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inline notes
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 21, 2013 at 02:25 PM
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.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 21, 2013 at 03:36 PM
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
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 21, 2013 at 04:03 PM
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.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 21, 2013 at 04:20 PM
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.
Posted by Cassius
Jan 21, 2013 at 04:27 PM
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.