I'm looking for a note management software that would allow me plop down hundreds of notes and build as many different connections between them as I want. Ideally, I could then visualize those connections in different ways. I create educational content on complex ideas and I need a way to move around a bunch of different information so that I can identify the ideal structure for delivery.

I've been using an outliner (Dynalist) but the issue is that a linear outline already ASSUMES structure & prioritization of information. When I've got a sea of information, structure and prioritization is the thing I'm looking for a tool to help me FIND. I end up just having to recreate the whole outline repeatedly toying with with different structures. It works, and I know it's somewhat mandatory, but I feel that there HAS to be a better way.

From what I've found, Tinderbox is the only thing that seems to do what I want, but I'm on windows. Are there any tools I'm missing? Is my only option to either limp along with what I've got or run a VM?

Other things I've tried
- Scrivener: It's okay, I like how much metadata you can add, but it lacks the visual arrangement flexibility
- Mind maps: They are just linear outlines made ugly and lack the rearrangement and heavy cross linking I'd want
- Scapple: Nice but too weak for larger things and doesn't let you easily move stuff around
- yEd: nice graphing and rearranging capabilities, but not really meant for lots of text
- (briefly) The Brain: Seemingly more optimized for storage rather than creation
- (briefly) Connected Text: Started scratching the surface, but everything was clunky, ugly, and I'm worried to invest more time into it if it's not being maintained.

Thanks for any help.

Some Windows options come to mind for the graphical piece. Each of these will play differently with the "dump in a bunch of notes" piece.

VUE from Tufts University
http://vue.tufts.edu

Cmap from IHMC
https://cmap.ihmc.us

SouthBeach Modeler
http://www.southbeachinc.com
(I suspect SouthBeach is abandonware, though the developer denies that -- but if you can find a copy it is pretty good.)

ThinkComposer from Instrumind
http://www.instrumind.com

There's an old-timey Windows writing app called Writer's Blocks. It probably isn't what you're looking for, but I'm mentioning it just in case:

https://www.writersblocks.com/


Steve Z.

One option that hasn't been mentioned yet is the TiddlyMap extension for TiddlyWiki. Basically this extends TiddlyWiki to full-fledged concept mapping. (However, if you found the interface of ConnectedText clunky, you might not take to this either.)

Unfortunately if you need what it offers (incremental refinement of notes representing complex relationships you can't quite figure out at first), there isn't anything quite like Tinderbox.

InfoQube (http://www.infoqube.biz/ is the only thing I have found other than ConnectedText which does the emergent structure thing.

Looking at it's manual and reading about it I think Tinderbox may also be good at revealing emergent structure in data but I haven't used it so I can't say for sure.

There may be other things which I haven't found ... but, I haven't found them.

I don't know what it is about ConnectedText which lends itself to the data communicating with the user but this is my experience. See https://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes for a better explanation of this phenomenon than I could possibly give.

I think it has something to do with the placement of data. In most applications the user decides where to place things and so they are unlikely to discover anything they didn't already know whereas in ConnectedText there is no place, the data organises itself depending upon it's links and metadata and things become apparent from the emergent structure which the user wasn't previously aware of.

I know what you mean about everything being a bit clunky in ConnectedText. The split between edit mode and view mode is especially incongruous to me but ConnectedText does do what it does very well. Yes development has been abandoned but the program still works just as well as it did.

InfoQube doesn't do the emergent structure thing as well as ConnectedText.

InfoQube does almost everything that ConnectedText does but with everything being accessible via a GUI rather than being in a markup language. Items can appear in multiple places/views and these views can be driven by the meta data which is what lets the data communicate with the user.

You could get a free trial version of InfoQube and see what you think. The user interface is quite complex and dense but it is very configurable so you can strip out the things which you don't need. Thats what I have done and my stripped down version is a lot simpler to use than the default version. Yes I am aware that I'm not using it to it's full potential but I don't care.

Paul J. Miller wrote:

I don't know what it is about ConnectedText which lends itself to the
data communicating with the user but this is my experience. See
https://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes for a better
explanation of this phenomenon than I could possibly give.

That essay about slip boxes is pretty interesting. I started down the path of structuring my brain drippings with Writers Blocks, and graduated from there to more fluid methods. One thing I've learned is that exposition, whether fiction or not, is a linear exercise that lends itself to hierarchical structure. An outline is like a list of goals and subgoals. What I'm going to say and its subunits, in the order I'm going to achieve the milestones.

Notes are different, best viewed as a navigable rat's nest, with heavy emphasis on the navigation.

I was blown away by The Brain, basically by two things. The jump thoughts which were more important to me than the parent-child-sibling hierarchy, and the plex view, which was like a limited context with escape routes. It fits me and my vulnerability to context switching and doorway effect.

The Brain lost some nodes for me once, probably due to Java trouble (and kudos to The Brain for getting away from Java). Along the way I moved over to Mac systems, and discovered DevonThink.

