Tree elements' formatting (Scrivener, "Aeon") - The Wolf!
Started by 22111
on 1/16/2023
22111
1/16/2023 5:34 pm
I once said, here - I cite from memory -, "writers should just adopt Scriveners, be good, and start writing" - I hadn't been aware, at the time, that Scrivener, as well as "Ulysses App", seemingly does NOT allow for user-sided tree elements formatting, so I made a post to https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/scrivener-needs-user-sided-formatting-in-its-tree/132080 which might be of interest to writers not yet feeling the urge to individually format their tree entries.
(And yes, my allegations over there had been prompted by some co-contributor's to this forum's, experiences with "Aeon", in the latter's forum. Scrivener's not good enough, had been my "resume" from that, but as always, I tried to be as constructive as I ever can be.)
(And yes, my allegations over there had been prompted by some co-contributor's to this forum's, experiences with "Aeon", in the latter's forum. Scrivener's not good enough, had been my "resume" from that, but as always, I tried to be as constructive as I ever can be.)
Amontillado
1/17/2023 2:39 am
Hmmm... I have fallen off the Scrivener bandwagon with great regret. Fine product, wonderful vendor, but I'm an odd duck. The "no style" paradigm for default text bugs me, and the compile process is too much of a one-man-band for my taste.
But don't listen to me - Scrivener is a writer's friend.
Regarding tree structure, one of the things that I didn't like about the Aeon-Scrivener formation flight was one timeline event per chapter seemed limiting.
It occurs to me, though, that it might work to have a "Chapter 1" event in Aeon that was the parent to the individual events in that chapter. I could exclude child events and just sync chapter events.
Would the time span of the child events appear in Scrivener as the start and end times?
There have been rumors Aeon 3 will be in beta soon. I'm looking forward to it.
But don't listen to me - Scrivener is a writer's friend.
Regarding tree structure, one of the things that I didn't like about the Aeon-Scrivener formation flight was one timeline event per chapter seemed limiting.
It occurs to me, though, that it might work to have a "Chapter 1" event in Aeon that was the parent to the individual events in that chapter. I could exclude child events and just sync chapter events.
Would the time span of the child events appear in Scrivener as the start and end times?
There have been rumors Aeon 3 will be in beta soon. I'm looking forward to it.
22111
1/19/2023 12:33 am
@Amontillado: Interesting find! Motivated by what you had told me/us about current Aeon, I had looked quite extensively into the current Aeon documentation, and overlooked that... it goes without saying that thus, whilst the writer is very (!) limited by that limit, the coder's code is much (!) simpler; for an add-on purchase, deemed to overcome the possible limits of Scriv's in-built "timeline", that's unacceptable.
My impression: It's very (!) pleasing, visually, and it's certainly a joy to play around with, but having not trialed it, I don't know how easy "construction work" within Aeon would be, vs "constructing" within Scriv / Uly, and then just "checking the results" in Aeon, but indeed, for Scriv or Uly users, it might be a "natural" purchase indeed, since the data transfer in both directions is described (sic!) as seamless; for users of other writing tools, the hassle of (more or less manual syncing) is probably not worth it - when juggling between the tools is instantly, WITH the data synced, ok, why not; otherwise it's procrastination (my stance here is similar to what I now think of "Mind Maps": for presentation purposes, especially if you don't display them but gradually, they are (often) very good, but for "constructing" purposes, they represent more "clutter" for me than anything else; very visually-minded people may have a totally different "user experience" though); as I said over there, UR offers me a quite detailed (vertical) "timeline", just by coloring and then filtering by those formats (see also below).
__________
Scriv comes WITH coloring and filtering, it's just a bloody mess, as far as I am (and some others are) concerned:
Push, Push!
Tucker Max (i.n.e. "Max Tucker" but Tucker "What Women Want" Max, and he should know indeed, 5 million novel books sold, 80 p.c. of them to women I suppose...) shares my advice: Do NOT buy Scrivener: https://scribemedia.com/scrivener-review/ but he arguments along his way of writing - outlining as a waterfall model, not iteratively -, which might not apply to the majority of writers or "writers"; thus, he preaches for MS Word, etc., i.e. for the better, traditional "text processors", which now come with some outlining (he doesn't mention "Atlantis", but that one's among those).
