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Why folding?
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Posted by Paul Korm
Jun 20, 2018 at 11:09 AM
I’m indifferent to “folding”—a concept that I suspect is not simple. But clearly many confederates here enjoy or even demand folding in their software. Since a simple forum search here does not reveal, among the hundreds of mentions of “folding”, a topic debating “why folding”, I propose this thread.
So, for you: “why folding”? What are the benefits / detriments? How is “folding” best implemented in software? Is there even an analog of “folding” in the physical world.
Posted by Luhmann
Jun 20, 2018 at 11:50 AM
I’m personally more interested in “zooming” or “hoisting” than folding. I love being able to zoom in on a part of a document and focus on it to the exclusion of other parts and then be able to zoom out and see the document in context. Outliners like Workflowy/Dynalist/Outlinely do this one way, but other apps, like Ulysses, do it in another… both are useful for me, depending on what I am doing. But to answer your question, folding is useful for seeing that larger context without getting lost in the details. One can see section headers with only those sub-headings expanded that you wish to see. So for me the two features are two sides of the same coin.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 20, 2018 at 01:16 PM
I agree with Luhmann - yes, I know I witter on about folding all the time, but actually it’s about being able to focus specifically on one thing while maintaining a broad overview of a host of other (possibly related) things, so the zooming/hoisting concept is also valid. On another level, it’s why mind mapping is interesting: but I find it lacking in precision. I would love to see a knowledge management app that allowed you to move blocks of information/text into prime position without losing their links to their original context. This would make sense for writing purposes, but also for task management and other activities involving prioritisation. There are some clever concepts currently emerging in task management apps, but keeping that combination of zoomed-in detail view surrounded by big-picture overview appears to be a very difficult thing to visualise and implement.
Folding is, I suppose, one of the simplest expressions of this requirement, but it’s certainly not the definitive one. Side-by-side views (or clever cross-comparable hierarchies like Gingko’s) are other possibilities. Tagging is a way of focusing, but I can’t think of any apps that have really mastered the advantages of tagging to the full (pace ConnectedText), because for me, a tagged view should coexist with other views of the same information, such as a list-based overview.
Having said that, more and more information management apps are allowing you to open multiple windows (Things, Bear, Ulysses, Keep It, Scrivener, Notebooks for iOS, etc. etc.), which certainly helps to manage complex masses of info more easily.
Posted by Chris Thompson
Jun 20, 2018 at 02:42 PM
For me, the appeal of folding is being able to refer to multiple relevant sections of a document with a chunk of intervening text at once on-screen *by manipulating the document* rather than by manipulating the viewing/windowing interface. If you can split a window into two or more horizontal viewing areas, like you can in Word, you can accomplish the same thing (as you can by opening and positioning multiple windows on the same document), but messing around with windows and splits and whatever is a lot less natural than just manipulating the document itself.
The physical analog is a binder with multiple tabs. Sometimes even though there are tabs, I’ll pull out the pages from tab 2 and tab 10 and refer to those outside of the binder, without all the other stuff in the way.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jun 20, 2018 at 04:57 PM
Great topic for discussion, Paul.
Folding is essential to me for certain kinds of outline. For example, in Dynalist I have outlines that break out an entire year into months and days. I then use the hoist feature to zoom in on one month at a time, with all the days of that month spread out below. I then bullet journal under the days. So by the time I have a few days under my belt, it is nice to be able to fold those days, so I don’t have to see the detail of preceding days unless I want to. Saves screen space and clutter.
It can also be helpful when composing a document to be able to outline with headers, write content under the headers, then fold them up to keep the structure in view, but not have to be distracted by the content.
A physical analog might be a binder with tabbed dividers vs. all the pages tacked to a white board in columns beneath the divider headings (i.e. in a sort of table). The latter might be useful in certain circumstances, but it is probably easier to zero in and focus on a specific divider topic using the binder.
Steve Z.