"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)."

Reading this, I'm quite "happy" (no, not really) that CT is "out" for me, for the time being, for its missing wysiwyg, since if it had this, I would perhaps very heavily complain about its inability to fake a "real" outliner. This being said, if the developer wanted to do this, he would certainly be able to realize this in a more outliner way, by option. Let's put it this way: Most developers say "I leave this and that out because I want my software to stay simple and easy in use for most users, don't want to frighten them off". Now we all convene CT is so complicated any additional complication will certainly put nobody off who without would come to this software, so adding some other complications to CT would be perfectly acceptable for its potential user base, AND could even enlarge it.

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

This triggered lots of comments, and in fact it's the recurrent problem. WHERE is the problem? Two things: Most of the time, it's not really smooth to get your data forth and back; and this would be needed because of the basic problem: What is reference material now, becomes writing material later, and vice versa, which means, so many consultants in office management and all this claim you must divide your things into "material, data, and so on" and "what you write/create", and this distinction is simply not possible, so you need tools for both, and that's why you then need better transition, and especially forth and back, and this interaction between tools is not smooth enough, so in the end, you would need "something better for both": A UR with a better editor, or a Scrivener with better data repository/management - and both will not bring the respective missing parts to their game.

And so most people work with Word, Excel and so on, and endless cascades of sub-directories.

22111 wrote:

This triggered lots of comments, and in fact it's the recurrent problem.
WHERE is the problem? Two things: Most of the time, it's not really
smooth to get your data forth and back; and this would be needed because
of the basic problem: What is reference material now, becomes writing
material later, and vice versa, which means, so many consultants in
office management and all this claim you must divide your things into
"material, data, and so on" and "what you write/create", and this
distinction is simply not possible, so you need tools for both, and
that's why you then need better transition, and especially forth and
back, and this interaction between tools is not smooth enough, so in the
end, you would need "something better for both": A UR with a better
editor, or a Scrivener with better data repository/management - and both
will not bring the respective missing parts to their game.

I have thought a lot about the transition/transformation problem, and the fact that material can morph into different things over time (reference material becomes writing material, correspondence becomes tasks, etc.).

It *seems* like something generic like a user-designed database similar to UR would be ideal for managing these types of transitions all within one software. However, I have come to believe this isn't true, or rather, that it starts out as being true when you have a fresh, clean database, but quickly devolves into not being true.

I think the problem comes from the fact that PIMs or personal databases or tree-based info managers:

1. simply can't reasonably handle the volume and diversity of information on an ongoing basis
2. are "spread too thin" to develop every conceivable feature you might want to have in regard to your information
3. give equal weight to each item

A little more on each item:

1. Take email. If you really wanted a single, global information store, you'd certainly want email to be part of that. Yet, the sheer volume of email tends to make it untenable (or at least tedious) to continuously do manual imports into UR or forwards to your Evernote account - if you're trying to capture ALL of them. (Note - only Zoot comes close to being intriguing here, with its built-in mail client and RSS feed reader)

2. This is the big benefit to things like Markdown in my mind. You can have one standard, lightweight format that is easily shared among a lot of different apps that can conceivably have a lot of different and specialized features. It's the opposite of proprietary formats, and it really ends up separating the storage format from the features/manipulation. If you want one package to do it all, well is it going to make charts and graphs? Is it going to do spreadsheet formulas? Can it resize an image, crop it, and make it black and white? Can it generate a PDF? Can it search Wikipedia? I think you see the problem.

3. A global tree of everything in my life sounds good in theory, but in reality each item has a potentially vastly different weight/importance and that also changes depending on time and context. Using different apps actually makes it easier to let some info recede into the background or limit the information you are currently working with to a manageable subset. I may want some way to search completed tasks, but do I want that cluttering up my global search results each time or do I just want a specific, separate place to go to search those? Do I need every tweet or blog entry I might be interested in later instantly at hand if I'm working on a work project? Do I need a bunch of technical work info in my face if I'm trying to write a novel? Etc.

