Instead of using "inline notes" to attach notes to an outline item, why not just put the same notes in subitems for that item? This is why I don't miss the absence of "inline notes" so much.

One advantage of using "inline notes", I suppose, is the ability to have consistent formatting for all inline notes. Whereas, if subitems are used in lieu of inline notes, different levels of subitems may have different automatic formats applied to them.

On the other hand - if inline notes are used - I would want to have the ability to split and join the inline notes, and easy conversion of inline notes to regular outline items and vice versa.

jim

jimspoon wrote:

Instead of using "inline notes" to attach notes to an outline item, why
not just put the same notes in subitems for that item? This is why I
don't miss the absence of "inline notes" so much.

One advantage of using "inline notes", I suppose, is the ability to have
consistent formatting for all inline notes. Whereas, if subitems are
used in lieu of inline notes, different levels of subitems may have
different automatic formats applied to them.

On the other hand - if inline notes are used - I would want to have the
ability to split and join the inline notes, and easy conversion of
inline notes to regular outline items and vice versa.

Inline notes are important to me for two reasons. First, they can contain large quotes and comments that may not display properly in sub-items (or may not even be pasted in due to restricted no. of characters allowed, such as in Bonsai).

Second, for transitioning from outlining to writing. With inline notes you can actually start writing your draft in the outliner, whereby the outline items turn into headings and subheadings. This is why Outline 4D for example can be used as a writing tool, not only as an outlining tool.

jimspoon wrote:

On the other hand - if inline notes are used - I would want to have the
ability to split and join the inline notes, and easy conversion of
inline notes to regular outline items and vice versa.

This is fairly easy to do in Outline 4D:
Split Event (Shift+Enter)
Merge Events (Alt+Shift+Backspace)

Dr Andus wrote:

jimspoon wrote:
>On the other hand - if inline notes are used - I would want to have the
>ability to split and join the inline notes, and easy conversion of
>inline notes to regular outline items and vice versa.

This is fairly easy to do in Outline 4D:
Split Event (Shift+Enter)
Merge Events (Alt+Shift+Backspace)

How about converting outline items inline notes?

jimspoon wrote:

Dr Andus wrote:
jimspoon wrote:
>>On the other hand - if inline notes are used - I would want to have
the
>>ability to split and join the inline notes, and easy conversion of
>>inline notes to regular outline items and vice versa.
>
>This is fairly easy to do in Outline 4D:
>Split Event (Shift+Enter)
>Merge Events (Alt+Shift+Backspace)

How about converting outline items inline notes?

Essentially that's what "Merge Events" does in Outline 4D.

Certainly sub-items can be a substitute for inline notes, but here are a few reasons I find inline notes more appropriate (some of these depend upon how the outliner in questions works):

1. The advantage of outlining software is the ability to move topics around at will. If you begin to mix notes and sub-topics, you have to start making a mental distinction between the two as you're shuffling your topics around. That is just one more distraction. With inline notes, they remain attached to the topic in question, whether you demote it or promote it, so you don't have to think about keeping the notes together with the heading, while leaving the sub-topics behind.

2. You can maintain a visual distinction between inline notes and sub-topics, which can be helpful.

3. The topic headings in an outline are often just cheat sheets -- that is, they're there to remind you want you want to write about, but they may not even end up in the final draft... it is the notes themselves that are the substance of your paper. A good outliner (and there are few, if any of these), should facilitate writing of the notes with a clear, clean editor. Whereas, the topic headings are often edited in small boxes. That makes it harder to really conentrate on the writing.

4. With inline notes, you can choose to view them or not. Want an overview of your topics/sub-topics, close the notes. But if you've got notes as sub-items, mixed in wth sub-topics, this gets a lot messier.

Admittedly, some of these are more theoretical than practicial, since few, if any, of today's outliners actually treat inline notes as they should be treated... as mini-documents associated with a topic.

Just my two cents.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

few, if any, of today's outliners actually treat inline notes as they
should be treated... as mini-documents associated with a topic.

What do you mean by "mini-documents associated with a topic"? Isn't that what the currently available crop of outliners with inline notes can do?

- Maxthink
- LexisNexis Notemap 2
- Inspiration
- UV Outliner
- Outline 4D
- Freeplane

Dr Andus wrote:

What do you mean by "mini-documents associated with a topic"? Isn't that
what the currently available crop of outliners with inline notes can do?

- Maxthink
- LexisNexis Notemap 2
- Inspiration
- UV Outliner
- Outline 4D
- Freeplane

I hate to be a broken record, but for the best example of what I mean by "mini-document," I'd refer you to how GrandView worked. Text associated with a topic could be edited inline or in its own dedicated word processing window. The text could be very long (don't remember if there was a limit -- being DOS, there probably was). Writing inline notes in GrandView wasn't too far from the experience of WordStar or other state-of-the-art word processors of the time.

I'm not familiar with all the applications you've listed, but of the ones I am familiar with, I believe the inline note editing falls far short of feeling like a full-fledged word processor. For example, when editing a note in the Inspiration outliner, you can't focus in only on the text of the note. The formating toolbar is pretty sparce. I feel comfortable writing a single paragraph. Basically, it really is just a space for notes.

So that's what I mean.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I hate to be a broken record, but for the best example of what I mean by
"mini-document," I'd refer you to how GrandView worked. Text associated
with a topic could be edited inline or in its own dedicated word
processing window. The text could be very long (don't remember if there
was a limit -- being DOS, there probably was). Writing inline notes in
GrandView wasn't too far from the experience of WordStar or other
state-of-the-art word processors of the time.

I see. Yes, you're right, GrandView's document view was pretty neat and I have't seen it implemented elsewhere either.

You can get something vaguely similar with Outline 4D, if you switch to Timeline view and hit Ctrl+3 (maximises the selected note), but edges of some of the other notes may still hang into the picture. Regarding RTF though, O4D can do the basics.

A thought:

Treat inline notes like footnotes. In your outline, create three major topics:
I. The main outline
II. A listing of the inline notes (see below)
III. A list of footnotes

Every time you want to add an inline note, add a code, such as "i213" to your outline topic and then in Topic II create a new subtopic with header such as "i213" or "" followed by the note.

Search will quickly find any "inline" note you want.

Do the same thing for footnotes.

One more thing: Paper -- remember that? Keep a running list on paper of the inline note codes (e.g. "i213") so you don't lose track.

Also, if you want, you can include in the main outline a couple of words to go along with the code (e.g. "i213") to help identify the content of the note.

Steve, in between Grandview and Ecco Pro, I used MS Word as my outliner. Outline levels appeared in the usual tree-like fashion in "outline view", with levels distinguished by degrees of indentation. In document view, the indentation is replaced by different formatting for the different headline levels.

But attached to any outline item/heading, you could have "body text". It appeared inline in "outline view".

So maybe to this extent MS Word would give you the inline "mini-document" that you like ... but I don't think you could edit it in a separate window as in Grandview.

forgot to say ... while in "outline view" the "body text" has rudimentary formatting, you can switch to "document view" and apply all the formatting you want. But in document view the "body text" is not isolated from other parts of the document, as in Grandview.