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How to best mix your stuff with theirs?
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Posted by 22111
Jan 23, 2014 at 09:28 PM
MenAgerie wrote: “Specifically, I want a way of recording my reading notes against a bibliographic reference - consisting of quotes, precis, and my reflections, in such a way that I can assemble multiple notes on a particular topic/sub-topic into the bare-bones of a discussion/argument without losing the bibliographical references (fear of plagiarism accusations). In this way I could in future assemble, reassemble, experiment, synthesise the fruits of my diverse labours in multiple creative ways - hopefully to produce novel insights etc.”
I’m thankful for your having brought up this subject, since it has never been elucidated whilst it concerns one of our core tasks, for most of us.
A - External stuff put into a regular item
As said, Ultra Recall (or Maple, or some other are, too) is rather bad here since the only way to differentiate such items in the tree is by special symbols, so their identification later on is much less easy than by formatting the tree entry.
A prob arises when you need that ref for more than one of your own items, since then you cannot put it as a child of that specific own item.
You also need some formatting for your own stuff (IMO, instead of special symbols), i.e. bolding, underlining, some coloring (but there is also background coloring possible in many outliners’ trees). Perhaps:
- bolding for better visualizing the higher levels
- regular blue for “must work on it!”
- bolded blue for “much work to be done here!”
and:
- light turquoise background for external stuff
- ditto bolded if you must dig deeper into that external stuff (externally, from source)
- both ditto but change to chamois background instead when you think you will not have to have another look into this external stuff, internally (i.e. into the text you have copied into that current “external material” item
So we have got 3 things: Your stuff, the external source, and what you will have copied from there into your “external” item, and it’s evident that 2 and 3 do not need to be identical; I for example, I very often just copy some paragraph (together with the source indications) from external sources, and even one part from them here, and another there.
Instead, you could systematically have one item “copied in full from specific external source”, and then you would do further, selective copies of parts of that material. Prob here: It will quickly become chaotic, since those parts will be children of YOUR respective stuff, whilst also being children of their (complete) parent, so you need an outliner with (easy) cloning here.
Also, you could divide up the external stuff into such stuff that you have already treated in your stuff (chamois-backgrounded items), and other parts you must further work on (turquoise-backgrounded items) - OR you could leave the whole item turquoise backgrounded, but do the necessary ToDo notes within its text.
The above-mentioned prob of “where to put those” is not resolved yet, since you will put them as children as low as possible (ok) but also as high in the hierarchy as necessary, and that is not really ok, since for your own items further down, you will then quickly forget if the “external” item higher up contains specific material concerning your specific item further down in particular, or not.
I.e. “point of departure” should be your specific item, instead of your “external” (or “mid”) item becoming their oncle! So best would be to NOT put the mid item above some of your own items further down to which it relates, but to have it in some special “oncle” “folder” (i.e. as a child of some heading “externals to this chapter” or such), and then to cr (cross-reference) to it from any related own item, in the form which MyInfo only allows for at this very moment, i.e. “link to paragraph xyz of item abc” - unfortunately, even in MI, this is not possible FROM the tree (where it would be a good thing to be replicated at least, for better clarity), but from within the text only - btw., these would be links NOT deemed to survive into publication.
Btw, this “replication” of the external stuff (see B), in your file system in its original format (e.g. pdf), AND as text in an item in your outliner, is exactly the point in UR’s and RN’s replicating the text of pdf’s indexed by those progs (and which we discussed some days ago in the RightNote thread, see Bill’s (wsp’s) interest of his pdf’s being “quickly readable” there, too).
B - External material “imported” in its original file format
Imported into your file system, not into your db, IMO.
Of course, you should do this anyway, and the corresponding references would be within your tree, as children of the corresponding “A” items (see above).