(Btw, their pricing of 49 bucks you'll find all over the place, is now 59, with minus 25 p.c. for some "Winter/Sommer" fest, twice a year; Win licence not transferable to Mac, nor vv.)
He brings some arguments in the line of that old "a db for IM is just an additional subsystem in the file system, and thus to be avoided" (I don't find the author of that essay currently, please help me out; it goes without saying that IM DBs like Ultra Recall - which I recommend - deploy their back-end db, SQLite's full text search, to "imported" or "linked" documents like pdfs, etc., thus partly invalidating the old "avoid IM DB's" argument).
Then, he says, "If anything, learning how to use the software will waste your time and keep you from doing what you should be doing—writing.", and, "Based on Scrivener’s obvious preference for the Mac platform, I wouldn’t recommend any version of it for Windows users." (written before Scriv-Win-3 but see my remarks over there, for both Scriv and Scapple), and,
("Scrivener likes to show off how easy it is to move your outline around, even as you’re writing. But you shouldn’t do that—especially not if you’re a non-fiction Author. Write a solid outline first. Then write your draft." (see above, and even for technical writing, I don't share his opinion, but of course, nobody needs Scriv for that indeed, and, e.g., even in venerable KEdit (more or less the same price as Scriv, depending on your (credit card's) location), it's perfectly possible (with easy macros) to shuffle anything around at will:
- 1-key for "display just the title lines" (e.g. starting with # or something)*
- select the (title) line(s) to shuffle (kb, mouse, it's up to you), ^x
- put the cursor before the target (title) line
- 1-key for the move: done:
- 1 key for "total view" again, and everything is in place
* = people who know KEdit might say I'm lying, but, "with easy macros", I said: I know that the *-line here comprises "reset scope to all" since KEdit sets it, by the display command, to "display": If you use easy macros (within the app, no external macro tool needed), it works as described here), and,
"The user guide on Scrivener 3 is horrible. It’s just a wall of text that goes on forever." - well said!, and,
"Maybe if you could just download the app and start typing, you could figure out the complexities later. But you can’t. It’s about as far away from intuitive as you can get." - That's exactly my experience with Scriv, and I would go even further: Any "review" mentioning Scriv as "intuitive" - many do! - has either been written by a genius, or just a liar; and he writes,
"Writing a book is hard. It’s easy to get stuck procrastinating. Learning new writing software is a great way to tell yourself you’re being productive when you’re really just avoiding the writing process." -
Bingo. That's what I have said before reading reviews or "reviews", but here again, I'll go one step further, just see:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=scrivener&i=stripbooks-intl-ship&crid=YN8LIZ3773TR&sprefix=scrivener
About 20 - TWENTY! - Scriv books, all for intl. shipping, so retrieved from the U.S., there might even more! I had originally thought all those "technical authors" just wanted to profit from the Scriv phenomenon - virtually every writer or "writer" out there thinks they'd need it, in order to be (more) successful - fetish, totem: you'll remember -, but no:
Fact is: Those how-to-use-Scriv books are more or less needed indeed, in order to become productive with Scriv... or even to be just able to start some jotting down!
And isn't that a WONDERFUL, ALL your time (and some more money) consuming way of procrastinating, oh yeah!
But now back to those "reviews", in double quotes. Here, https://www.amazon.com/Literature-Latte-SCRWINREG-Scrivener-Download/product-reviews/B0079KJB54/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewpnt_rgt?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&filterByStar=critical&pageNumber=1 , AFTER clicking on "All critical reviews", you will be able to read some REAL reviews, which don't need those quotes, BUT you must follow this link to get there, according to your "seat"'s location (except for VPN that is): outside the U.S., Ama HIDES those reviews from you, yeah!
One there wrote, btw, "Scriv pays for good reviews" (I cite from memory) - I would never ever allege such a thing, but fact is, the web is FLOODED by RAVES about Scriv, and virtually all of those come with one, two or even multiple links to Scriv, and I'd call them advertorials.
Now, you ask me, why then ain't there more of such raves-with-a-commission for Scriv alternatives? Simple: (allegedly) 20 p.c. from the market leader (by far, I suppose), again and again, that's really cute, and since "men" (women and transes, too) are herd animals, just like sheep, most of prospects getting some rave "review" for something (much) lesser known, would then, finally, land on some other rave "review" page, leaving their (allegedly) 20 p.c. over there: it's marketing, stupid!