So even if the interaction between tools isn't smooth enough, I still think I'd rather deal with that than the issues above - which seem to multiply the longer you try to shoehorn everything into one single tool.

Chris Murtland wrote:

I think the problem comes from the fact that PIMs or personal databases
or tree-based info managers:

1. simply can't reasonably handle the volume and diversity of
information on an ongoing basis
2. are "spread too thin" to develop every conceivable feature you might
want to have in regard to your information
3. give equal weight to each item

Excellent points, Chris. Which is why it is becoming increasingly more interesting to discuss arrangements of software (tool-chains) and 'workflows', than comparing individual pieces of software.

Regarding dealing with the volume of data, I'd argue for a multi-level approach, in order of increasing value. 1) ignore or delete; 2) keep it in the background (in the email inbox etc.), where it can be searched for, if necessary 3) record its location (link to it), if need to return to it, 4) capture and import into relevant software for further categorisation and analysis, 5) archive it, back it up online/offline etc.

Interesting point you make about Markdown. It goes hand in hand with the resurgence of text-only apps and minimalist apps.

I wish there were more meta-applications out there, where you could easily model (arrange and lin

...and the rest of the post:

I wish there were more meta-applications out there, where you could easily model (arrange and link together) different tool-chains for different workflows, be able to visualise them dashboard-style, and even launch them from there. At the moment I do this using VUE or Freeplane, when I remember to do it, but they haven't been designed for that purpose. I have to force myself not record my workflows, so I don't forgot how I got certain complex tasks done and with what tools.

*Correction: have to force myself to record my workflows...

Some very interesting points indeed.

Total integration is desirable.

I perfectly convene, but let's remember this is just a conceptual problem. Don't forget we are speaking here of "individual, pc software", und this almost always supposes, traditionally, one database, and indeed, some critics of Zoot say that it grows too big, becomes unmanageable, and so on - I cannot speak of Zoot here, but I perfectly know that anybody who'd ever try to do such a thing for a corporation of 10, 100 or 10,000 staff, should be considered nuts.

So we must always remember that the paradigm we almost always encounter with software here, is bound to be confined into "pc" uses, and that any real solution must treat data in a completely different way, the main tool just being a referential database "that brings it all together, any which way, in any combination you would ever want", the real data being stored in multiple databases from which then they are fetched, and then it becomes possible to integrate it really all, even for a corporation of 1 million staff.

Also, dedicated CRM, and dedicated DMS, tools, try to do this, on a "pc" level, and often I read reports that they become unmanageable, from poor response times, and so on. Myself, I own Act! 2000 (which I didn't use anymore, for AS (see in other threads)), and have trialled a newer version of it... just to throw it out after some hour of frustration; but I suppose this is for very poor programming, and of course a front-end to a desktop database should be able to do whatever newer versions of Act! can do, with much better response times.

Your second point, such tools should DO it all.

Here, I convene again, and in fact, my research (my Sohodox review here was not by accident) goes into the file system, since having one "main program", but which does only parts of the tasks you have to do, is far from brilliant, and so you should have some other "point of departure", in the end, than have your "main program" but which lacks this functionality, and a second one, and a third one, and so on.

We convene that you cannot put all this functionality into just one program, which would become a monster, lacking still any detail, special functionality. On the other hand, why your markdown hint here? I want bolded passages bolded, italicised passages italicized, and so on, and if the program in question does this by markdown, so be it! I am just asking for wysiwyg, in text, remember, graphic programs today don't do it without colors neither, today, but these were the very early years of graphic programs, where in fact you designed your objects by just vectors, and then had some special "preview" mode in order to see the results; these times are gone for graphics, why defend such poor implementation for text processing, in 2013?

Again, remember, I just want to have wysiwyg, I am NOT asking for a special format to arrive at this result, and in particular, I am not asking for rtf. In fact, most of my things are then published within the html format, so they are to be exported from rtf into html, and I would never complain if the outliner of my choice did store them in that html format up-front, as long as on the screen, I see bolded words bolded, and so on. And I quickly agree that the common rtf format is something from the past, and could easily replaced by something more suitable today. But why should I have those codes on screen, like Ventura Publisher 1985? That's simply not necessary today.