DevonThink is wonderful, but at first it seemed like losing the jump thought/plex view was a personal tragedy.

Now, though, I think of tags as my jump links, and there is a bit more to them than that.

When I add a tag to a note, I try not to think of making a tag that describes an attribute of the note as much as I think about how the tag will relate to other, future, notes that will get the tag. A tag, then, reveals what The Brain would have shown as a collection of jump thoughts. A second tag on the same note reveals something The Brain doesn't have, a second collection of jump thoughts.

Having a hierarchy of tags lets me adjust the focus of which thoughts I want to jump to, and discovering I could replicate a tag was a great revelation. Now notes about Bad Bart could fit under Mass Murderers for his taste for blood, and under needlepoint for his cross stitch passions.

Anyway, it's good to think about how logic is formed as well as what logical discoveries we can make. Efficient study is names, dates, places, and epistemology.

When I realized tags could fill in for jump thoughts, DevonThink became more useful. Realizing that The Brain organizes as two hierarchies, parent-child-sibling and jump relations, led me to think of tags as forming multiple hierarchies. Replication serves in a similar capacity to The Brain's adept use of circular references when you want them.

In other words, I suppose, anything used for information management is more useful with some thought as to how to organize.

The slip box article was nice.

It may be worth looking at Hyper Plan. It has Windows and Mac versions. The Professional edition allows you to make any number of types of connections between cards. You can automatically layout cards by their properties or connectivity.

--

Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com

@Andy Brice -- nice thought, but Hyperplan doesn't really work well for me with note taking and content or context mapping. It doesn't fit into the category of software discussed in this thread. Just my opinion.

@Amontillado -- very interesting reply. Thank you. DEVONthink isn't a contender when it comes to visualization, but you're right about tagging -- when used thoughtfully as you describe DEVONthink tagging can be quite useful. Coupled with DEVONthink's powerful search and "see also" capabilities, a good case is to apply a tag on the fly to a group of search results to create a temporary relationship among those results. Later on when that relationship is no longer needed, the tag can be deleted without disturbing any other tagging.

thouqht wrote:

I'm looking for a note management software that would allow me plop down
hundreds of notes and build as many different connections between them
as I want. Ideally, I could then visualize those connections in
different ways. I create educational content on complex ideas and I need
a way to move around a bunch of different information so that I can
identify the ideal structure for delivery.

Assuming that the information is in English, I would personally use Brainstorm* even at this day and age (it has not been updated in several years). I stress that this is a personal solution, and not one without issues, but bear with me as I explain the logic behind my rather outdated approach in case you find it useful.

Content-wise, Brainstorm is plain text (one can colour whole paragraphs, but that's all). It works in permanent 'hoist' mode, showing only the current level and the single entry above it. It is possible to open several windows to display different views of the same file ('Model' in Brainstorm terminology.)

One can collect or type text entries to their heart's content and worry about organisation later. This can then be done using several tools, including buckets ('Throw' to 'Marks'), drag-n-drop, and cloning ('Namesakes').

It is this latter feature that I find unsurpassable: other programmes have clones, but Brainstorm is the only programme I am aware of (along with the humble, and also no longer developed, Zulupad personal wiki) which can identify namesakes on its own.

So let's say that I'm typing a list of topics, if I type one that already exists somewhere in the model (as an independent entry, not as part of a paragraph), Brainstorm will recognise it, light up, and include below it all existing subsidiary information. With the left and right arrows one can slide between the various namesakes wherever they may be, identifying related info along the way.

Brainstorm allows one to focus on structure (hierarchy, order, association, etc.) at the immediate level, while the overall structure slowly arises. There is a 'balloon' view-only mode to assess the whole hierarchy. This is a classic outline so, if there are namesakes, these will appear in multiple positions in the outline, with their subsidiary hierarchies repeating each time. The structures can be exported as OPML or indented text files.

A point of caution: while visual tools may seem more attractive and make structure more immediately evident, I have rarely seen them perform well at scale, i.e., with hundreds of entries.


* Find it at http://brainstormsw.com/ Click on the "Quick and dirty demo" link at the top right for, well, a quick and dirty demo.

Paul Korm wrote:

@Andy Brice -- nice thought, but Hyperplan doesn't really work well for
me with note taking and content or context mapping. It doesn't fit
into the category of software discussed in this thread. Just my
opinion.

Actually, I believe that the new 'relationship mapping' feature introduced to Hyperplan in v.281 https://www.hyperplan.com/hyperplan_v281.html might well make sense for the kind of task described in this thread. And Hyperplan is one of the few visual programmes that works well in scale.

Paul Korm wrote:

@Andy Brice -- nice thought, but Hyperplan doesn't really work well for
me with note taking and content or context mapping. It doesn't fit
into the category of software discussed in this thread. Just my
opinion.

It may not. Obviously it works much better in some scenarios than others. I don't have enough context to judge whether it would be a good fit here.

--
Andy Brice
http://www.hyperplan.com