In this respect, also see the old concept of "cognitive dissonance" - AFTER having got the Covid "vac", AFTER buying Scriv, it's difficult to disavow your decision, so you rationalize it (sic!), thus avoiding the hindsight you had acted sheep-psychology-driven.
So, why the hype? Why the universal phenomenon? Fact is, non-factual writing (i.e. "creative", "literary" writing, "journalism", and so on) is 90 p.c. Mac / iSome, and Scriv "was there", "in time", and had had the brilliant idea to target those non-factual writers, also with very low prices at the time, whilst their competitors either tried to address PIM in general*, or then asked 3, 4 times Scriv's price-at-the-time. And now they just make, I suppose (sic!), quite the double or triple of all their competitor's sales-to-writers combined, dedicated screenplay tools deducted.
(*=Or they even tried to address the pop-n-mom family corporate market, as askSam in part did (cf. their templates, or the fact you could send telephone numbers to your Ninetees modem), Ultra Recall (again their templates, with endless lists of "attributes" for "commercials", some Outlook integration) or InfoSelect, with even many more "goodies" for pop-n-mom trying to sell something, and with its own mail component, the first and the latter being priced accordingly for those target markets... for which then all three weren't good enough, and so we now have one defunct contender, one with allegedly very few paying customers, and the one mentioned in the middle is "more or less good enough", and further developed at snail's pace...
(Did you know UR, even today, comes with "text" export where almost every term is lowercase (only, not by option, might you think!), good for (I think) nothing, and just because SQLite's fts (see above) puts all those terms into lowercase, for searching? Whilst its "contender" (no, not really...) RightNote (also SQLite-backed) does it right (but does most other things quite or very poorly...)? You can live with that, since you simply use rtf export instead, then import into MS Word, or into TextMaker (free), save-as-text, and voila... (don't use Atlantis here, since the (very needed) item separator "new page" then is a problem, whilst in Word and TM, you simple switch between their native char and e.g. "¬" (or whatever).))
And here, we turn back to Max' misunderstanding, related above: He spoke of those "word processors", together with file system possibilities, vs Scriv, but not, not explicitely, vs the kind of writing tool Scriv is just one (totally convoluted) example of, and that might be the situation of most prospects for such tools, at the end of the day.
Today, with the web, it should be a transparent market, but for most prospects, it remains quite intransparent, e.g. because they don't enter the right terms into Google, e.g. "outliner"? No, they might enter "text processing for writers", and bingo, they're flooded with those "Scriv" reviews, getting 20 p.c. or whatever...
Now don't get me wrong: Yes, Scriv comes with user-individual tree element formatting (see the linked thread), it's just that you need, well, up to 20 books ON Scriv, in order to know how to start writing, and yes, Scriv is a very powerful tool, it's just a bloody mess, and whilst you will probably have read, in some paper for the masses, that "decluttering is the trend now", I'm the last person on earth to tell you software should be functionally "streamlined" (as then InfoSelect is said to have done...), but "less is more" (Ludwig MiesAndSoOn) indeed applies to the GUI design: all the complications belong BEHIND the scenes, but tell that the Scriv people...!
Since Scriv, design-wise, well: It's a nightmare, probably in part because there might have been what they call "organic development" (on the Mac side, and then they replicated that bloody mess to their Win versions), and here's just one example of their design desaster (I have to say I didn't "grasp" it, and I'm not going to buy those 20 books), but here's what I retrieved from their screen shot: It's always a good thing to split up the tree into a project part, and a details part, more or less Miller-columns-wise (cf. "Ulysses app", too, whilst e.g. the UR developer unfortunately refuses to implement such a higher-up, "project", "cases" pane / tree), but then, any child element (currently) displayed within the subordinate tree (pane), has to disappear from the "parent(ing)" pane - whatever you call those panes (de-clutter!); not so in Scriv, of course, where they appear in what they call the "binder" (what did we call that again? skeuomorphism?), and in the "Inspector" (if I remember well, but hadn't that been a palette-for-the-selection in FreeHand, which then Adobe bought for cheap in order to kill it, in order to - step 3 - rent out their inferior "Illustrator" at any price they seem appropriate?
