Does anyone know of any writing software that can tag paragraphs?

I'm really looking for something that I can mark the topic or category of the paragraph, and ideally sort or arrange this way.

I know I could do it in ECCO, so I suspect SQL Notes would do it, but I find it too steep a learning curve to learn.

I'm trying to help some people write clear paragraphs that flow into clear short papers, and helping them see the topics is valuable.

Anyways, if this makes any sense and you know of anything, I'd be grateful for the feedback

PS: I use a WinXP machine (unfortunately)

Hi,

If you are using Word then you could take a look at WritingOutliner:
http://writingoutliner.com/

Dominik

Dominik Holenstein wrote:

Hi,

If you are using Word then you could take a look at
WritingOutliner:
http://writingoutliner.com/

Dominik

Dominik, Thanks for pointing me there, but as I understand WritingOutliner, I'd have to make each paragraph a document in order to tag them.

For all. Here's what I'm doing now (please, no feedback that I'm insane - I already know that). I'm having the people I'm helping write in a spreadsheet. Each row is a paragraph of text, with the 1st column of the raw its topic tags, and the second column the actual paragraph.

Then, when they have their short papers (usually about 12-20 paragraphs) written, they can reorder them to make the ideas flow better.

That's what I'm doing. (Again, please don't ask why). I suspect ConnectedText will do this fairly easily, but I think the learning curve is a bit steep. It should be easy in Scrivener for Windows, but again - a steep learning curve.

If you know of anything, I'd love to hear. If I've made you feel good about yourself, cause there's someone crazier than you out there - great!

DaXiong wrote:

Does anyone know of any writing software that can tag paragraphs?

Atlas.ti could.
http://www.atlasti.com/
Very unfortunately, the price is simply crazy. I have been using it some time ago only because I was affiliated to the institution the owned multi-user license
Best regards!

DaXiong wrote:

If you know of anything, I'd love to hear. If I've made you feel good
about yourself, cause there's someone crazier than you out there - great!

Well, I'm right there with you in the crazy camp---I've wanted for a long time to do something like what describe, but each attempt eventually ran out of steam. Currently I'm using Tinderbox on a Mac, but as for XP software:

--InfoQube would be the most flexible and powerful option, I think, although as you said, it does involve a learning curve (similar to Tinderbox). You will have to decide whether to write paragraphs directly in the outliner or in the separate HTML pane. If you write directly in the outliner, this gives you the ability to "hoist" to specific paragraphs or mash up combinations of tagged paragraphs however you want. I tried this once and it basically worked, although it required a lot of tweaking. On the other hand, if you write in the HTML pane, it will have more of the feel of a word processor, a more flexible and powerful writing space, but you will thereby forfeit, as far as I know, a "combined view" whereby you could edit multiple paragraphs at once (unless you export them).

--ConnectedText is also very powerful, but again you will be limited in terms of a combined view. There are very powerful export options, but I never found a good way to move back and forth between editing in a combined view and editing a granular (paragraph-specific) view.

--Scrivener seems like it might hit the sweet spot, because the bar is significantly lower for getting started, and it's one of the only pieces of software that allows editing in both combined view and granual view. But the tagging and sorting features are far more limited than in either InfoQube of ConnectedText.

--Microsoft Word: I once came up with a highly complicated scheme using columns, margin notes, Outline View, and so forth, but it turned into a big mess. But it could be worth exploring.

--Excel is also a good option, especially given that it has rudimentary outlining. When I tried it out for this purpose, however, I became frustrated with the lack of power features like smart folders and so forth, and I abandoned it at the time for InfoQube.

--OneNote also comes close in certain ways, but falls short in others. When you want to view notes that have a certain tag, for instance, it copies the notes into the new view, such that any editing you do in that view will not affect the original copies of the notes. This is a major limitation, although in other respects it's excellent software.

--Whizfolders allows basic tagging, but also lacks editing in combined view (although a read-only combined view does exist).

--Emacs Org-Mode could also work very well, but the learning curve is a bit high.

--Finally, for what it's worth, I would mention Sense Editor from SilvaElm, although I don't think it offers tagging. But it might be worth encouraging the developer to add that feature, because what it does offer is a very powerful way to do outlining of individual paragraphs, while also offering, at the same time, a normal word processor view of the document.

Well, I'm sure I've forgotten something, but I hope that's helpful.

