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Keeping zetel notes: productive or counterproductive approach.
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Posted by steve-rogers
Dec 4, 2018 at 09:00 PM
This makes sense to me, too. Lougleed’s rationale for structuring text verbatim from the source as a child object was so that the links back to the DevonTHINK database could be hidden for readability, but there’s no reason why the link couldn’t be appended to the OO “note” field.
Amontillado wrote:
I would refine Mr. Lougleed’s method slightly. While you can write (or
>paste) lengthy notes as OmniOutliner topics, that’s probably better done
>as notes for the topics.
>
>He pastes an excerpt as a child topic. I think it’s a better use of
>hoisting/focusing to keep the topic title short. The optional note on
>each topic is easier to use for lengthy input, since the enter key works
>as a line ending and doesn’t terminate the entry process. Cmd-enter is a
>keyboard shortcut that will close out a note.
>
>With the long and windy stuff in the notes, OmniOutliner’s show and hide
>all notes features can quickly switch between a full-on display of
>everything and a more navigable menu of what’s there.
>
>I keep wishing Devonthink had more fluid navigation. On the other hand,
>I really like DT’s feel of cast-iron dependability, something I didn’t
>get with Tinderbox.
>
>Maybe I should take another look. I still have a Tinderbox license,
Posted by washere
Dec 5, 2018 at 04:14 AM
The roots of the concept , as well as a few interesting apps by the same name, are German. Might remember the Stasi index card boxes, but that is not what I am referring to. Luhmann was a great mind, not a cold fish with no substantial human warmth lacking the milk of human kindness. He was not self obsessed with his own areas of interest and railroading concepts and people and indexing them, but very social and insightful and had relations with the group known as the Frankfurt School.
The group which included his philosopher friends, like Adorno and others like Habermas who is still alive, influenced his work, and vice versa. Unlike previous generations of philosophers, they expanded their fields of study. The next great generation of about a dozen thinkers in France continued this multi disciplinary Cultural Theory. Some of which, i.e. modes of analyses, is even beyond most academicians who teach the subjects. Luhmann thus started to collect information on a wide range of subjects. Also there were no personal computers. That was his context and Zeitgeist.
In current IT, an equivalent is tagging, from relational databases to apps. BTW there are certain cutting edge computing technologies related to outlining which are never discussed here, I know as I search for them here with no results. Lets not assume all relevant info is here.
In real life right now for billions, the index card retrieval system is called “Googling”, generally. Specifically, it is the summary at top of what is called the pages in “Wikipedia”.
As far as tools in my experience, there is no single tool that does it all for this sub-genre for me. I link a few tools for this specific purpose, with unified data format structures. Like above paragraphs, expanding would take time and space.
Another area of confusion in this area is mixing up two separate fields. The first is that of collecting data, like brief descriptions of terms or ideas. In fact since the Frankfurt School and Luhmann and then the French theorists, an indeed the 3 great figures in 3 generations before the German wave, influencing them, we now have “History of Ideas” as a field of study in many universities. Back to the point, this is basically data/information summary/collection/indexing.
The other area, being mixed up, is for creative purposes. This can have the prior as a subset but it’s main raison d’être is completely different. So commenting on them as though both are the same is talking at cross purposes. This lack of ontological clarity and separation is often a given in generalized discussions. As to this very interesting category, the process of creative building blocks and symbiotic flows between them, I have found certain data modelling aspects to be indispensable, but that is beyond the topic here too. But mixing the two, simply means the wires are crossed, ironically from a Luhmannic system POV, with little formal progress in the dialectics.
Yet to another point,briefly. I’ve known many who thought if they get an expensive piece of kit they will be great thinkers or researchers or innovators or artists in various fields. I always disagreed, and when they did get what they desired, it did not happen as I predicted. The prospectors’ gold fever here for the perfect outliner eldorado app is also a mirage, just leads to cabin fever.
Which is why once I said here that pen and paper is superior to any app, and those great Franco German thinkers would agree. I also said once, even above pen and paper is the mind. Those figures had great minds,which can be developed like muscles in a gym. With memory tools, indexing methods, visualizations, exercises, flow systems, alternative thinking processes etc. etc. For example most people can be trained to sequentially remember dozens of items.