But back to the initial problem, you point is on the spot, especially since I have been thinking for months now that indeed, it is a totally wrong strategy to try to put your file system into your outliner tree (and then have numerous synch problems), something tools like UR try to promote; it's certainly much more natural to start off from the file system (or from tool exactly replicating it, meaning a better gui for that very file system), and then consider your outliner = data repository for TEXT data and such, NOT for "everything", as just ONE part of your overall system, just as are other data formats.

I think you need some "nucleus" for your work, but if this nucleus is your 2-pane outliner, it invariably tries to "replace" the file system within your workflow, and this inevitably brings about multiple problems, for your outliner's lack of capability to really REPLICATE the file system, in real-time. (At the end of the day, this would only be a technical, "programming-expertise" problem, but I am not even sure that such a SHIFT in "nucleus role", from file system to outliner, would be that desireable.)

Relative importance, depending on time and context

This is the most demanding of your points, and in fact, I have been thinking of these problems for some time, also with respect to physical files in the office, because every conception of "which files on your desk, which files near your desk, which files in your office, which files within the archive" is bound to answer exactly this question, of relative importance, and even relative context, and it's evident that depending on context and time, this has to be a totally "chaotic", multiple re-assigning of "everything to anything else", and this problem, for physical files, has never been quite resolved.

Also, in my post above, I did not want to say, every "reference material" should/would/could become "writing material", and vice versa, but then, it's evident that you never can be sure, for most of your stuff, which parts of it will remain the nature they now have, and which parts will become something else, even in multiple contexts, while also keeping their current nature, at the same time: the variations here are endless (and of course, some "natural" reference material stays exactly that during its whole lifetime).

I've become an expert in these "physical files' management" questions by now, and I have to admit that I don't have found a valid answer to these questions; I have tried to get really any information about these questions that are available in numerous countries (and yes, it's very interesting that in different countries, very different "answers" get universally accepted, but only there).

And now the paradox: We all would assume that for electronic files, within the pc, those answers would be very much simpler; we all know about crazy corporations that do 10 photocopies of the same document, then create total chaos with them throughout the company; in an electronic system, with clones (cf. Sohodox that does not even offer them), it should be easy to bring perfect order into your stuff...

(I am not speaking here of the hybridity problems, caused by the coexistence of physical and electronic files, which really over-complicates it all; interesting here, most software for "physical file management" I would not touch, since their integration into the management of your electronic files is either inexistant or so bad that multiple problems arise which nobody would ever accept deliberately.)

But now we see that even for our electronic stuff, we have endloss problems with our categorization, with our taxonomy. Why? Because there is one taxonomy, which, once you introduce clones (of files AND of folders, especially!), does not represent any big problem anymore, but there is "processing", overlaid over this taxonomy, and here, endless problems begin, and you mentioned them; it's all about "AVAILABILITY", and even of "IMPOSING", meaning some things that should be in the background, today, or in this context, are "LEFT-OVERS" from former prominence, and do disturb, divert your attention, distract the clarity of your searches, and so on.

The real problem is, for every single task (if those are not extremely standardized, as perhaps in the treatance of assurance claims, and even there...), you need myriads of contextual elements, but never the same.

In fact, in a perfect world, you'd need either AI, or you'd need endless time for your staff to SELECT the relevant context, for any single task, and that's technically impossible.

Any "NATURAL context", as I call it (you also could call it "DEFAULT context"), in outliners, is a BIG help to begin with (and which could be replaced, indeed, by VERY specific tagging), but of course, you also need SPECIFIC context, and that's almost impossible to gather, by technical means, because, yes, you can do clones of everything, but you first have to SPECIFY those clones, which implies that you must identify and find them, first, and this is time-consuming and expensive (and for physical files, you will have to manage that there are (normally) no clones, meaning other staff treating similar dossiers will not have those (perhaps relevant) elements at their disposal then), so most of the time, relevant "information", relevant "contextual elements" will be missing in your treatance of the dossier on your desk, and this is valid both for physical as for electronic files (and both for physical and for electronic "additional elements" to such dossiers).