And of course, this “A” variant is subject to discussion; your stance might be, I’ve got “B”, so I don’t need “A” on top of that, but my experience is that it’s much easier to have some “mix” from which you work, instead of just the original file. My stance is, leave the original file alone (hence no need for “pdf comment functionality”, e.g.), but copy the relevant “greater passages” and start your commenting there. I’m aware if you don’t apply special styles here, you risk to mix the external material with your own writings, but as said, have these “intermediate” items as “external”, by background-coloring them in the tree, and then do YOUR work in not-background-colored items. In these intermediate items, I do it this way: I cut the original lines, begin a new line with “ICH:” (German “I”; the English “I” would not do it, but why not begin those lines with “IMO:” instead?), then write my “intermediate stuff” there, then do another blank line, and then the original text continues; this way is much more error-proof than applying several formatting styles or such where you risk to forget to properly format, or to inadvertantly reformat it back to default style.
C - External material in not-digitized format
Books from the library, academic journals, and so on, but most of the latter are digitized, today. When not: Do you have a photocopy, or do you risk to give the “original” away again, perhaps rather soon, without a copy of the relevant parts being in some sort of physical folder? I know physical files are cost-intensive, in time, in supplies and in furniture, but I never give away the “originals” without having made a copy of the relevant parts, and I reference them within my tree, as everything else (as said, I have installed a pc file folder system replicating my tree(s), and that very same system is replicated on shelf, too (and yes, this implies some unavoidable shuffling around then).
D - Bibliographic references
Citavi has been mentioned, as a compromise; I fully understand this and acknowledge any try to integrate reference managers into your workflow. But from what I’ve seen, their main interest lies in managing the reference info, e.g. by sparing you to unnecessarily retype it, but then, why not put that info into your clipboard, for further processing?
From my experience, even very light macroing, from there, will do everything you will further need, and this means, how about considering your reference manager as just and nothing more than an input tool in your workflow, just like Evernote, for its superior input facilities? But don’t expect anything more from those “early-on” tools.
I think there’s a trap with reference managers: There are so useful for fetching the references, but afterwards, you certainly will not need them anymore for any further ref “M”, and as soon as you will have grasped this, this will spare you lotsa trouble with further “integrating” them into your “real work” workflow, then. In other words, once you’ve got your ref, you don’t need your ref manager anymore, for that ref in question, and this will be a relief in your workflow… since there HAS TO BE one “central repository” for your work, which is your outliner, whatever make it might be (and from which you “live”-access your file system, too). Just my opinion.
This being said, there would certainly be much more to be said on this VIP, very important prob. Share your insight, please, as I do here.
Posted by 22111
Jan 24, 2014 at 03:21 PM
I’m aware many (but not all of) these probs arise from the initial choice to MIX those “externals”, “mids”, and “internals” - I am aware of the fact that your initial choice could have been, “separate these” (be it 2 or 3 such groups, as in my workflow) “into two different material bodies” (higher-placed main entries as parents and/or different file system folders).
But in real life, you will probably opt, as I do, for this “immediate vicinity” of disparate material; for me, it comes much more “natural” this way. And bear in mind, the above-described prob of “which external doc(s) (and then, which respective part(s) of it) relate(s) to which (perhaps multiple, perhaps not “siblinged”) internal doc(s)”, will “survive” even your most radical separation into “work here” and “material there”.
It’s such - unresolved - conceptual probs that make me currently refrain from starting development of the perfect outliner, so you bet I crave for some input on these matters, from which then I could develop better solutions to such “details” (quotes because the common association of “details” and “minute” is one of the worst misconceptions (judging from results) of the human mind).
That “Watership Planner” subject today is a perfect example of what I mean: From a purely coding pov, the developer has done tremendous work - but in the course of all that coding, the conceptual clarity has been dumped, and by “conceptual clarity” I of course mean the “user experience”, the “how it works on arrival”. I’ve said this before: For sw becoming oh so “natural” for the user, the developer has to do lotsa coding… but I should have also added, he’s got to have to do lotsa thinking, before coding starts.
