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Noteliner adds tables
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Posted by jimspoon
Jul 6, 2011 at 05:20 PM
I don’t get Noteliner at all. The “pages” confuse me. The keystrokes are counter-intuitive to me. For example, Ctrl-PgDn hoists, and Ctrl-PgUp dehoists. (Noteliner uses the concept of “drilling down” rather than “hoisting up”.) Also I find Noteliner lacking in keystrokes for navigating, collapsing/expanding, reordering etc. when compared say, to Ecco. The manual doesn’t give a keystroke for moving an item up/down among siblings, I can’t find anyway to do it. I’ve tried some of the obvious candidates (alt-up), nothing works.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 6, 2011 at 07:06 PM
Jim,
You can move notes up and down the outline, but the process is a little obscure until you learn what it is (I didn’t know it until I e-mailed the developer a few minutes ago so I could respond to your comments). You first have to select the entire line, an extra step, but a pretty small one. With the cursor on the note in question, just use shift-down arrow. Then the entire note is selected, including the bullet. Once the line is selected, use the control key in conjunction with the up and down arrows to move the note around.
One caveat, the shift-down arrow selection process does not seem to work for the last note in the outline. In that case you’ll have to use the mouse to click in the far left column (where the reveal triangles live) to select the note.
Steve
jimspoon wrote:
>I don’t get Noteliner at all. The “pages” confuse me. The keystrokes are
>counter-intuitive to me. For example, Ctrl-PgDn hoists, and Ctrl-PgUp dehoists.
>(Noteliner uses the concept of “drilling down” rather than “hoisting up”.) Also I
>find Noteliner lacking in keystrokes for navigating, collapsing/expanding,
>reordering etc. when compared say, to Ecco. The manual doesn’t give a keystroke for
>moving an item up/down among siblings, I can’t find anyway to do it. I’ve tried some of
>the obvious candidates (alt-up), nothing works.
Posted by Sam Hawksworth
Jul 6, 2011 at 07:41 PM
Hi Jim,
I’m the developer of Noteliner. I have to admit that I didn’t realize that hoisting was a clearer concept to people than drilling down. It that is the case I’m happy to rename and reconfigure the hot keys. If there are any missing hot keys I’m happy to add them, that’s the easy part! I’ll make Alt-Up and Alt down raise and lower notes compared with siblings.
It is hard for me to judge what is intuitive since I’ve been using Noteliner for about 17 years at this point. So it is hard for me to understand what is confusing about “pages” or lists of notes. Perhaps you could explain? Noteliner is designed around the idea that if you have a structured approach to your information then entering and managing it is much faster. For example, if one page (list of notes) is a list of project names, those would probably all be underlined or bolded. Shift-Ctrl B lets you bold all your project names with one press. Much of the formatting (the way I use it) in noteliner is at the page level because I always put similar notes together on a page.
To me, in the end it is a simple outline tool combined with a filtering capability that allows you to very quickly keep track of information, and the filter that information to see what you need to actually do. At work, if I need to know what I should be doing next I press Ctrl-2 (now I can click on the A on the tool bar) and Noteliner shows me everything that I have marked for attention or that needed following up.
Tables add structure to an outline and a second dimension. They allow you to continue the outline horizontally rather than vertically. In a table the first column is the parent, the other columns are their children. The table gives you an easy way to specify and see that the first child of every note on a page is “status” the second child is “contact” for example.
Hopefully I haven’t muddied the waters even more. The bottom line is, if you think there are missing hotkeys, or better language I can use in Noteliner that will make it more intuitive and quicker/easier to use let me know! I’ll make the two changes I mentioned above.
Hope you will give it another try!
Sam
Posted by jimspoon
Jul 7, 2011 at 02:49 AM
Hi Sam,
Nice of you to post. I should gone through manual.nte again before posting - it makes your concepts more clear.
