Single-pane outliner with inline notes and customisable column - is there such a thing?

I need to outline and write a complex chapter in matrix-style, i.e. besides the main line of argument there are several intersecting themes that need to be covered at the same time in each section. The best way to visualise it is as a table, however tables are not the best environments to carry on writing in.

I could construct this in Word, by creating a table with two columns, and in one column I use outline-style numbering of items and add notes, while in the second column I plan and track the other 5 or so themes that need to be covered.

The key here is visibility. I want to be able to see all of this in one view, rather than having to switch back and forth.

TreeSheets could be one candidate, but again, it's better for planning than for actual writing. I'd basically need something like Outline 4D with a column...

Perhaps some of the fiction writing tools might have something similar (?), as the above is bit like having to track certain characters across the story line.

I assume that the column(s) in Natara Bonsai are not sufficient, nor is the character follow-up in Outline 4D, as you already familiar with those tools.

So I understand that the additional column will itself have to carry a substantial amount of text to support the argumentation.

I can think of two solutions, both of which are not limited to two columns, but rather offering the full matrix experience:

XL notes, briefly discussed here in the past
http://xlnotes.com/

The very particular Notebox Disorganizer (freeware)
https://sites.google.com/site/squirreltechnologist/

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Thanks for the prompt suggestion.

I assume that the column(s) in Natara Bonsai are not sufficient, nor is

the character follow-up in Outline 4D, as you already familiar with
those tools.

So I understand that the additional column will itself have to carry a
substantial amount of text to support the argumentation.

Yes, I'd need a bit more space and freedom than the Bonsai columns can offer. As far as I know, in O4D the tracking stuff is not visible when in outline view, so one would need to switch back and forth. (Though O4D is still my fall-back option, as the screen can be shared between outline and timeline views, though it does get crowded quickly).

I can think of two solutions, both of which are not limited to two
columns, but rather offering the full matrix experience:

XL notes, briefly discussed here in the past
http://xlnotes.com/

The very particular Notebox Disorganizer (freeware)
https://sites.google.com/site/squirreltechnologist/

Thanks for the suggestions. Looking at them though my impression is that you can only see the selected item's note in the column (one column note at a time)? I'd prefer to have a single scrollable page overview of the whole matrix.

Actually I'm starting to think that ECCO might be appropriate for this. It doesn't have inline notes but the items seem to be able to handle longer notes, so they almost look like inline notes. I've never written anything in ECCO yet, so I hope I can figure out how to export stuff from it.

Dr Andus wrote:

Actually I'm starting to think that ECCO might be appropriate for this.
It doesn't have inline notes but the items seem to be able to handle
longer notes, so they almost look like inline notes. I've never written
anything in ECCO yet, so I hope I can figure out how to export stuff
from it.

Well, copy and paste into Word seems to work well enough, so it looks like I may have found the solution.

Dr Andus wrote:

I'd prefer to have a single scrollable page overview of the
whole matrix.

Hm, you could of course turn to Excel alone, but that's not very long-text friendly. I personally find Google Spreadsheet more amicable towards such structured writing, e.g. for grant proposals, where I want to keep a form's field description next to my actual text to help me focus. On the downside, Google Spreadsheet doesn't allow diversified formatting within a cell and has no outline (grouping) functionality as far as I am aware.

Best of all is OpenOffice/LibreOffice Sheet (or whatever they call it nowadays), which is rich-text-friendly (in a way that Excel, for example, isn't). You get none of the unstable, unpredictable behaviour of Excel in LibreOffice Sheet, partly because they're using the suite's built-in rich-text editor, I believe. This also means you can manipulate really large chunks of text without Excel's sudden "oh no, where's it all gone!?!" moments.

Oh, and like Excel, both versions of Sheet support outlining. It's not beautiful, but it works.

There's an older program called Notebox Disorganizer, which might be just what you are looking for. It's actually quite ingenious, and I wish it had been developed further. This seems to be merely a hobby project for the developer, who has promised a revised version for quite a while. Nevertheless, the current version works (at least on Windows 7), and uses the very matrix approach you describe, I think.

https://sites.google.com/site/squirreltechnologist/home/software

Steve Z.

