I notice several comments about some programs from people wanting markdown support. I had to look it up to see what it meant.

I had a look at it but it seems to me that it would be slower to make some text bold using markdown vs just clicking on the B in a WSYWIG editor. What am I missing? What is the appeal of markdown?

It's even faster to use the keyboard shortcut CTL-B to turn bolding off and on while you're writing.

I think markdown is mostly useful for programmers who need to automatically generate HTML and the like, but I guess it all depends on what you're doing.

The two main advantages of MarkDown go hand in hand:

- it is stored in plain text files, so you can use it with any editor

- it is human-readable, i.e. unlike HTML it doesn't interfere with the text's readability

I mostly like the link format.

When I'm writing something that's going online and is going to have a bunch of links I can just go [Text to be hyperlinked](TK) and keep writing without stopping to deal with the link.

Once the article is finished, I can back through and paste the URLs in place of the TK. I find this much faster than any means I've found using WYSIWYG editors.

Related to bob's comment immediately above, I think one of the argued-for attractions of Markdown to long-form writers of all descriptions is the focus that it allows them to give to their content, rather than to their formatting. (This also explains commercial decisions by developers to include Markdown functionality or interfaces in certain applications designed for long-form writing, such as the recently launched Ulysses III.)

One could debate forever whether Markdown does indeed enable the promised facility and therefore focus - but that is the claim.

I'd argue that markdown (and other markup notations such as ConnectedText's own) is faster than WYSIWYG. The latter is only seemingly faster. Remember that you need to take your hand off the keyboard to a) highlight the text with the mouse and b) to click on the Bold icon, and c) put your hand back on the keyboard. By that time a fast typist has typed those two (or four) asterixes.

I only use markdown in minimalist iOS writing apps that do not have a Bold button to click on. It has pretty much become the standard. (But if it goes into CT, I use CT's own markup.)

Here is an iPad example I've just come across where you can transform a text using markdown (in an app called Editorial) to an iThoughtsHD mind map:

http://editorial-app.appspot.com/workflow/5396970004807680/Wbz6lzr0518

Funnily enough, I was about to mention Editorial, which is by far the most accomplished and powerful Markdown editor on iOS (and there are a lot of Markdown editors on iOS!). You can use it as a very powerful text editor, but it's got a full Python-based scripting language as well, which is well-documented and easy to use.

It's also that most satisfactory of Markdown editors - one that shows you markup plus effect of markup in a single screen (you can, of course, preview the final HTML output, too - it uses side-swipes for moving from screen to screen). Because of the elegant font, the combination of markup and output isn't as confusing as it is in other editors that use this technique (I'm thinking of that wiki one, but I can't remember its full name).

I've ditched my (many) other Markdown editors in favour of Editorial. Thoroughly recommended (not least because of the very powerful search function, with highlighting, multi-file search etc. etc.).

After what was probably the most challenging summer of my life (I may talk about that another time...) I decided to buy myself a gift and purchased the Galaxy Note 8" tablet. It is a very good piece of equipment and I'm now looking into ways of using it productively--or excuses for having bought it, if you will.

I've successfully installed most apps that work fine in my aged Xperia Mini Pro phone and then some, but my favourite MarkDown editor Denote simply crashes whenever I start it. I therefore found Draft https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mvilla.draft which seems really competent. It is unrelated to the Draft service discussed here, as far as I can tell.

By the way, having ample external memory in my tablet, I also installed Dropsync, which works like Dropbox does in PCs, i.e. actually keeping local copies of selected folders in the device. This way I can work with other cross-platform apps that don't sync on their own (yet) like Notecase Pro.

Ah, I have been dribbling over the Galaxy Note 8 (I hope you've already played with the multiwindow feature - seriously cool), but am gradually concluding that once I dip my toe into 8" tablet waters, I shall probably go for an iPad Mini. Simply because so many of my favourite apps are available for it. I like Android very much (and my daughter has just swapped from iPhone to Galaxy Note II with squeaks of joy), but really good tablet apps are definitely a little thin on the ground.

Having said that, the Galaxy Note 8 does come with the very pleasant AwesomeNote app, which is an iOS stalwart.

MadaboutDana wrote:

am gradually
concluding that once I dip my toe into 8" tablet waters, I shall
probably go for an iPad Mini. Simply because so many of my favourite
apps are available for it.