From my experience, in the legal world, very, exceptional smart lawyers "just think of it": They seem to have both an elephant's memory for (totally disparate) "things", and the ability to "think of those", whenever those elements might be of relevance, or "could be used".

And now, from our electronic system, we demand something similar: To present us the relevant elements - but only those - for our task at hand; the problem here, as explained above, those elements are in part standardized - that's why I are so fond of outliners: those standard elements are siblings or cousins, or then, links / references there, and such a system is not so easily replicable in a tagging and / or a search-based system -, but all the "extras" are missing, in an electronic as well as in a physical file system.

And at the same time, we hope that "electronics", software, will one day lay all these "extras" onto our "desk", just as a very well-paid executive secretary would "think of it all", and would indeed lay upon our desk all the "they MIGHT be relevant or useful here" things, and not only the file we have asked her for.

(The Germans have "invented" a so-called "thin-file" system, Mappei and Classei (TM in both cases), which both try to dissect physical files into their core elements, facilitating then any possible combination of those, but of course breaking any "natural" context by this, and not offering any help for combining all these disparate elements.)

This is exactly our problem now, in 2013: Software is lacking far behind our (justified) expectations; AI has NOT come to our desks and our screens yet (as has not even semantic search, which would be a good start).

Of course, the very first step would be to at least allow for easy combining such elements from everywhere, and to facilitate "loose standard combinations", meaning that on top of the "natural contexts" within your outliners, heavily enhanced by cloning (of folders, especially!), it would also be as easy, simple and quick as possible to combine very disparate elements from "everywhere", and to store those "working environments for specific tasks", even supposing you have to collect them for yourself, for the time being.

It goes without saying that such a workflow, in attendence of AI, implies that in a corporation, (1) some people treat the files/dossiers, after having read them, gathering all the relevant things (but additional problem here, how to dissect them, from their respective context, irrelevant here), then (2) VERY smart people read those same dossiers, together with their "standard context" gathered in (1), and try to find "hints" to additional, special "context" that possibly might break up the "stone walls" within the problem, and have their comments how this could be done, and in step (3), again other people would develop this all, and of course there would be recursion between steps (3) and (2) whenever the (3) people are "stuck": (1) = highly specialized secretaries; (2) laywers and such; (3) high-brows; the same principle would apply to non-legal tasks.

But as said, real elaborate software to facilitate and help with this is missing in 2013; human memory, and human ability is always needed to THINK of those "elements possibly relevant in this context here", in order for them to be added to the current context bunch.

And now compare with development in software we are discussing here, 30 years after the introduction of the pc.

(The Brain seemingly does a big part of its business within corporations; I often think about their possible capabilities to provide some of those missing functionlity there at least, but I don't see any. But you see it's easy to think up a corporate software that easily asks for 2,500 dollars per seat, but which has got everything we all are missing in our software every day.)

StackEdit - free, browser-based Markdown editor with edit and preview panes split. I haven't tested it yet, but I like it that you can write a blog post in it and post it straight into Wordpress.com with a click of a button. I thought you had to self-host to be able to use Markdown in Wordpress(?)

http://benweet.github.io/stackedit/#

Mango - a WYSIWYG browser-based Markdown editor (a more minimalistic experience than StackEdit). Folding of headings is possible, so it's a bit of an outliner, too.

http://mangomarkdown.com/

More discussion re StackEdit at HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512704

David Hewson on writing a novel in Markdown with Slugline (Mac only):

http://davidhewson.com/2014/02/21/slugline-minimalist-writing-with-markdown-that-works/

Just a reminder for those that use MultiMarkdown and LyX (LaTex): http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5247/0/multimarkdown-to-lyx

Charles

Laverna, online Markdown editor with local storage, encryption, multiple notebook support, Dropbox syncing, tasks and more:
https://laverna.cc/

Here's a brief article on it:
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Productivity-Sauce/Laverna-Markdown-Editor-in-Your-Browser

The code is Open Source so the tinkerers among us can even install Laverna on their own server.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Laverna, online Markdown editor with local storage, encryption, multiple
notebook support, Dropbox syncing, tasks and more:
https://laverna.cc/

Alexander, thanks for posting this. Editorially is shutting down this month, and I've been looking for a replacement, and this looks just the ticket! I see that they're comparing themselves to Evernote. That looks a bit (over)ambitious. However, this might be a perfect replacement for Editorially, in combination with Dropbox.