And, oh, the "Inspector" is for the "attributes", here, too? Why not have them, by option (to the right, for our Western languages; elsewhere accordingly), as (ordinarily narrow, but extensible) extensions to the trees, instead of creating hodgepodge, with waste, redundancy and the urge (to avoid the term "need") to click everywhere? (Mac "philosophy", I said...)
And it seems they even have some integrated (horizontal) "timeline" - and though, their customers feel the need to buy another "timelineapp" now, with endless forth-n-back? Because it's even cuter? And then, that "cork board" - oh, yeah! especially for half-price, in 2005, when their competitors-for-writers might not have had one? Now, cork-boards-on-screen are not so much "needed" anymore though, since they all (Scriv, Uly, even UR*) come with, by option, more than just 1 line in the (unique or subordinate) tree pane.
*=I have to admit that for UR, that's just the (long, in case) title, whilst for the other two, that might also be some lines of the start of the content field (option in Uly, certainly similar in Scriv), which is clearly better, but that's all the more reason for not using that ugly cork board anymore, in Scriv.
Btw, I put the "necessary-for-overview, additional" info into the titles, then enlarge the pane, and I have found some, just some, easily available special chars for multiple tagging means, in case, even for hierarchical tagging within those sets, and which are retrieved both by SQLite's fts, and by that incomparable "Everything"'s indexing routine, Something (haha) most Maccians, knew'em how good it is, would probably kill for.
Push, push! Get your percentage!
Scriv's "philosophy" is quite different though from mine - as said, neat GUI, complications in the code (only), any possible functionality straightforward, at your fingertips (cf. my "hotkey" musings re portable Mac's touch bar); here's an original Scriv staff citation (you can read it in an answer to my first Scapple post there):
"I regularly hit Alt,n,g,l to align-left for example, to the point that it just rolls of[f] my fingers when I need it."
This might be representative of much of what they (force their customers to) do. And it is nuts.
My impression: It's very (!) pleasing, visually, and it's certainly a joy to play around with, but having not trialed it, I don't know how easy "construction work" within Aeon would be, vs "constructing" within Scriv / Uly, and then just "checking the results" in Aeon, but indeed, for Scriv or Uly users, it might be a "natural" purchase indeed, since the data transfer in both directions is described (sic!) as seamless; for users of other writing tools, the hassle of (more or less manual syncing) is probably not worth it - when juggling between the tools is instantly, WITH the data synced, ok, why not; otherwise it's procrastination (my stance here is similar to what I now think of "Mind Maps": for presentation purposes, especially if you don't display them but gradually, they are (often) very good, but for "constructing" purposes, they represent more "clutter" for me than anything else; very visually-minded people may have a totally different "user experience" though); as I said over there, UR offers me a quite detailed (vertical) "timeline", just by coloring and then filtering by those formats (see also below).
__________
Scriv comes WITH coloring and filtering, it's just a bloody mess, as far as I am (and some others are) concerned:
Push, Push!
Tucker Max (i.n.e. "Max Tucker" but Tucker "What Women Want" Max, and he should know indeed, 5 million novel books sold, 80 p.c. of them to women I suppose...) shares my advice: Do NOT buy Scrivener: https://scribemedia.com/scrivener-review/ but he arguments along his way of writing - outlining as a waterfall model, not iteratively -, which might not apply to the majority of writers or "writers"; thus, he preaches for MS Word, etc., i.e. for the better, traditional "text processors", which now come with some outlining (he doesn't mention "Atlantis", but that one's among those).
(Btw, their pricing of 49 bucks you'll find all over the place, is now 59, with minus 25 p.c. for some "Winter/Sommer" fest, twice a year; Win licence not transferable to Mac, nor vv.)
He brings some arguments in the line of that old "a db for IM is just an additional subsystem in the file system, and thus to be avoided" (I don't find the author of that essay currently, please help me out; it goes without saying that IM DBs like Ultra Recall - which I recommend - deploy their back-end db, SQLite's full text search, to "imported" or "linked" documents like pdfs, etc., thus partly invalidating the old "avoid IM DB's" argument).
