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Single-pane outliner with inline notes and customisable column
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 20, 2013 at 06:35 PM
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
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 20, 2013 at 09:25 PM
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.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 20, 2013 at 09:38 PM
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
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 21, 2013 at 12:10 AM
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 :)
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 21, 2013 at 09:14 AM
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.