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Markdown vs WSYWYG
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Posted by Chris Murtland
Sep 5, 2013 at 11:32 PM
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.
Posted by 22111
Sep 10, 2013 at 07:57 PM
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.
Posted by Chris Murtland
Sep 11, 2013 at 11:17 AM
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.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 11, 2013 at 02:06 PM
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
Posted by Dr Andus
Sep 11, 2013 at 03:15 PM
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 :)