Then, he says, "If anything, learning how to use the software will waste your time and keep you from doing what you should be doing—writing.", and, "Based on Scrivener’s obvious preference for the Mac platform, I wouldn’t recommend any version of it for Windows users." (written before Scriv-Win-3 but see my remarks over there, for both Scriv and Scapple), and,
("Scrivener likes to show off how easy it is to move your outline around, even as you’re writing. But you shouldn’t do that—especially not if you’re a non-fiction Author. Write a solid outline first. Then write your draft." (see above, and even for technical writing, I don't share his opinion, but of course, nobody needs Scriv for that indeed, and, e.g., even in venerable KEdit (more or less the same price as Scriv, depending on your (credit card's) location), it's perfectly possible (with easy macros) to shuffle anything around at will:
- 1-key for "display just the title lines" (e.g. starting with # or something)*
- select the (title) line(s) to shuffle (kb, mouse, it's up to you), ^x
- put the cursor before the target (title) line
- 1-key for the move: done:
- 1 key for "total view" again, and everything is in place
* = people who know KEdit might say I'm lying, but, "with easy macros", I said: I know that the *-line here comprises "reset scope to all" since KEdit sets it, by the display command, to "display": If you use easy macros (within the app, no external macro tool needed), it works as described here), and,
"The user guide on Scrivener 3 is horrible. It’s just a wall of text that goes on forever." - well said!, and,
"Maybe if you could just download the app and start typing, you could figure out the complexities later. But you can’t. It’s about as far away from intuitive as you can get." - That's exactly my experience with Scriv, and I would go even further: Any "review" mentioning Scriv as "intuitive" - many do! - has either been written by a genius, or just a liar; and he writes,
"Writing a book is hard. It’s easy to get stuck procrastinating. Learning new writing software is a great way to tell yourself you’re being productive when you’re really just avoiding the writing process." -
Bingo. That's what I have said before reading reviews or "reviews", but here again, I'll go one step further, just see:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=scrivener&i=stripbooks-intl-ship&crid=YN8LIZ3773TR&sprefix=scrivener
About 20 - TWENTY! - Scriv books, all for intl. shipping, so retrieved from the U.S., there might even more! I had originally thought all those "technical authors" just wanted to profit from the Scriv phenomenon - virtually every writer or "writer" out there thinks they'd need it, in order to be (more) successful - fetish, totem: you'll remember -, but no:
Fact is: Those how-to-use-Scriv books are more or less needed indeed, in order to become productive with Scriv... or even to be just able to start some jotting down!
And isn't that a WONDERFUL, ALL your time (and some more money) consuming way of procrastinating, oh yeah!
But now back to those "reviews", in double quotes. Here, https://www.amazon.com/Literature-Latte-SCRWINREG-Scrivener-Download/product-reviews/B0079KJB54/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewpnt_rgt?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&filterByStar=critical&pageNumber=1 , AFTER clicking on "All critical reviews", you will be able to read some REAL reviews, which don't need those quotes, BUT you must follow this link to get there, according to your "seat"'s location (except for VPN that is): outside the U.S., Ama HIDES those reviews from you, yeah!
One there wrote, btw, "Scriv pays for good reviews" (I cite from memory) - I would never ever allege such a thing, but fact is, the web is FLOODED by RAVES about Scriv, and virtually all of those come with one, two or even multiple links to Scriv, and I'd call them advertorials.
Now, you ask me, why then ain't there more of such raves-with-a-commission for Scriv alternatives? Simple: (allegedly) 20 p.c. from the market leader (by far, I suppose), again and again, that's really cute, and since "men" (women and transes, too) are herd animals, just like sheep, most of prospects getting some rave "review" for something (much) lesser known, would then, finally, land on some other rave "review" page, leaving their (allegedly) 20 p.c. over there: it's marketing, stupid!
In this respect, also see the old concept of "cognitive dissonance" - AFTER having got the Covid "vac", AFTER buying Scriv, it's difficult to disavow your decision, so you rationalize it (sic!), thus avoiding the hindsight you had acted sheep-psychology-driven.
