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The ultimate outliner
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Posted by jimspoon
Jan 25, 2013 at 11:15 PM
pjbw wrote:
Doctor,
>I notice Bonsai appears frequently in your wishlist.
>I have used ECCO as a general purpose outliner for years for contact
>lists, family trees, diaries, work schedules, software evaluation, etc,
>etc.However the software has been getting increasingly ‘fragile’ over
>the years (I keep getting a warning that ECCO has failed; please
>restart, which I can ignore).
pjbw, have you tried the Ecco Extension authored by Slangmgh? If not, you may be amazed by how much it extends the capabilities of Ecco Pro. And a lot of the error messages you can get in Ecco are caused by the Ecco’s limitations on the number of items you can put in a database or a folder; the Ecco Extension does not remove these limits completely, but it does do quite a lot in that regard. In other words ... if you used Ecco Extension, you might find that it makes Ecco a lot less fragile.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 25, 2013 at 11:40 PM
jimspoon wrote:
>pjbw, have you tried the Ecco Extension authored by Slangmgh? If not,
>you may be amazed by how much it extends the capabilities of Ecco Pro.
>And a lot of the error messages you can get in Ecco are caused by the
>Ecco’s limitations on the number of items you can put in a database or a
>folder; the Ecco Extension does not remove these limits completely, but
>it does do quite a lot in that regard. In other words ... if you used
>Ecco Extension, you might find that it makes Ecco a lot less fragile.
>
I used Ecco Extension on my previous office PC and it worked great. However, Norton Antivirus keeps deleting it from my new PC (not that new), saying it is a threat. Don’t believe it is a threat, but I can’t convince NA of this and it isn’t worth the trouble to try to remedy the situation. Bummer.
Posted by jimspoon
Jan 26, 2013 at 05:58 AM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I used Ecco Extension on my previous office PC and it worked great.
>However, Norton Antivirus keeps deleting it from my new PC (not that
>new), saying it is a threat. Don’t believe it is a threat, but I can’t
>convince NA of this and it isn’t worth the trouble to try to remedy the
>situation. Bummer.
Steve, I knew I had seen something recently about this, and I found the following posted in the ecco_pro yahoo group:
“Starting with EE v4.5.6.6, there is a reduced chance that your AV software will incorrectly think EE contains malware. So if you are using an older version—
and that concerns you—you might want to upgrade.”
You may want to give EE another try - the current version of EE is 4.6.6.0.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 28, 2013 at 12:10 AM
I’ve managed to narrow down my requirements for my ideal set-up and workflow for academic writing (which must be similar to other non-fiction and perhaps even fiction writing) to the following:
1) a notes database that allows for hierarchical categorisation of large number of notes (e.g. as an outline that can serve as Table of Contents).
2) a single-pane outliner that can be turned into a dual-pane outliner by linking notes from above database to outline items.
3) another single-pane outliner that can be viewed alongside the dual-pane outliner in step 2 and which has inline notes as well as multiple headings for reverse outlining.
Ideally there is easy integration between these 3 aspects and steps, either as drag and drop or via import/export.
I have implemented the above system as follows: for 1) using ConnectedText as a database and CT’s Project Outline pane as the “table of contents”. For 2) using CT’s Outline pane with links to CT’s notes. For 3), using Outline 4D.
The only thing preventing me from using CT for step 3 as well is that CT only allows one view/edit window displayed at a time. So if you’re looking at a note in step 2, you can’t simultaneously be writing a draft in CT.
If there was another view/edit window, one could use CT for reverse outlining as well, using the text “folding” feature that can fold sub-headings and hide their text content, and the Table of Contents pane, which displays the hierarchy of headings. Though I have to say I enjoy doing the writing and reverse outlining in Outline 4D, due to all the visualisations and colouring options.
Are there any other PIMs, outliners, writing tools that could emulate this system?
Some further description/justification for the above workflow can be found here:
http://drandus.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/academic-writing-process-and-associated-tools/
http://drandus.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/academic-writing-workflow-with-connectedtext-freeplane-and-outline-4d/
Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 28, 2013 at 12:24 AM
Dr Andus wrote:
>The only thing preventing me from using CT for step 3 as well is that CT
>only allows one view/edit window displayed at a time. So if you’re
>looking at a note in step 2, you can’t simultaneously be writing a draft
>in CT.
Well, I didn’t want to give the impression that it is not possible to use CT for this step at all. But it’s not convenient. You either have to switch back and forth between the topic you are viewing and the one you’re writing in, or you need to do the writing in its Notes pane, which is like Notepad, or you need to somehow enable some other editor in its browser pane.
>If there was another view/edit window, one could use CT for reverse
>outlining as well, using the text “folding” feature that can fold
>sub-headings and hide their text content, and the Table of Contents
>pane, which displays the hierarchy of headings.
Again, CT can already work as a reverse outliner, but you can’t view another topic at the same time.
So let me repeat the question:
>Are there any other PIMs, outliners, writing tools that could emulate
>this system?