P.S. Don't be fooled by the screenshot of Notebox, which makes it look like a spreadsheet. You can easily expand the cells to show much of the text.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

P.S. Don't be fooled by the screenshot of Notebox, which makes it look
like a spreadsheet. You can easily expand the cells to show much of the
text.

Steve & Alexander, thanks for the Notebox Disorganizer tip, it looks interesting indeed! However, I haven't been able to expand the row height (only the column width). I wonder if it's a Win7 64-bit limitation, or I just need to read the Help notes to figure out how to do it...

It's a little tricky figuring out how to expand row height:

There's a blue bar (the third element down from the top of the window). On its far left is a little box that displays the number of notes in your file (and if you click on it you can cycle through other stats about your file). Just to the right of that box are three smaller, square boxes. If you click on the third of these, the one with the up pointing triangle, you can expand the row height in two increments. The down pointing triangle box will decrease row height, and the bullet box will return to the minimal height of a single line of text.

Hope that helps.

Steve

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

The very particular Notebox Disorganizer (freeware)
https://sites.google.com/site/squirreltechnologist/

Hi, Alexander,

Sorry that I didn't see your earlier reference to Notebox... I wouldn't have jumped in with my own suggestion otherwise.

Steve Z.

Just to be thorough here, returning to that same blue bar, the three square boxes to the far right of the bar will cycle through expanding the editor window or the grid window, so you can see more rows.

SZ

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

square boxes. If you click on the third of these, the one with the up
pointing triangle, you can expand the row height in two increments. The
down pointing triangle box will decrease row height, and the bullet box
will return to the minimal height of a single line of text.

Thanks for your help, Steve! Those are some pretty cool features...

On Windows, InfoQube could also handle this well.

(FWIW, on Mac, Tinderbox is especially well suited to the task. OmniOutliner and NeO/TAO could also work.)

Oh, and I guess UV Outliner might be a candidate as well, although I've barely used it. I thought it was a dead project, but I now see that it was updated to 2.4.4 in October.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Sorry that I didn't see your earlier reference to Notebox... I wouldn't
have jumped in with my own suggestion otherwise.

No problem; in fact, I never got to grips with that program so I wouldn't have been able to provide the info you did to Dr Andus :-)

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Sorry that I didn't see your earlier reference to Notebox... I wouldn't
>have jumped in with my own suggestion otherwise.

No problem; in fact, I never got to grips with that program so I
wouldn't have been able to provide the info you did to Dr Andus :-)

Wow, Notebox Organizer just blows my mind... How come you haven't mentioned this tool to me before?? There can only be one explanation. You knew that I just wasn't ready yet. I bow to my two Zen masters ;)

Dr Andus wrote:

Wow, Notebox Organizer just blows my mind... How come you haven't
mentioned this tool to me before?? There can only be one explanation.
You knew that I just wasn't ready yet. I bow to my two Zen masters ;)

But is anyone really ready for Notebox Disorganizer?

SZ

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

But is anyone really ready for Notebox Disorganizer?

Not really; and apparently not even its creator, or he would have taken it some (needed) steps further and possibly made some money out of it.

Dr Andus, before you commit too much into ND, do check what the export features are. I believe that its lack thereof was a reason that I didn't end up using it much. I may of course be wrong; it may have been my own immaturity.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Dr Andus, before you commit too much into ND, do check what the export
features are. I believe that its lack thereof was a reason that I didn't
end up using it much. I may of course be wrong; it may have been my own
immaturity.

I have just been reacquainting myself with Notebox by reading the documentation. If the export works as described, it should be pretty nice, actually. But I haven't tested it yet to see if it works as advertised.

As for the developer, I've e-mailed him a couple of times over the past three or four years to see what is up, as he's been promising an upgrade. Last word I got (about a year ago), it was still in the works. Still waiting!