This being said:
And to some “contributors” to this forum who deliberately withhold their respective insight, I can only say this: You’d make many forum users happy by sharing some ideas, some experience of yours here, since in the end, and without “it being tit for tat”, there should be at least SOME counterweight to my contributions here, and then I’d be perfectly willing to share such macros as the one I’ve spoken here today, but you see, the “input” for Jil Sander,
the doyenne of German (minimalist, I worship her a lot for her Seventies’/Eighties’ creations, and THEN only came some Japanese following, developing and mastering the style SHE had introduced beforehand) prêt-à-porter who once spoke of her work as a never-ending “giving story” (these and other English words in her German text, which brought her lotsa mockery from her compatriotes not grasping that “mistress” (I’d like to convey the idea of “female master” here) probably spoke the lingua franca 90 p.c. of her (then) 16-hours day)),
was the returns of her sales (and please note that in spite of those, she alleged she “gave out”), whilst in “our setup” here, I do most of the thinking alone, and even came to “silence”, in a way, formerly eager fellow contributors to this forum, and that’s why I would very much like to insist on the fact that I’d be happy to “hear from you” again - of course I dissect your arguments, but then, I constantly dissect mine, for superior outcome, and as you will remember, I never bit the purveyor of an argument, I just snapped at cynic moves (note I’m not saying, “at cynics”) that tried to invalidate some devopment by some insignificant line.
Franz, we must distinguish two complexes of problems here: One, you’re never too old to gain some manners. Fully accepted. Two, my developing style will not change anymore (and I’m aware of your prob that yes, you simply could pass over any 22111 post, but then, you’d risk to pass over some useful info/idea, so you skim to it, and thus the prob of my too meandering writing style), but our COMMON “enemy” should always be the “lazy programmer”, and which means, the developer who doesn’t THINK enough before coding, our real enemy being the schism between technology in 2014 and “what we get” from that same technology, by way of totally insufficient programming efforts - I never came here to “silence” formerly eager contributors, and let’s confine jealousy to our ancient schoolyards.
I never stole any idea from somebody else; I cite my sources; I’d cite any new idea’s source that I’m given. If I find some fellow combatants, we’ll all have the very perfect outliner out there (and for cheap) before I’ll die. Ok, that would probably be a relict from the pc age then, but let’s assume MS and Intel will be able to get us the Win-regular slate weighting 800 g and working a full 14 hours workday, up to then.
I came here to share my insight and my knowledge, in the hope of getting some missing details here, in return, in 2010; the Proust bomb two years later was a totally unnecessary declaration of war I wasn’t able to take then; I had to cope with a terrible grievance at that time (and we all know some of you - not necessarily present anymore at this moment for all of them - even reactivated their dormant accounts in order to throw additional fuses at the stake); NONE of today’s outliners or other “correctly-priced-for-individuals” IMS’ have ever been able to replace word processor functionality, AND add IMS functionality on top of that; we all live with more or less miserable comprimises.
Let’s join our thinking forces. Let’s change the IMS-for-individuals-and-little-workgroups world together; I’ll do the relevant part but ask for some “little help from your friends”.
Posted by Franz Grieser
Jan 24, 2014 at 04:25 PM
22111
I still keep skimming over your posts - and spotted your “anyone still here?” call. ;-)
It’s just: I do not see developers as enemies. And I do not have much to contribute to a thread on “my stuff vs. their stuff”: Whenever I copy something, I also write down the source. When I plan to use a thought (except for citation), I rephrase it and make it “mine”.
I think Dr. Andus will have more to contribute to the topic than me.
Posted by 22111
Jan 27, 2014 at 06:18 PM
Franz, thank you for answering.
Part 1: well seen!
Part 2: “It’s just: I do not see developers as enemies.”
OMG! For me, too, the opposite is true! I’m perfectly aware of the fact that my sharing plenty of ideas could trigger “parallel development”, from them, with much higher risk of “them being first” than if I shut my mouth on those (and being aware some ideas might indeed be “in the air” anyway). So this proves my bona fide motivation for improving “outlining environment” (even if in extremis, I’d argue, “Why take this feature from someone who “stole” it from me, instead of using the “original”?”) - I “severely judge” coding, and especially conceptual lackings in current sw, but, e.g., if Rael did serious work between RightNote 3 and 4, I’d be the very first commentator to congratulate him for having done a real big step forward (as as is shown by my “RN posts”, I would not even blame him for not introducing clones even then, that being a “choice” of his and to be accepted… but then, the current implementation of his tagging system instead is un-acceptable for serious use). So I’m very precise in my criticism, when some other commentators just say, “well, I’m very happy with that very same prog”... the difference being that I bring arguments, they do not (and thus encourage the respective developer to not do anything really important). So developers are certainly not “enemies” for me - only bad sw is.