But this is the low end and mechanical aspect of mind. I am talking of much higher aspects than mind mechanics. Just as the 2 perspectives, top-down analytical and bottom-up neural network architecture style sense/data/info input/collection. It is not either or, it is all. What I am not referring to here is merely simple indexing, that is a tiny aspect.
Could go on as there are many other aspects but would like to finish with those great thinkers. They were not OCD self obsessed psychopathic people or like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman collecting data or simply wanting comfortable input to suit their closed minds as most. They developed their mind beyond the tool obsessed top-down data possessed caricature some make of them. In many wonderful and unusual ways, often attacked by lesser beings who always disappear in the mists of time.
How can one expect the majority to do the same when they can not even dare look at their own mind once before they die? Such great ideas came from unusually developed minds not because of tools, or apps or methodologies, but through: “real intelligence”, sense of wonder, reinventing the rules, instead of shelter in conformity as in their less moral attackers, creativity and above all being warm empathetic “human beings”.
But then again, we can not go into these climes on the infinite potential of human mind, as this is not the topic nor the forum on mind or even pen and paper, just obsession with outliner software.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Dec 7, 2018 at 06:30 AM
My understanding is that the content, indexing and interconnections of zettel notes can be reproduced in any wiki, with a wiki page being the equivalent of a note.
What software like TheBrain (and Tinderbox, and more recently InfoQube I believe) can provide, which most wikis and the original Zettelkasten lack, is the visualisation of those connections.
In TheBrain, this occurs for the hierarchical (parent-child) and horizontal (jump) links. Not so for tags.
It is also possible to use TheBrain as a wiki, i.e. each ‘thought’ has its own local URL which can be copied into a note of TheBrain, in effect providing the full Zettelkasten functionality. However, these links are also not visualised in TheBrain’s ‘plex’.
In brief, win some lose some.
Amontillado wrote:
>The Brain has a vertical parent-child structure, the hierarchical tree,
>and it has a horizontal hierarchical tree, the jump thought references.
>Both can contain multiple parent and circular references.
>
>That’s not quite enough, though, so it supports tagging, too.
Posted by Dellu
Dec 7, 2018 at 12:30 PM
Revising the forums about DEVONthink, I realized that people have been divided on this issue for a long time.
It seems like there have been two main approaches for reading and understanding literature.
1) The separationist approach: attempts to pick some ideas from the reading material, and attempts to give the idea its own life (write it in a separate file, with separate file names and tags).
There are two approaches within this system:
a) extremist separationism: this the slip box approach: might link the note to the source reading the material. But, it is important for this approach for the note to be self-standing (not dependent on the context given by the reading material). This is the zettel (slip box) approach.
I am very skeptic of this approach; doesn’t sound tenable in the long run (unless you are obsessively committed person, which many of us in here doubt to be so).
b) the pragmatic separationism: attempts to keep give a life to the note (quote); but doesn’t attempt to remove it from the context of the reading material. The note (quote) might have its own title or tag, but, is still understood within the context of the bigger reading material it stands in.
- I have used this approach for a whole when I was using Sente.
- I pick snippets of ideas as I read the article
- these snippets have their own title and tag. They also have the page number. But, they are also linked back to the main material.
- export these snippets of the ideas to Tinderbox
Another tool that is used largely a script known as “Annotation Pane” in the Devonthink community (https://forum.devontechnologies.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=21707). Frederiko (the one who developed Annotation Pane) also has another tool that quotes material to Omnifocus.
Both of his scripts amazing; could be very useful for this community.
2) unification approach: an idea picked from the reading material is dysfunctional if the context where it is written is removed. We have to understand the ideas only within reading material. A general summary, or excerpt of the reading material might be possible. But, picking up individual ideas separately doesn’t make much sense.
This is the approach I have been using for the longest time.
I use Skim (PDF expert) for this.
- I read the text (article) from the beginning to the end
- highlight texts
- write short reflections if I find the ideas very attractive (write comments)
- at the end, I write a summary and reflection
- I export the whole thing into one file
- tag the whole note material ( and use the whole reading material in my future reference).
Copy part of my reflection or quotation into my drafting system (or, Scapple, or Tinderbox) for developing the idea.
QuoteHighlight (https://forum.devontechnologies.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=12038&hilit=QuoteHighlight#p56483) another example for the implementation of this approach.
Posted by Dellu
Dec 7, 2018 at 01:37 PM
correction: Omnifocus => OmniOutliner