So, why the hype? Why the universal phenomenon? Fact is, non-factual writing (i.e. "creative", "literary" writing, "journalism", and so on) is 90 p.c. Mac / iSome, and Scriv "was there", "in time", and had had the brilliant idea to target those non-factual writers, also with very low prices at the time, whilst their competitors either tried to address PIM in general*, or then asked 3, 4 times Scriv's price-at-the-time. And now they just make, I suppose (sic!), quite the double or triple of all their competitor's sales-to-writers combined, dedicated screenplay tools deducted.
(*=Or they even tried to address the pop-n-mom family corporate market, as askSam in part did (cf. their templates, or the fact you could send telephone numbers to your Ninetees modem), Ultra Recall (again their templates, with endless lists of "attributes" for "commercials", some Outlook integration) or InfoSelect, with even many more "goodies" for pop-n-mom trying to sell something, and with its own mail component, the first and the latter being priced accordingly for those target markets... for which then all three weren't good enough, and so we now have one defunct contender, one with allegedly very few paying customers, and the one mentioned in the middle is "more or less good enough", and further developed at snail's pace...
(Did you know UR, even today, comes with "text" export where almost every term is lowercase (only, not by option, might you think!), good for (I think) nothing, and just because SQLite's fts (see above) puts all those terms into lowercase, for searching? Whilst its "contender" (no, not really...) RightNote (also SQLite-backed) does it right (but does most other things quite or very poorly...)? You can live with that, since you simply use rtf export instead, then import into MS Word, or into TextMaker (free), save-as-text, and voila... (don't use Atlantis here, since the (very needed) item separator "new page" then is a problem, whilst in Word and TM, you simple switch between their native char and e.g. "¬" (or whatever).))
And here, we turn back to Max' misunderstanding, related above: He spoke of those "word processors", together with file system possibilities, vs Scriv, but not, not explicitely, vs the kind of writing tool Scriv is just one (totally convoluted) example of, and that might be the situation of most prospects for such tools, at the end of the day.
Today, with the web, it should be a transparent market, but for most prospects, it remains quite intransparent, e.g. because they don't enter the right terms into Google, e.g. "outliner"? No, they might enter "text processing for writers", and bingo, they're flooded with those "Scriv" reviews, getting 20 p.c. or whatever...
Now don't get me wrong: Yes, Scriv comes with user-individual tree element formatting (see the linked thread), it's just that you need, well, up to 20 books ON Scriv, in order to know how to start writing, and yes, Scriv is a very powerful tool, it's just a bloody mess, and whilst you will probably have read, in some paper for the masses, that "decluttering is the trend now", I'm the last person on earth to tell you software should be functionally "streamlined" (as then InfoSelect is said to have done...), but "less is more" (Ludwig MiesAndSoOn) indeed applies to the GUI design: all the complications belong BEHIND the scenes, but tell that the Scriv people...!
Since Scriv, design-wise, well: It's a nightmare, probably in part because there might have been what they call "organic development" (on the Mac side, and then they replicated that bloody mess to their Win versions), and here's just one example of their design desaster (I have to say I didn't "grasp" it, and I'm not going to buy those 20 books), but here's what I retrieved from their screen shot: It's always a good thing to split up the tree into a project part, and a details part, more or less Miller-columns-wise (cf. "Ulysses app", too, whilst e.g. the UR developer unfortunately refuses to implement such a higher-up, "project", "cases" pane / tree), but then, any child element (currently) displayed within the subordinate tree (pane), has to disappear from the "parent(ing)" pane - whatever you call those panes (de-clutter!); not so in Scriv, of course, where they appear in what they call the "binder" (what did we call that again? skeuomorphism?), and in the "Inspector" (if I remember well, but hadn't that been a palette-for-the-selection in FreeHand, which then Adobe bought for cheap in order to kill it, in order to - step 3 - rent out their inferior "Illustrator" at any price they seem appropriate?
And, oh, the "Inspector" is for the "attributes", here, too? Why not have them, by option (to the right, for our Western languages; elsewhere accordingly), as (ordinarily narrow, but extensible) extensions to the trees, instead of creating hodgepodge, with waste, redundancy and the urge (to avoid the term "need") to click everywhere? (Mac "philosophy", I said...)