Dr Andus wrote:

Editorially is shutting down this
month, and I've been looking for a replacement, and this looks just the
ticket! I see that they're comparing themselves to Evernote. That looks
a bit (over)ambitious. However, this might be a perfect replacement for
Editorially, in combination with Dropbox.

Hm, syncing with Dropbox is a bit choppy (at least in Firefox 29). This is a bit of a concern. I would want a bit more confirmation that a document had been synced successfully.

Also, the files are saved as .json, which is not ideal, if one would want to carry on editing the file in a plain text editor locally. At the moment copy and paste seems to be the only way to export and import text within the browser interface. Also, it's not that easy to see within the .json file in Dropbox whether all recent changes have been saved, as the JSON code makes it difficult to check in a long document.

Dr Andus wrote:

Hm, syncing with Dropbox is a bit choppy (at least in Firefox 29). This
is a bit of a concern. I would want a bit more confirmation that a
document had been synced successfully.

I don't want to be too harsh on Laverna, as it's still in beta, but the Dropbox function is not working properly in the browsers and on the machines I use (Firefox, Chrome, Win7 & Chromebook). If I just hit sync, nothing happens. The only way I was able to trigger it was to change the layout of the page (from "normal" to "fullscreen", for instance), and then the sync kicks in (which I'm sure is not how it was intended to work). However, then the indicator keeps turning and does not stop by itself, so you don't know whether the sync has successfully completed or not. Even when I monitored the process in Dropbox, not all the files would sync all the time. This makes it currently an unreliable cloud solution, especially if you're using someone else's computer that you leave behind for good, with the false hope that the files had synced.

But otherwise it's a promising project, I hope they'll be able to iron these issues out.

Here is something (haven't had a chance to try it yet) that is both Markdown and WYSIWYG:

Marko Editor
http://marko-editor.com/

Dr Andus wrote:

Here is something (haven't had a chance to try it yet) that is both Markdown and WYSIWYG:
Marko Editor
http://marko-editor.com/

Thanks for this. It seems rather similar to Markdown Pad but is cross platform.

In addition it support CriticMarkup which I was not familiar with, but which looks brilliantly intuitive for reviewing plain texts--at least by a single person. I visited its site http://criticmarkup.com/ and found it quite interesting.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

In addition it support CriticMarkup which I was not familiar with, but
which looks brilliantly intuitive for reviewing plain texts--at least by
a single person. I visited its site http://criticmarkup.com/ and found
it quite interesting.

here is another one (beta, Windows) that supports Critic Markup:

"A zen and efficient Multi Markdown Editor for Windows."

http://www.aflava.com/

Dr Andus wrote:

here is another one (beta, Windows) that supports Critic Markup:

"A zen and efficient Multi Markdown Editor for Windows."

http://www.aflava.com/

I missed the name of this one. It's called SmartDown, and as of today it also supports text folding, which officially qualifies it as an outliner :)

http://www.aflava.com/markdown-text-folding-in-smartdown/

SmartDown looks promising. It's light and aesthetically pleasing. The developer is very dedicated and responsive. I reported him some problems with diacritics and it was fixed within two days.

Tomasz Raburski wrote:

SmartDown looks promising. It's light and aesthetically pleasing.

I just had a quick play with SmartDown and I also like it a lot. It's the best markdown editor for viewing text I've come across, thanks to the nice code highlighting.

I probably wouldn't switch from Gingko or WriteMonkey for writing long texts just yet, but I'd definitely use SmartDown for viewing and editing the text after exporting it from them.