SZ

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Dr Andus, before you commit too much into ND, do check what the export
>features are. I believe that its lack thereof was a reason that I
didn't
>end up using it much. I may of course be wrong; it may have been my own
>immaturity.

Thanks, Alexander. I am being extra careful with backing it up, as it's got some issues on Win7, 64-bit. However, regarding export, one you can just use "save to file" with the option of text or RTF, which is good enough for me.

A few issues I noticed. 1) It hijacks icons of other programs in the taskbar and in the system tray, so it seems like it's not running any more, when in fact it is (right now it uses the Listary icon in my taskbar and the Outlook sync conduit icon in the system tray (!). 2) It did crash on me a couple of times, but then maybe I closed it, thinking it was something else. In any case, it saved all my data automatically, I didn't lose anything. 3) Sometimes some of the panes don't fully resize when you toggle them, leaving a dead area at the bottom. But it can be toggled away by some of the other buttons.

Overall however I'm amazed by the creativity of the developer. It's an ingenious design, perfect for certain types of writing. I had a very specific problem that I needed to solve. I need to write a 10,000-word chapter and I don't want to run over. I want to be able to track the average size and number of paragraphs very strictly, for individual sections and for the chapter as a whole. Notebox is just perfect for imposing such discipline. I could set up 67 boxes for my 67 paragraphs, and it displays the word count for each box, as well as for the total column. And there is even a visual progress bar.

Finally, I wanted to have my outline in the first column, the notes for the outline items in the 2nd one, to write the draft in the 3rd one, have notes for the draft in the 4th one, and have any removed text fragments in the 5th one. Notebox makes it really easy. In fact I imported a Bonsai outline that I exported as RTF, and then I used Notebox's "cut selection to" function to chop it up into the 67 paragraphs.
And then it even has a scratchpad and distraction-free writing mode. It's a truly brilliant piece of software, or at least a rough diamond :)

As for the developer, I've e-mailed him a couple of times over the past
three or four years to see what is up, as he's been promising an
upgrade. Last word I got (about a year ago), it was still in the works.
Still waiting!

Well, I would certainly be interested in seeing a newer version, at least a compatibility update for Win7, 64-bit machines.

Dr Andus wrote:

1) It hijacks icons of other programs in the
taskbar and in the system tray, so it seems like it's not running any
more, when in fact it is (right now it uses the Listary icon in my
taskbar and the Outlook sync conduit icon in the system tray (!).

Notebox Disorganizer is doing that on my machine, too. One time it was Internet Explorer; now it's the calculator! Sometimes it uses the correct icon in the task tray, but right now it has duplicated the printer.

But I completely agree that this is an ingenious little application. I always wished I had found a workflow to make real use of it.

SZ

Dr Andus wrote:

I am being extra careful with backing it up, as it's
got some issues on Win7, 64-bit. However, regarding export, one you can
just use "save to file" with the option of text or RTF, which is good
enough for me.

It seems that Notebox's own .nbx file type can be opened in a text editor, so there does seem to be a way to extract text with a bit of cleaning up, should it come to the worst (I'm not suggesting that as an export option though :)

Dr Andus wrote:

I need to write a 10,000-word
chapter and I don't want to run over. I want to be able to track the
average size and number of paragraphs very strictly, for individual
sections and for the chapter as a whole. Notebox is just perfect for
imposing such discipline. I could set up 67 boxes for my 67 paragraphs,
and it displays the word count for each box, as well as for the total
column. And there is even a visual progress bar.

Finally, I wanted to have my outline in the first column, the notes for
the outline items in the 2nd one, to write the draft in the 3rd one,
have notes for the draft in the 4th one, and have any removed text
fragments in the 5th one.

Another way to describe the above writing process is that it is like writing on index cards laid out on a desk in columns and rows, whereby you can organise your notes in one column and do the writing in another, having blank cards as placeholders and being able to move them freely around.

It is the best implementation of the index card writing method I've seen so far. But I still wouldn't use it for storing a large amount of index cards; wikis are better for that.