a Google search.

I did come across these links, and I'm wondering if this is on track to what you are looking for?

PR Release:
http://exitpath.prwebdirect.com/releases/2005/3/prweb219298.php

Which led to this link - eXpertSystem Author:
http://richcontent.blogs.com/creative_questions/

Which all leads back to this HomePage:
http://www.ideacenter.com/

This last link is very confusing as to just what their product is - seems to be a lot of different flavors on the same theme.


Later,
KenA

Stephen

I wonder if this is a facility that Tinderbox (for the Mac) has...

I am afraid Tinderbox does not have that capability. (at least, I couldn't find it - speaking about the current 3.6.1 release).

Franz

Franz, Steve and Ken,

Thank you very much for your answers.

I am very surprised that only DevonThink has this kind of feature. It looks brilliant !
This will be the first app I'll purchase if I switch one day to the Mac.
I can't understand why other outliners (especially on windows) do not try to have such "AI" features (even if the "AI" terminology is a bit oversized to describe this).

Ken, eXpertSystem is a kind of "predefined cards stock" with intelligent questions made by "experts" to help and guide brainless people during a work session supposed to be creative. They have two (overpriced and useless) products for Fiction writers:
http://richcontent.blogs.com/creative_writing_software/
http://richcontent.blogs.com/expert_screenwriter_softw/

Regards,

Sebastien

Sebastien

What I would love is an outliner able to propose me *associations* on the
fly. Indeed, when I write, I constantly gather some keywords out of my new text and use
them to do a manual search in Treepad to discover which ideas, snippets and notes could
be used to complete and improve this new text.

Although, this will not be of much help to the majority, but the Remembrance addin for Emacs would seem to do exactly what you want.

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs-en?action=browse;oldid=RemembranceAgent;id=RemembranceAgents

As I am still setting my Emacs system up, looking at this will be some way down the line, but it would seem to be a way of combining a good (multi-platform) outliner with the feature you are looking for.

Graham

Thank you Graham,

Unfortunately, it works on unix based systems only, and I can't imagine working with an engineer-designed word processor like Emacs ;-)
Anyway, Remembrance is very very interesting, and I really hope that developers of outliners will soon consider adding such features into their app.

BTW, I think I've found one after reading the following on shashdot:

"The Literary Machine [literarymachine.com] provides a lot of power in a Windows environment. The basic version was free last I checked, though he's ceased development on it in favor of the Pro version ($20), which is being actively developed and integrates a number of new features (but I haven't tried it yet). It organizes everything based on a non-hierarchical keyword association system, and while it takes some getting used to (and can be downright messy sometimes), it does allow for the discovery of connections between notes that you might not have put together otherwise."

source:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/16/236216&mode=thread&tid=185

This software is certainly good, but the UI is a tribute to the computer first ages! Has anyone used it successfully ?

Thanks again,
Sebastien

Sebastien,

Unfortunately, it works on unix based systems only,

Seems to also work on the Mac, but I'm having problems finding anything positive about a Windows version. It also seems that development has stopped. A problem with Emacs, a rather attractive Emacs gantt chart tool that I got excited about also seems to be no longer developed either

and I can’t imagine working with an engineer-designed word processor like Emacs ;-)

Well, I have only been using it for a few weeks (in Windows, and spurred on by the thread on using text editors) and I am finding it a great writing tools, with some really nice wrinkles such keystrokes to transpose characters, words, sentences and paragraphs, and I like the fact that nearly all the window is used for text maximising the information I can read when I have several windows open, and I like the outlining and file management capability I have become a fan, and have moved my time management and free form data management into Emacs as well as my writing and small spreadsheet work, but its a steep learning curve.

Not sure about the "engineer-designed bit Stallman was a software developer interested in music and dance and has written science fiction novels. Now I think he is a "full time" political activist.

“The Literary Machine [literarymachine.com] provides a lot of power in a Windows environment.

This software is certainly good, but the UI is a tribute to the computer first ages! Has anyone used it successfully ?

I bought a copy years ago, but couldn't get on with it. Nor does it work the way remembrence does, it relies on you assigning multiple key words and synonyms, which it then recalls via search or hyperlink - if I remember correctly.

My main recollection of it being that it was very difficult to get to grips with, and I gave up - even though ot showed promise.

Graham

Hi,

Everybody interests in such a writing software (a Word addin) that pretty much combines Microsoft Word?, treepad and SuperNoteCard together to make the whole writing process smoother, check my reply to Sebastien in another similar thread:

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1074/25

Writing Outliner - Turn Microsoft Word into an all-in-one writing software.
http://WritingOutliner.com

Hi Sebastien,

perhaps Zulu Pad does what you want? It's not an outliner in the classic sense but "senses" Links to contents you have already written. Only started to experiment with it myself recently. There's a free and a pro version. http://www.gersic.com/zulupad/help.html

jester

(1) There are several Linux applications.
(a) RedNotebook.
RedNotebook, as you type it shows a "cloud" of words and concepts. It initially stores all information in a calendar format, but you can just create a "Category" called "My Novel," and create sections by chapter, by concept, or whatever else strikes your fancy.
When you are finished, export to html or similar. (This is closest to what you want.)
(b) Basket NotePads -- too complicated to explain, but it has a graphical format and uses text boxes.
(2) Linux or Windows
(a) MindRaider http://mindraider.sourceforge.net/
(b) Use a wiki. If you have a list of concepts that you want to use, make them into wikiwords (i.e. throat surgery becomes ThroatSurgery). Wikiwords are easy to find. You can always do a search-and-replace later.

Not all wiki implementations requires words to be in Camel Case. Many use double brackets to mark words, like ConnectedText, WikidPad, etc.

Susan, thanks for the heads up on RedNotebook and Basket NotePad. I am new to Linux and still on the look out for information management software. These do look interesting.

It suddenly occurs to me, would this just be the kind of functionality found in the WordPress "Related Posts" plug-in?

And then I'm left to wonder, has anyone tried using WordPress as a notes database?

You've got categories and tag views, pages and sub-pages, linking, searching and all that fun stuff crammed into a MySQL database

shatteredmindofbob wrote:

You've got categories and tag views, pages and
sub-pages, linking, searching and all that fun stuff crammed into a MySQL database

Maybe, but I would never consider using WordPress, nor any other online Content Management System for that matter, as a PIM (if that's what you are suggesting) for the sheer inconvenience of it: lack of speed, tools, functionalities etc.

For me it's always been the other way around: having an easy way to publish (part of) my notes conveniently organised within a desktop PIM. By far, the best I've ever found until now are Evernote's public notebooks .

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Maybe, but I would never consider using WordPress, nor any other online Content
Management System for that matter, as a PIM (if that's what you are suggesting) for the
sheer inconvenience of it: lack of speed, tools, functionalities etc.

True, but one could setup WordPress (or Drupal) locally... to do something like a "design-your-own" PIM. Of course, knowledge of WordPress (which I don't have) or Drupal (which I do) is required. For Drupal, CCK, Views, etc could be used to create some nice reports.

But neither of these are really outliners...

Hello everyone,

the following programs might not really be what you are looking for. They don't do an automatic AI-Search, but they show you links to other interesting notes based on the given keywords:

http://www.verzetteln.de/synapsen/
http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/index.php

I use the last one for my research. It is not so good at taking snippets from webpages or pdfs. But you can fill your notes with sources, attachments, links etc. And after giving the keywords, it will show you all other notes relating to this note. So you can jump from note to note - following your imagination :)

Greetings
M.Burg