This dilemma would probably deserve its own thread. I have an iPad 1 and have been pretty happy with it, but recently I ran into the first app (Calca) that wouldn't run on it because it recquires the next OS version, which would only run on a newer machine.

And then the question is whether to go with Android, Windows, or iPad... I'm wondering what I'm missing with Android. Re Windows, I'm only considering it because I could run ConnectedText on it. But ultimately I'm so happy with my iOS apps that I don't really have a strong reason to switch platforms (other than the premium price tag for the latest iPad...).

I've been running an iPad 2 for the past couple of years, and to be honest? Once you've reached a certain age, the Retina display (while impressive) really isn't worth the extra dosh, because you don't really notice it anyway. And you can buy iPad 2s for very reasonable prices nowadays. How long they'll continue to be compatible with iOS 7, of course, is a moot point (I believe a couple of Apple apps in iOS 7 - like Siri - will only run on the latest machines; but then again, who needs Siri?!).

"I’d argue that markdown (and other markup notations such as ConnectedText’s own) is faster than WYSIWYG. The latter is only seemingly faster. Remember that you need to take your hand off the keyboard to a) highlight the text with the mouse and b) to click on the Bold icon, and c) put your hand back on the keyboard. By that time a fast typist has typed those two (or four) asterixes."

For CT not being an outliner to begin with, mentions of that program seem to be quite frequent here? This is perfectly ok with me, but info and pr about any program here should not be that biased as in this citation?

To begin with another example, CT was pushed here for its ability to gather text bits, more or less with their respective source indications, into new text compounds - very good info to have indeed. But then, it became evident that this was for texts only, any numeric processing being impossible with this solution, when in fact other solutions mentioned there did not have such limitations. Now what's interesting here, as soon as it became evident that CT didn't do it, the very need to have such analysis became inexistant.

Here, quite similar: CT does not have wysiwyg, so it's classified irrelevant, and furthermore, programs that have wysiwyg, in 2013, are deemed to ask for your fingers leaving the keyboard and do weird things with your mouse... or then, have your fingers do control-i (quite ok albeit not really easy) and control-b (which is outright awful). When in fact, you just do a macro, for having these commands on your 8, and 7 keys, respectively.

And yes, the same would be possible with CT's special signs, but the topic was not ease of entering those, but that they are ugly, all the more so in 2013.

I am always eager to hear good things, but then, for the less good ones, it's just a little bit exasperating, in the long run, to have them systematically denied by fanboys.

Hm - slightly contentious post. I think ConnectedText certainly qualifies as an outliner under the very broad criteria generally applied to the apps/solutions discussed by this group. A ConnectedText "database" can be broken down into sections (documents), and further broken down by tags - and then cross-related by links. In my book, that's more than enough to qualify as an outliner, and hey, I'm not even a ConnectedText "fanboy" (although how such a term could be applied to our eclectic collection of CRIMPers I'm really not sure).

We've had some fascinating discussions of ConnectedText on this forum, but we've discussed a vast selection of other applications, too, and a number of users have provided valuable - because based on personal recommendations - references to a whole heap of analytical apps that could by no definition be characterized as "outliners". That's known as "value added" - not something to criticize.

So I think you're getting your money's worth. Oh, hold on - you don't have to pay anything to belong to this forum.

So what were you complaining about, exactly? You're a bit cross because nobody has provided you with a precise answer to your particular problem? Perhaps you would care to define it so we can have a go, rather than falling into the troll trap and criticizing "fanboys".

Sorry, I should have added to my very broad definition of an outliner that the breakdown of a "database" (for want of a better term) into segments or sections should be accompanied by some kind of central navigation concept, either in the form of a tree or some other ingenious overview. That, for me, is what an outliner is. Oh, and a good search engine helps, but isn't necessarily part of the definition. There's a big difference between an outliner (by this broad definition) and "your perfect outliner" - each person individually has to decide what additional features s/he would also like in their ideal outliner.

By "ingenious overview" (whether treelike or not), I mean, of course, "structured overview" (according to a structure defined either by the application itself or by the user's own preferences). Now I'm attempting a broad definition of "outliner" that should, I suppose, be put into its own topic...

Another interesting example of Markdown use: drop a text with Markdown into iThoughtsX and it creates a mind map automatically:
http://vimeo.com/73838786

"Posted by Dr Andus
Sep 2, 2013 at 09:16 AM
I’d argue that markdown (and other markup notations such as ConnectedText’s own) is faster than WYSIWYG. The latter is only seemingly faster. Remember that you need to take your hand off the keyboard to a) highlight the text with the mouse and b) to click on the Bold icon, and c) put your hand back on the keyboard. By that time a fast typist has typed those two (or four) asterixes."