So much depends on what one is used to (in my case Ecco), so that another approach seems “wrong”, which of course is not at all true. Your existing users are used to the Noteliner scheme, and you wouldn’t want to make changes that would seem “wrong” to them! :) For example, to someone used to the idea of “ctrl-pgdn” to drill down, it would seem wrong to use it for “dehoist” instead.
If you use alt-up and alt-down for moving items, then you might also want to consider alt-left and alt-right as an alternative means for indenting and outdenting. That way you can do all the moving you want to do simply by holding down the alt key while using the arrow keys to position the item where it needs to be in the hierarchy.
You also might want to consider some more hot keys to expand and collapse. Ecco has handy options for expanding and collapsing from the keyboard. Ctrl+number expands and or collapses the whole outline to specified level number. For example, Ctrl-2 shows all first and second level items. Ctrl-Shift-number expands and collapses the current item to the specified level. So I find myself expanding and collapsing by using the Ctrl-Shift-1 or Ctrl-Shift-2. I guess i found it easy to remember because the key assignments are parallel to the “global” Ctrl-number expansion. But I know other people must prefer other keystrokes for expand/collapse - they might think I’m nuts to use a three finger chord for a simple thing like that. And I know you already have Ctrl-number assigned for another purpose and you shouldn’t mess with that.
You have a nice program as it is!
jim
Sam Hawksworth wrote:
>Hi Jim,
>
>I’m the developer of Noteliner. I have to admit that I didn’t realize that
>hoisting was a clearer concept to people than drilling down. It that is the case I’m
>happy to rename and reconfigure the hot keys. If there are any missing hot keys I’m
>happy to add them, that’s the easy part! I’ll make Alt-Up and Alt down raise and lower
>notes compared with siblings.
>
>It is hard for me to judge what is intuitive since I’ve
>been using Noteliner for about 17 years at this point. So it is hard for me to understand
>what is confusing about “pages” or lists of notes. Perhaps you could explain?
>Noteliner is designed around the idea that if you have a structured approach to your
>information then entering and managing it is much faster. For example, if one page
>(list of notes) is a list of project names, those would probably all be underlined or
>bolded. Shift-Ctrl B lets you bold all your project names with one press. Much of the
>formatting (the way I use it) in noteliner is at the page level because I always put
>similar notes together on a page.
>
>To me, in the end it is a simple outline tool
>combined with a filtering capability that allows you to very quickly keep track of
>information, and the filter that information to see what you need to actually do. At
>work, if I need to know what I should be doing next I press Ctrl-2 (now I can click on the A
>on the tool bar) and Noteliner shows me everything that I have marked for attention or
>that needed following up.
>
>Tables add structure to an outline and a second
>dimension. They allow you to continue the outline horizontally rather than
>vertically. In a table the first column is the parent, the other columns are their
>children. The table gives you an easy way to specify and see that the first child of
>every note on a page is “status” the second child is “contact” for example.
>
>
>Hopefully I haven’t muddied the waters even more. The bottom line is, if you think
>there are missing hotkeys, or better language I can use in Noteliner that will make it
>more intuitive and quicker/easier to use let me know! I’ll make the two changes I
>mentioned above.
>
>Hope you will give it another try!
>Sam
Posted by Sam Hawksworth
Jul 7, 2011 at 02:26 PM
Hi Jim,
I agree that there is always a danger that existing users have become used to the current approach. However, if there is an industry standard that switches things around a bit then it is probably better in the long run. The “hoist” concept is a better way of thinking about “focusing”. I put the two changes that I mentioned on the site this morning.
Steve Zeoli was kind enough to send me some screen shots of Ecco so I understood what you were referencing. It made me think that, in some ways, Noteliner has outgrown the original concept of a simple single pane todo-outliner. It’s being used in many ways that I never originally envisioned. As such, I think it probably does need an improved navigation system, like a pane of folders on the left. It is a shame to move away from the single pane outliner (although that would still be an option), but I think that is what I’m going to try to do for 3.3.
Sam