Part 3: “And I do not have much to contribute to a thread on “my stuff vs. their stuff”” - Your main work is (if I got this well) to write sw manuals, and to translate. Both occupations are highbrow - please don’t me wrong here!!! - but atypical for “integrational” work… well, it would be otherwise if you wrote manuals after there being lots of competing manuals for the same applics already, right? But when you write yours, I suppose very few such competitive offerings are on the market, and you’ll have to do, more or less, with the developer’s help file, and with the prog itself.
Of course, from a TECHNICAL - not intellectual!!! - pov, this is very different from the “classic” situation where a scholar has got 500 “sources” of all kinds to what he’s writing about, and where he not only has to administer those sources as “citations”, but also and especially for his own writing.
Btw, you imply exactly this, and I just thought it helpful to put this in more detailed words for the casual reader. ;-)
It’s the scholar’s-with-never-ending-piles-of-material situation that really interests me more than anything else currently, since I seriously think that before coding, there has to be some “system analysis”, and workflow-optimization-by-desgin, and THEN only developers should conceive their respective outliners.
In order to not only theorize here (and by that make again “aggressive writing since there’s nothing tangible here”), I’d like to add that even for physical sources, the scanner should replace more and more the photocopier (today, in many cases, it’s the same device anyway), in order to have a max of “clippings” ready as outliner items (which is a relief in itself), AND in order to minimize that awful “electronic vs. paper files (incl. books) synch work”, by a VERY substantial proportion, since that synch work is quite the same effort for 20-page papers, and for just a little clip of 2 paragraphs (but which ain’t available in electronic form originally).
Hence the very big interest of EASY scanning (cf. Bill’s (wsp) use of Evernote), but then also of easy “inboxing” / pre-distribution of such notes.
Also, it’s become so extraordinarily important to have a second, portrait screen, in order to read electronic pdf’s in the best possible way.
And, of course, it’s always a good idea to leave 20-page papers in their original paper format (, too), for more convenient reading and annotating - but only such “much-reading-in-a-row” papers, and not some 20 lines of text.
Thus, and also with more and more books being available on-screen, managing your physical paper stuff, and hold it all in synch, will become more and more dispendable, but this even adds to the “how to best manage external, and internal writings together” prob, and I’m sure a real good outliner should optimize this workflow as well as it can (and offering two concurrent panes isn’t but the very first, basic step to this complex of tasks), and here, it’s two ranges of elements that are deeply interwoven: compartimentalization of information into different “items” (how, when, and with replication of the relevant source info) and in general all processing relating to the “tree”; better “word processing” - being able to do whatever you’re currently able to do in MS Word et al., in your outliner as well (and which currently is mostly hampered by sub-standard rtf components in those outliners) - BUT as said, this differenciation between “what the tree should be able to do for you” and “what you should be able to do within the text pane” is purely artificial and due to today’s outliner’s text component vs. tree component set-up - the ultimate “word and items’ processing” functionality of a perfect outliner should consider the tasks of the user, and make available instruments of fulfilling those, and NOT maintain two worlds, “here’s items, and here’s text within those”.
That’s what I’d call “functional design”, vs. design by “what the respective components are able to do”.
Hence my interest in how university professors do their work, now (and also considering their respective staff working with them), and how they would like to organize their work if they weren’t “stopped” by the numerous limitations of currently available sw.
(And I’m absolutely sure that the very special paragraph / “margins” the German legal profession invented (?) isn’t but one, but a tremendously useful element in such an amended IM-for-creation system (and yes, while creating the “product”, you could have the “real identification”, on top of the “item number”, in brackets, for every such cr).)
(And then again, in the early stages of hyperspace theory, a lot of good ideas were presented, most of which did NOT make their entry into today’s outliners, simply because it was all too highbrow for the developing crowd. It is VERY funny TB developers seem to have delved again into such legacy readings, lately.)