That wasn't you writing there, and my fault was, I made the citation from above without judging it necessary to give the author's name, and I put "fanboys" in plural, trying to weaken the expression by not putting it directly to the author I had cited, but trying to speak more in general - I wasn't aware I could cause others to think they were meant too in particular - sorry!

There is no bolding here, so I cite again:

"Remember that you need to take your hand off the keyboard to a) highlight the text with the mouse and b) to click on the Bold icon, and c) put your hand back on the keyboard."

As we all know, this is simply NOT TRUE, it could even be called a big, big lie; at least control-b and such is available everywhere, even if you don't spice up your keyboard by any macro tool.

So it's gross tweaking reality in order to make a big, big disavantage into an alleged advantage, and that's fanboy behavior, as when Apple fanboys explain to you why it's an advantage to have no possbility to change the battery or to put some data in by usb stick. It is the most gross marketing speak we were accustomed to 20 years ago; most suppliers don't even dare to continue such gross marketing speak for fear of total loss of credibility.

Which more is, why not leave such marketing lies to the respective developers, especially when they take part in this forum, as is the case for the developer here whose name I remember to have seen sometimes here. Similar for speculations why a given software doesn't have this feature or deliberately refrains from having that other feature: It should be up to the developer to answer such questions that are perfectly legitimate in 2013, I think.

This being said, you say CT is an outliner indeed. So let's assume I am simply wrong, and it is an outliner!

For me, the wiki concept is worthless, I just need outliners, the 2-pane variety, and it's highly interesting that wikipedia.org is doing reflections upon the possibilies to overlay wikipedia with a big outline: Even for them, so successful with this wiki concept, the "lost in hyperspace" problem seems to have become unbearable, and in fact, the only people who really profit from the web's being a hyperspace instead of an outline are Google, since without they couldn't sell their expensive ads.

This being said, could anybody explain in brief if CT is an outliner in such a way I imagine it, in the way of Ultra Recall or something like (and without the latter's additional features of course)? Or do we speak of different things here?

I think I have understood some former explanations in this way that CT is a wiki, where you create new items from their links to existing items, and this is not an outliner. Then, you can (from what I have, perhaps wrongly, understood) built up specific outlines within ranges of such "hypercards", in order to have quicker access to those "cards"/items within that "stack"/range of items, but by no means, you'll get a 10,000 items "tree" for your 10,000 cards, except manually, this way, "put the current item to the current tree" or something.

So, if in the end you need an outline, with CT you will be lost, since it will not deliver this outline, only partial outlines here and there where the investment of your time and effort will be justified by your ABSOLUTE need of an outline at least there, but for all the rest, you will have to live with your wiki.

You see, I'm not trying to just childishly pretend, "CT is not an outliner", in order to childishly pretend it's bad, but I have come to this conclusion from my (perhaps wrong) understanding of its conception.

I would be glad to hear my representation is wrong, really! (And then, I would hope the developer introduced wysiwyg asap.)

Hm. I can see where your confusion is coming from, and will confess that my first few encounters with CT didn't end well. Until the latest version (shortly to be superseded, as Dr. Andus has just advised), I thought it was an immensely frustrating kludge of a program.

However, I hadn't looked at the variety of structures you can use to view your data. The outliner and project outliner features are only a small part of it - and yes, you're right, you have to build those manually, although that will suit some people (like me, for example) very well. In fact, your criticism of this feature is a little hard to understand - you could easily use CT to build a one-pane or two-pane outline, adding topics as you needed them. You don't have to START with the topics and FINISH with the outline - you can reverse the process easily enough, so start with the outline and add topics as required.

But there are also other outline concepts. For example, a history (not all outliners have this, but some very good ones do; it's a great navigation aid). More outliner-like is the topic list, which can be arranged either as a flat list, or as a navigation tree. The category list is similar - it can be flat or hierarchical, but obviously depends on the use of categories. The navigator is very outliner-like, in the sense defined elsewhere in this forum - it links topics together in a mindmap-style network, but can be adjusted to display topics as a tree, or in various other configurations.