Best,

Lucas D

DaXiong wrote:

If you know of anything, I'd love to hear. If I've made you feel good
about yourself, cause there's someone crazier than you out there - great!

Well, I'm right there with you in the crazy camp---I've wanted for a long time to do something like what describe, but each attempt eventually ran out of steam. Currently I'm using Tinderbox on a Mac, but as for XP software:

--InfoQube would be the most flexible and powerful option, I think, although as you said, it does involve a learning curve (similar to Tinderbox). You will have to decide whether to write paragraphs directly in the outliner or in the separate HTML pane. If you write directly in the outliner, this gives you the ability to "hoist" to specific paragraphs or mash up combinations of tagged paragraphs however you want. I tried this once and it basically worked, although it required a lot of tweaking. On the other hand, if you write in the HTML pane, it will have more of the feel of a word processor, a more flexible and powerful writing space, but you will thereby forfeit, as far as I know, a "combined view" whereby you could edit multiple paragraphs at once (unless you export them).

--ConnectedText is also very powerful, but again you will be limited in terms of a combined view. There are very powerful export options, but I never found a good way to move back and forth between editing in a combined view and editing a granular (paragraph-specific) view.

--Scrivener seems like it might hit the sweet spot, because the bar is significantly lower for getting started, and it's one of the only pieces of software that allows editing in both combined view and granual view. But the tagging and sorting features are far more limited than in either InfoQube of ConnectedText.

--Microsoft Word: I once came up with a highly complicated scheme using columns, margin notes, Outline View, and so forth, but it turned into a big mess. But it could be worth exploring.

--Excel is also a good option, especially given that it has rudimentary outlining. When I tried it out for this purpose, however, I became frustrated with the lack of power features like smart folders and so forth, and I abandoned it at the time for InfoQube.

--OneNote also comes close in certain ways, but falls short in others. When you want to view notes that have a certain tag, for instance, it copies the notes into the new view, such that any editing you do in that view will not affect the original copies of the notes. This is a major limitation, although in other respects it's excellent software.

--Whizfolders allows basic tagging, but also lacks editing in combined view (although a read-only combined view does exist).

--Emacs Org-Mode could also work very well, but the learning curve is a bit high.

--Finally, for what it's worth, I would mention Sense Editor from SilvaElm, although I don't think it offers tagging. But it might be worth encouraging the developer to add that feature, because what it does offer is a very powerful way to do outlining of individual paragraphs, while also offering, at the same time, a normal word processor view of the document.

Well, I'm sure I've forgotten something, but I hope that's helpful.

Best,

Lucas D

Lucas ... thank you (well, until you said Emacs *L*)

That's a great survey, and some programs I hadn't considered. Appreciate the timely feedback, Daxiong

Lucas Wrote:

Finally, for what it?s worth, I would mention Sense Editor from SilvaElm, although I don?t think it offers tagging. But it might be worth >encouraging the developer to add that feature, because what it does offer is a very powerful way to do outlining of individual paragraphs, while >also offering, at the same time, a normal word processor view of the document.

As the developer of Sense, I'm currently working towards implementing a ViewPoints feature that will enable "fast view" referencing to any Sense document content, both the current working document, and external - the existing Preview feature implemented for cross-document hyperlinking should possibly yield some idea of performance. However, Viewpoints will be provided as a separate selectable view within Sense Professional's lower screen. I'm not sure if this will exactly meet the "tagging" requirement but may be a step towards it - I'm very open to suggestions to how the tagging might work?

The intention is for this to be available in the 1.13.0 release along with other new features such as a ScratchPad and an Outline view --- this latter view will be a stripped down version of the Content Browser showing just the headings (tree) hierarchy as a tab page- although structural editing and navigation is provided via the existing Content Browser, its deep paragraph level tree hierarchy can make simple heading-level navigation cumbersome. I'm also considering implementing a Hoist feature for this same release. I'm afraid I cannot offer a release date yet.

Dave Ewins

http://www.silvaelm.com

I've just discovered Sense as a result of this thread, Dave - aha, looks interesting! Could it represent a first step to a genuinely semantic info manager (i.e. one that doesn't need tags, because it puts them in for you)? One of the nicest implementations of that is the MultiDex in Circus Ponies Notebook, but I'm sure there are more flexible ways of doing the same thing, perhaps in a separate view that allows you to combine/separate (computer-identified) tags and view the results immediately?

I look forward to evaluating Sense, in any case.

