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Footnotes?
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Posted by JG
Jul 16, 2007 at 11:49 PM
I have been looking for exactly this feature for some time now, as well as a bibliographical listing of the citations. There is a distinction to be made between software that manipulates data (i.e. particular times or dates) and one that manipulates text (i.e. paragraphs or pages). The latter often requires the author to keep track of her or his sources. Netmanage’s Ecco Pro is the best compromise I have found, but no citation component. IdeaMason works, but slowly. I have been using ndxCards for smaller projects. The citation output is rather limited, and the program has several quirks. But it works well enough, again for smaller projects. I have endnote only because my school provides it but it doesn’t allow the kind of text manipulation I want in an outliner. What I lust for is a form of PCoutline or Grandview that has a bibliographical component. I haven’t round anything like that yet.
Posted by Ken Ashworth
Jul 17, 2007 at 08:53 AM
Cassius wrote:
>Are there any reasonably priced one- or two-pane outliners/PIMs that have footnote
>capability? I’ll be writing one, possibly two, nonfiction, slightly technical
>volumes that will require some footnotes, but not a great many.
>
>Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Although I really don’t think that WebIdeaTree (WIT - http://www.webideatree.com) is the program that you’re looking for, it does offer some interesting features. Depending on the project, WIT may have something to offer.
Admittedly, its output is to html and its purpose is website generation and content management (and you’ve got to put up with “branded” pages), but it does provide for a biblio database (http://www.webideatree.com/mu-en/text/publications.html).
What I find interesting about WIT is the way it breaks down a page into structured elements, and allows for the inclusion/exclusion of these elements and their ordering on the page (CSS).
URL links, extenral doc links, and image links are available thru a site (project) wide respository. It also has the ability to create reciprocal links.
Another one that comes to mind is The Literary Machine (http://www.sommestad.com/lm.htm).
Although I’ve never had a reason to throw a project into this program, it may have something to offer.
Just throwin’ out some ideas.
Posted by Matty
Jul 17, 2007 at 03:12 PM
JG wrote:
>I have been looking for exactly this feature for some time now, as well as a
>bibliographical listing of the citations. There is a distinction to be made between
>software that manipulates data (i.e. particular times or dates) and one that
>manipulates text (i.e. paragraphs or pages). The latter often requires the author to
>keep track of her or his sources. Netmanage’s Ecco Pro is the best compromise I have
>found, but no citation component. IdeaMason works, but slowly. I have been using
>ndxCards for smaller projects. The citation output is rather limited, and the
>program has several quirks. But it works well enough, again for smaller projects. I
>have endnote only because my school provides it but it doesn’t allow the kind of text
>manipulation I want in an outliner. What I lust for is a form of PCoutline or Grandview
>that has a bibliographical component. I haven’t round anything like that yet.
To my mind, there is nothing yet adequately does what we are talking about. I am a historian, therefore citations and footnotes are central to my work. What I do is keep all my references in biblioscape. When I take notes, or have an idea, related to a specific reference, I write it in whizfolders, then tag it with one or more temporary citations from biblioscape. Now I can use Whizfolders to do what outliners do best: organize my ideas/research into a coherent structure. Truth is, however, I transport my writing into MS word earlier than I might otherwise because of the ability to create footnotes. BTW, biblioscape will then transform all of my temporary citations into formatted citations in any style I choose. I have done a fair amount of research, and biblioscape appears to me to be by far the most sophisticated reference management tool. I still have not switched over to v.7 for my work…well… because I’m lazy and comfortable with v.6, but I think people should keep an eye on the continued development of the program. It is already a great reference management program, and the developer is working hard to make it a very good note management program as well. I don’t think it will ever take the place of a true outliner, but as a primary repository for research I think it will soon be very good. The benefits of having reference management and notes management in the same program should be obvious.
P.S. I did try Idea Mason. Its nifty, seems promising, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way. Too, hermetic I think. Even if it was lightening fast, which it isn’t, it didn’t allow for as easy back and forth movement of information between itself and ms word, which is crucial to my work process.
Matt
Posted by Tom Colvin
Jul 18, 2007 at 01:33 PM
I’ve been intensely searching for and evaluating bibliographic and note-taking software to help me with a huge research project and eventual book. [While I trained centuries ago as a historian, this is the first time in decades that I’ve been confronted with rigorous documentation/footnoting requirements].
I agree with Matt that BIBLIOSCAPE is emerging as the strongest program of its type. I’ve recently downloaded version 7.0.1 and successfully imported my database from Citation 9 [which I’ve given up]. Version 7 does bring together in one place a reference database and note-taking capability. I really like what I see. However, the software still has bugs. A good many people who have upgraded from version 6 are reporting problems. And I’ve even encountered some problems with organizing my notes into an outline. Developer Paul Chen is very responsive and is working hard at bug fixes—he’s already up to version 7.4. He wrote me that he hopes to have the outlining problems fixed in version 7.5, which he hopes to make available soon.
ENDNOTE remains the industry standard, but I think it’s position will be severely challenged by BIBLIOSCAPE 7. ENDNOTE has a very clean interface, and everyone is more or less required to allow data conversion to ENDNOTE format. However, it’s note-taking capability is limited.
For what it’s worth, I’m writing in Word, each chapter in a separate file, using the Chapter-by-Chapter add-on to manage all the separate chapters. When I need to footnote, I jump to the end of the document, where I am accumulating my footnotes as part of the text, rather than utilizing Word’s footnote facility. There I copy and paste a few words from the text whict I need to document, then boldface those words. Then I turn to BIBLIOSCAPE, which easly presents me with a properly formatted citation for the source, to which I add the page number. This system of footnoting is beginning to spread, especially among writers aiming at a popular market.
Posted by Tom Colvin
Jul 18, 2007 at 01:45 PM
Opps, my post above got “published” before I was finished proof-reading it.
.
It’s BIBLIOSCAPE version 7.0.5 I’m now waiting for, not version 7.5.
A couple of days ago, I came across a video lecture online that explained how to use, my goodness, pen and paper for note-takiing! What a revolutionary idea…
Actually, the system he described makes a lot of sense, especially since we don’t yet have a full software solution. Go to:
, click on the MWC Online tab, and scroll down in the left sidebar to “sample video.” In the video window that will come up, you will see three samples—click on the bottom one with two speakers named in its title. The system they describe is simplistic, but effective. I went out immediately and bought a steno pad.
Tom