Thing is, CT is immensely flexible, hence its value to Dr. Andus and clearly also to others in this forum. This flexibility can be viewed as excessive. It's certainly not immediately user-friendly. But so what? CT is all about flexibility, which is why it's so very powerful. If, as you suggest, you only want to use a simple two-pane outliner, there are plenty of excellent, user-friendly options available (The Guide springs to mind, for example, or the more sophisticated AM-Notebook). Both are easy to use and have pleasant, WYSIWYG interfaces.

But if you want to get into serious cross-referencing and linking, you might need something more like CT. One of the nice things about outliners is their sheer diversity. For example, I've just been playing with Gingko (gingkoapp.com). Now there's a wonderful new way of writing and interrelating information! I do hope they produce a nice app (for various platforms) in the near future! But that's just me - you might look at it and hate it. And that's fine.

As for views on typing - they vary, again, according to individual preferences. As a touch typist, I'm highly keyboard-oriented, but I also enjoy taking my hands off the keyboard and using a mouse. Unlike some of my colleagues, who get very grumpy without their keyboard shortcuts. So I suggest the best thing is to enjoy the diversity, rather than criticize the fact that some people are immensely fond of one particular application. As I hope the above brief sketch indicates, your lack of familiarity with their beloved application may be causing you to overlook some of its most exciting features!

See http://www.connectedtext.com/screenshots.php - check out the "Outliner" image.

It might be more accurate to say ConnectedText *includes* an outliner rather than ConnectedText *is* an outliner.

Of course, that's only if you're considering the feature in CT explicitly titled "outliner." If you consider any hierarchy or nested list to be an outline, then CT may indeed *be* an outliner.

22111 wrote:

I think I have understood some former explanations in this way that CT
is a wiki, where you create new items from their links to existing
items, and this is not an outliner. Then, you can (from what I have,
perhaps wrongly, understood) built up specific outlines within ranges of
such "hypercards", in order to have quicker access to those
"cards"/items within that "stack"/range of items, but by no means,
you'll get a 10,000 items "tree" for your 10,000 cards, except manually,
this way, "put the current item to the current tree" or something.

So, if in the end you need an outline, with CT you will be lost, since
it will not deliver this outline, only partial outlines here and there
where the investment of your time and effort will be justified by your
ABSOLUTE need of an outline at least there, but for all the rest, you
will have to live with your wiki.

I think I see what you're saying... CT is never a "complete" outliner (unless you build it manually, as you say) in the sense that every single item is necessarily represented in one canonical outline as in a traditional two-pane outliner. However, in real life, CT's approach seems to be a feature rather than a flaw. Having multiple, arbitrary outlines representing a network of information solves a lot of issues related to trying to represent reality with a single tree.

For one thing, you can create any number of *limited* outlines that represent a view/snapshot that may be temporal, contextual, etc., while not modifying the underlying data. In other words, CT allows superimposing an arbitrary number of outlines over a data store that is not inherently hierarchical.

But if you insist that reality is a tree rather than a graph, you will probably be forever frustrated with CT.

Thank you both very much, Chris Murtland and MadAboutDana. I think your explanations are really helpful and shed a good light on ingenious software; I understand better now why in the Kühn blog, it's so "over-celebrated" as I might say.

If I understand well, you don't even need the wiki, you can treat it as an outliner, or let's say you have some item, but which in fact is sort of a "main topic", from which then its own, partial outline emerges, by your creating children, grand-children, and so on, from there, and in that particular outline.

Coming from Ultra Recall, I have never seen any real solution, in UR, to the problem that that one outline tree grows bigger and bigger; kinook, the developer, offers hoisting to other tabs, but then, any work you will do there, in that subtree (renames / moves of items, but also expanding/collapsing subtrees further down within the hierarchy, are replicated, real-time, within your first, "complete", "overall" tree.

Don't get me wrong, of course this replication of the overall tree is necessary, and UR is technically faultless here (as with most other things; just search brings problems, sometimes), but the problem here, this endless instant replicating, also to that DISPLAYED "full tree", makes that in UR, there is no such thing as an "overview": As soon as you have such hoisted sub-trees, you will LOOSE your "content tree" by this very move: There is no possibility in UR to have a "general view", and a detailed view, let alone more than one detailed view, at the same time: No way to have some tree just with the first- and second-level-indented main topics, and other trees showing details in some part of this big tree.