Here is another new markdown-based app, sqink: Scroll, Quill & INK - Note taking application for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

It seems to focus on journal-writing, as it syncs with Narrate:

"Create notes on your desktop, and synchronize using Dropbox. Use tags to classify your notes. Compatible with Narrate for Android."

https://code.google.com/p/ck-sqink/

...and here is another Markdown editor (haven't had a chance to try it yet, but looks interesting). This one also supports CommonMark.

Markdown Edit

"Markdown Edit is a Windows desktop CommonMark (a.k.a. Markdown) editor with an emphasis on content and keyboard shortcuts. There is minimal window chrome and most functions are accessed through keyboard shortcuts. There is no main menu, status bar, tabbed windows or other distractions."

http://mike-ward.net/markdownedit/

Dr Andus wrote:

...and here is another Markdown editor (haven't had a chance to try it
yet, but looks interesting). This one also supports CommonMark.

Markdown Edit
http://mike-ward.net/markdownedit/

I did manage to try it now. It requires NET Framework 4.5.2, so that takes a bit of time to install/update to. Overall it's a nice piece of software with a good set of features. But there seem to be a few bugs in it (e.g. hitting F9 to call up its settings in Notepad, where I was hoping to be able to adjust the width of the edit window, had crashed the app for me, which is not good when you're writing. Also, a bit of encoding issue, as em dash is not recognised in the text).

But there are lots of things to like, such as multiple visual themes, a preview pane that can be hidden, markdown syntax highlighting, word count, and so on. Reminds me of SmartDown (although SmartDown has the edge with its CriticMarkup support - but Markdown Edit is free). Most of the controls are only accessible by way of keyboard shortcuts, which some might find not so intuitive (e.g. need to use CTRL+O to open a document, it doesn't seem to be possible through the interface). F1 will give you a list of all the controls.

This thread had been titled correctly by Mr. Coulson, given the specific question he asked in post 1.

Then, though, we are on page 10 now, and with undeniably lots of valid info contained in this thread, its title has become totally wrong, since in this general meaning, it's another false dichotomy, and I should perhaps told you so on page 1 indeed.

In fact, there is not the slightest reason to not have wysiwyg, it's just some developers who ain't able (or willing, which is worse) to introduce it into their respective product, and we all know this applies to one not-even-an-outliner product which has some followers here which hold it in high praise or even tout it as the tool of choice for any new task that may come around.

Have a look into traditional dtp tools, and which all offer markdown (or was it markup? even the appropriation and then reversing of the original term by some wasn't helpful in any way), ON TOP OF wysiwyg, and that's the only way text tools should work: Wysiwyg for the standards (bolding, italicising), and in an ideal tool, underlining could be used as visual indicator for some other formatting (since in the target text, underlining would certainly not be used - for texts to read, it's quite deprecated, and rightly so); ditto for coloring and similar.

And then, in this nicely-(pre-)formatted "work text", you'll get (by kb shortcuts, hopefully) all those markdowns (or was it -ups?) you'll need (and will happily use) for much more elaborate formatting of your target text(s) - note that ideally, the same text codes (be it -down or -up, whatever) would be transposed differently, depending on your target format (textbooks, pdfs, web sites...).

Also, those text codes are not always in a visually pleasant format, but COULD be put into a such a format if simply you refrain from putting the "original" codes of the dtp tool in question, into your original text, but use your own codes (and endcodes), which will make a much more pleasant texting/rereading experience in your original text; then, you replace these "nice codes" with the codes your dtp tool will understand...

but in ANY case, all those bolds and italics will be transposed "as is", i.e. without the need of some additional encoding in-between, and ideally, that also should apply to other codes you will have visually-translated in your original text; as it is = for the time being, you will need to run an additional macro for these then, within your dtp tool (since current dtp tools don't (?) have inbuilt macros in the line of "replace orange-colored text by margin encoding"; as said, since the dtp tool WILL replace orange text by plain text, together with the codes for orange text, you'll be able then to replace those orange-text codes by margin codes or anything else by your macro.

Thus, it's either wysiwyg AND text codes, for the more elaborate formattings, links, cross-references, etc, OR you simply had not been thinking enough before buying your text/edit tool. THAT's the real dichotomy here.