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Gingko
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Posted by Gorski
Aug 30, 2013 at 09:29 PM
A new online app will interest many here: Gingko
> In writing about Gingko, it’s easy to talk about what it is. A new kind of word processor. A way of reading and writing hierarchical documents. A mix between Evernote + Workflowy.
> It’s different, but is it significant?
> We believe it is. And though I usually temper my enthusiasm when discussing it (I can get a little intense), I am going to make a very bold claim:
> This new medium will be the way most text is read and written in the future.
Lots of critical commentary on Hacker News, including for the hyperbole:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302825
Posted by Dr Andus
Aug 30, 2013 at 10:01 PM
Mark wrote:
>A new online app will interest many here: Gingko
>https://gingkoapp.com/
Mark, thanks for posting this! I’ve only looked at the demo but if this really works as described, then the hyperbole might be justified.
I’ve actually looked for such a software before when I was asking for a horizontal version of Outline 4D’s timeline view (or index card board), but nothing came close:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/18059
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/18094
However, Ginko does exactly that! This could be incredibly useful for academic writing (and possibly screenwriting etc.), where you need to write highly structured documents in terms of hierarchical levels.
It might be more useful for planning a document than to actually write it in full, but if it would be possible to export from Ginko as RTF, then one could carry on the writing in O4D, which would be a way of having an O4D as it should have been designed in the first place…
Running to try it out…
Posted by Dr Andus
Aug 30, 2013 at 10:29 PM
Okay, so formatting is limited to Markdown, and exporting is limited to text. I like the simplicity. It looks like there are ways to convert Markdown to .docx (e.g. http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/) and then to RTF, so it should be possible to import a Gingko horizontal outline and turn it into a vertical outline in O4D (or your favourite outliner).
So far I like Gingko a lot!
Are there any other outliners for Windows or iOS that can import Markdown and convert it to an outline more directly?
Posted by Dr Andus
Aug 30, 2013 at 10:41 PM
One limitation of Gingko is that it only has three levels of hierarchy (4 levels, if you count the Markdown headings), as opposed to O4D’s unlimited levels. But, hey, you can’t have everything…
It does compensate somewhat with the ability to hide the index cards on the other 2 levels, while focusing on writing an index card on one of the levels.
Posted by Dr Andus
Aug 30, 2013 at 10:57 PM
Mark wrote:
>Lots of critical commentary on Hacker News, including for the hyperbole:
>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302825
It’s good to see that the developers are planning for off-line mode, OPML export and hoisting. Those would be my top requests as well.
From the comments it looks though that the developers might have an uphill battle to sell this to the general public. This looks to me like quite a specialist tool, the benefits of which might not be that easy to explain. It looks like it’s the WorkFlowy users who are cottoning onto it the quickest…