So this is a very important problem, discussed in their forum for years, and which has never even been considered to be problem by kinook, let alone for them to search for a solution (which would consist in a virtual representation of the big tree, but independent of it, display-wise, and in which you only could select items to hoist from there, and select items to expand or recollapse; ideally, this special "JUST LOOK AND CHOOSE FROM TREE" would be in an additional pane, but technically, it could also be realized in just another tab (perhaps differently colored or such for better distinction)).

But as said, in UR, there is no such thing (not speaking of other outliner I tried: none does it or something similar).

So from what you both say, it seems CT has found another, but a real solution to this problem no (other) outliner of my knowledge is aware of.

1) Is this wishful thinking of mine, or am I right to say, then, that in CT you could have a pane with a topics list, and then you could click on it, and the corresponding outline (sub-tree of that topic; it's understood that sub-outline must exist of course, in order to be opened here) will open within another pane? (I've seen screenshots for CT showing one pane to the left, the "text" / content pane in the middle, and a second pane to the right.)

2) And if this is so, does CT have any import routines allowing for importing EXISTANT trees/subtrees, from a program like UR, into such a compound (even one by one, not speaking of the overall tree here in one single import move)? The "import of existing structes is almost impossible" problem is there in "The Brain", so most people with existing databases will not make the move; here, it could be the very same problem, I fear.

3) But if this is possible (not necessarily from UR, but perhaps from a third program), that old question arises what CT is doing about its 1985 markup scheme. (And for people wanting to do the move even now, without wysiwyg, the question arises if in import, rtf (which is lost here) is correctly translated into CT markup.)

This being said, I would think CT is a very ingenious outliner which has fully its place in this forum!

Thank you very much again for your explanations.

I tested in UR, and I do see what you mean - if you have a hoisted section of the outline, whatever you expand or collapse in the hoisted section is always replicated in the main, full tree. I agree that if the tabs could become disconnected that would be useful for getting a view of different levels of the outline at the same time. (Side note - one thing I like about Workflowy in this respect is that you can just ctrl+click on anything and get that section of the outline open in a new window, so you can be viewing your outline from any number of levels at once if desired).

In regard to CT and outlining, I think you would have to expand your definition of outlining a bit to be satisfied with how CT might let you drill down into sub-levels. You can overlay multiple real outlines on your CT data, but the "drill down" effect is mostly gained by "outlining" in the content pane with bullet lists and having topic links within those lists. I believe the end effect is essentially the same as outlining (and ultimately more flexible), but the fact remains that it doesn't necessarily feel the same as outlining. (My favorite is one-pane outlining, so even two-pane outliners like UR never really feel truly like outlining to me).

There probably won't ever be one application that does everything and meets everyone's needs. I keep dreaming of the total, integrated solution, but I think the ever-increasing volume and diversity of the information that needs to be managed makes that a pipe dream. And I'm not sure the best thinking tool could ever also be the best reference material tool and so on. So I'm personally trying to switch over from a "my information is perfectly organized in a rational manner" approach to a "I am accomplishing specific tasks with my information in the easiest and most practical way possible" approach; to me, that really means you need an arsenal of tools rather than just one.

Chris Murtland wrote:

There probably won't ever be one application that does everything and
meets everyone's needs. I keep dreaming of the total, integrated
solution, but I think the ever-increasing volume and diversity of the
information that needs to be managed makes that a pipe dream. And I'm
not sure the best thinking tool could ever also be the best reference
material tool and so on. So I'm personally trying to switch over from a
"my information is perfectly organized in a rational manner" approach to
a "I am accomplishing specific tasks with my information in the easiest
and most practical way possible" approach; to me, that really means you
need an arsenal of tools rather than just one.

I couldn't agree more:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3097

Chris Murtland wrote:

that really means you
need an arsenal of tools rather than just one.

Yes, this also rings true to me. The next logical step (to which I haven't quite matured yet) is to learn AutohotKey or Python and write scripts that create linkages between your tools.

Also, it is very difficult to compare individual tools as alternatives: one piece of software may be a one-trick pony, while another one might be a bundle of several or even dozens of software tools.

This is one point where I would disagree with Prof. Kuehn. In a recent blog post he suggested that the fewer tools and steps one uses during writing, the better:

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2013/08/personal-workflow.html

However, his examples of Scrivener and CT are tools that are such bundles of multiple software tools in one. Plus, he is a prolific user of AHK as well.

Personally I have found transferring my data and drafts around from software to software useful, as each time the argument gets more abstracted and refined. But I still haven't published as many books as he did, and that will be the proof of the pudding :)