iBooks as outliner and information manager

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Posted by MadaboutDana
Jan 18, 2018 at 11:05 AM

For some reason, an article I was reading on iBooks Author prompted me to experiment with the latter’s capabilities. And rather like Scrivener, what you find, if you start playing with iBooks Author, is a remarkably powerful information management tool, that also happens to be capable of exporting its contents as PDF and ePub files. (As well, of course, as actual iBooks.) And it’s got a fairly powerful search function, too, albeit more like something you’d find in a word processor than in an information management tool (such as e.g. DEVONthink Office).

The outliner part? Well, chapters, sections and headings are all treated as levels in the left-hand navigation bar.

It’s not entirely unlike Curio in general feel.

I haven’t played enough to decide whether it’s a genuinely viable tool for info management (I would need to create or load up a sizeable document to find out, and while it does import ePub files, it doesn’t appear to import anything else; however, I do have a few large ePub files somewhere about, so I’ll dig them out and experiment further). But an intriguing discovery, nevertheless.

Of course, like most Apple software, it’s enormous, taking up at least 400 MB on its own. So that’s a bit of a disincentive: nearly twice the size of Scrivener, and about 7 times the size of Curio…

Cheers,
Bill

Posted by Chris Thompson
Jan 18, 2018 at 03:53 PM

That’s an interesting idea! I’ve only used it briefly. On first blush I was thinking about what it provides that Keynote doesn’t, because the interfaces are similar. But upon reflection, there is a considerable amount of material that would be useful for information management (multi-page text flows, ability to add custom widgets and code directly to pages, indexing, easier embedding of math equations, etc.).

It turns out Apple does have a brief blurb about using it for personal uses such as personal travel journals or scrapbooks, so you’re not the first to have this idea: https://www.apple.com/ca/ibooks-author/made-with-ibooks-author/

It is about halfway between Curio and Scrivener in terms of approach. Both of those apps have become powerhouses though in their most recent releases (love the kanban-like stuff in Curio’s core toolset, and Scriv3 is just fantastic all-around, including excellent metadata options) that it would probably be hard to switch away. But maybe….

I’ll give it a try.

—Chris

Posted by ikandi
Jan 18, 2018 at 11:22 PM

The fact that it is Apple, 400mb and appears to be more of a Word Processor is a showstopper. No doubt it comes at a price?

Posted by Skywatcher
Jan 19, 2018 at 12:15 AM

ikandi wrote:
The fact that it is Apple, 400mb and appears to be more of a Word
>Processor is a showstopper. No doubt it comes at a price?

Yes, the price is 0$. :-)
It’s not a word processor. It was initially made to allow for the creation of interactive material ( mostly destined for the iBooks Store , but it also generates HTML )
I used it many years ago to create an interactive booklet for a music album. It combined images, animations, music, etc… I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use.
I haven’t used anymore since that time , but Bill’s approach is interesting. I might revisit it soon again.

Posted by ikandi
Jan 19, 2018 at 02:17 AM

Thank you for the heads up Skywatcher.

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