Cheers,
Bill

DaXiong wrote:

I'm having the people I'm helping write in a spreadsheet.
Each row is a paragraph of text, with the 1st column of
the raw its topic tags, and the second column the actual paragraph.

I would expect some of the writer oriented tools to be able to provide such a functionality; then again, I don't expect them to handle collaborative writing very well.

Here's my take; I believe that some information management software discussed here is more suitable for providing alternative views of textual content. However, information management software is usually not particularly suited for writing.

- Surfulater has two alternative trees for organising information: a usual folder organisation and a tag tree view. Note: it is basically a single-user program; I don't know how well it fares when a knowledge base is shared among several users.

- Evernote relies much more on tagging, as otherwise information can be filed only in notebooks and stacks of notebooks (two levels and that's it). The Windows version now allows shared notebooks which is a great feature. The basic version, which should be good enough, is free.

- Working with Excel, you might want to take a look at the XL Notes plugin http://xlnotes.com/ which allows for long rich text notes in Excel

- Citavi is, as far as I know, the only software that will show you "stacked up, scrolling previews of whichever items you multiselect"; see this discussion for more: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/2414/5

By the way, how do you share the spreadsheet among your collaborators? Have you tried Google Cloud Connect?

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

By the way, how do you
share the spreadsheet among your collaborators? Have you tried Google Cloud
Connect?

Alexander, we collaborate the old fashioned way - I visit them and look at what they've got. (Yeah, I'm old school and insane, who knew).

I've got some good suggestions here, and I see the topic has spawned a side conversation (why do mine always do that? *L*), I think we can let this go ...

Dave Ewins wrote:

I'm not sure if this will exactly meet the "tagging"
requirement but may be a step towards it - I'm very open to suggestions to how the
tagging might work?

Hi Dave,

great to see you here. I can point to Surfulater as a product making excellent use of tags as an alternative organisation system. See these two articles:

http://blog.surfulater.com/2008/10/20/surfulater-version-3-released/

http://blog.surfulater.com/2009/07/28/knowledge-tree-filters-have-arrived-in-surfulater-version-31600/

I can think of several ways that tags can be used in a writing environment like Sense. One is to selectively expand/collapse text objects to focus one's writing on specific themes/topics and ensuring consistency from one mention to the next. Another (technically more complex I imagine) is to reorganise the text on the selected tags.

You could try Noteliner which tags by paragraph.
www.noteliner.org

Terry

Alex Wrote:

I can think of several ways that tags can be used in a writing environment like Sense. One is to selectively expand/collapse text objects to focus >one?s writing on specific themes/topics and ensuring consistency from one mention to the next. Another (technically more complex I imagine) is >to reorganise the text on the selected tags.

Hi Alex

I've finally released Sense Version 1.13.0 with the new ViewPoints feature mentioned a few posts back. I think this goes some way towards meeting your "technically more complex" reorganisation on tagging suggestion. I may need to go that litte bit further to enable creation (Export/Printing) of new documents based on ViewPoint content -let me know if that is what is required?

The ViewPoints feature enables focused editing on document material whether from the current Working Document or external Sense documents (in different languages if you need). ViewPoints provides a multi-hoist capability whereby material may be expanded and collapsed from view within a categorized tree hierarchy that can be reorganized swiftly to suit.

While ViewPoints is specific to Sense Professional, new Outline and ScratchPad Views are also provided with Sense Personal.

More information and downloads are available from [href=http://www.silvaelm.com/download.shtml}Silva Elm[/href].



.

I regularly tag paragraphs in Emacs.

You must create a separate outline level for the paragraph to tag it.

* level one

bla bla

** level two ::tag::

bla bla tagged paragraph

After reading the OP and Lucas' nice post, I revise my answer.

The real question is, how do you rearrange your writing.

You're basically looking for BrainStormWFO. There's no tagging. Instead, you give paragraphs one-line titles. Then you arrange the titles in the logical sequence. This is the fastest way to restructure your writing. It also allows you to shift individual sentences that don't fit with the logical flow. You can rearrange title order, then rewrite titles, then adjust match of sentences below titles, all in a feedback loop, until the flow of ideas makes sense.

After you've done this, you switch to text editor mode again to rewrite your transitions.

For minor restructuring, I just use emacs in collapsed outline view, with the same strategy of good titles for paragraphs or sections, and then rearranging. Using indirect buffers greatly expands this capability.

Vim or whatever would work too.