And it seems they even have some integrated (horizontal) "timeline" - and though, their customers feel the need to buy another "timelineapp" now, with endless forth-n-back? Because it's even cuter? And then, that "cork board" - oh, yeah! especially for half-price, in 2005, when their competitors-for-writers might not have had one? Now, cork-boards-on-screen are not so much "needed" anymore though, since they all (Scriv, Uly, even UR*) come with, by option, more than just 1 line in the (unique or subordinate) tree pane.
*=I have to admit that for UR, that's just the (long, in case) title, whilst for the other two, that might also be some lines of the start of the content field (option in Uly, certainly similar in Scriv), which is clearly better, but that's all the more reason for not using that ugly cork board anymore, in Scriv.
Btw, I put the "necessary-for-overview, additional" info into the titles, then enlarge the pane, and I have found some, just some, easily available special chars for multiple tagging means, in case, even for hierarchical tagging within those sets, and which are retrieved both by SQLite's fts, and by that incomparable "Everything"'s indexing routine, Something (haha) most Maccians, knew'em how good it is, would probably kill for.
Push, push! Get your percentage!
Scriv's "philosophy" is quite different though from mine - as said, neat GUI, complications in the code (only), any possible functionality straightforward, at your fingertips (cf. my "hotkey" musings re portable Mac's touch bar); here's an original Scriv staff citation (you can read it in an answer to my first Scapple post there):
"I regularly hit Alt,n,g,l to align-left for example, to the point that it just rolls of[f] my fingers when I need it."
This might be representative of much of what they (force their customers to) do. And it is nuts.
Amontillado
1/19/2023 7:13 pm
Scrivener isn't so bad, nor is it hard to use. The best way to learn it is to explore the features you need, ignoring the rest until future needs arise.
It's not for everyone, which is just like everything else out there. One thing I liked about Scrivener was the common-sense structure of its project files. I wrote my own sync routines, for example, to sync Scrivener with an Android office suite.
Aeon is not quite as open, but the import and export facilities are nice. For instance, it's no big deal to export from Omni Outliner with extra columns to Aeon, or from Devonthink with custom metadata.
I suspect in about 30 minutes I could write a Python exporter from Obsidian to Aeon, picking timeline data out of YAML metadata. In fact, if I put the timeline data in YAML headers in Devonthink Markdown files, the same script would transfer from either Obsidian or Devonthink.
Literature and Latte is very friendly to independent writers and is worth supporting. Even if you don't like Scrivener, it's not something to dismiss as worthless. There is too much productive output coming from Scrivener projects. The same can be said of Microsoft Word, and I avoid it like a cliche.
It's not for everyone, which is just like everything else out there. One thing I liked about Scrivener was the common-sense structure of its project files. I wrote my own sync routines, for example, to sync Scrivener with an Android office suite.
Aeon is not quite as open, but the import and export facilities are nice. For instance, it's no big deal to export from Omni Outliner with extra columns to Aeon, or from Devonthink with custom metadata.
I suspect in about 30 minutes I could write a Python exporter from Obsidian to Aeon, picking timeline data out of YAML metadata. In fact, if I put the timeline data in YAML headers in Devonthink Markdown files, the same script would transfer from either Obsidian or Devonthink.
Literature and Latte is very friendly to independent writers and is worth supporting. Even if you don't like Scrivener, it's not something to dismiss as worthless. There is too much productive output coming from Scrivener projects. The same can be said of Microsoft Word, and I avoid it like a cliche.
satis
1/20/2023 12:50 am
Scrivener for macOS isn't bad, but the iOS version is lacking and people have complained about the Windows version for years on the app's subreddit. Development appears to have significantly slowed or halted: the last version for macOS (v.3.2.3) came out ten months ago with some bugfixes and UI tweaks but that's about it.
Ulysses has been iterating regularly and while a more expensive, subscription app, its iOS app has parity in features. Las month it added Projects, sort of a superceding folder for individual projects which only shows relevant files to that project when working, hiding everything else in the app's sidebar for better focus. It also added 'keyword pools' to let each project use its own discrete tags and colors.
https://help.ulysses.app/kb/en/projects-287895
I've owned and upgraded my copy of Scrivener since 2012. I used it quite a bit in the past, but it never really clicked with me enough to happily settle into it. To me the app's best feature is the automatic corkboard view but aside from that I am able to duplicate all other features I need with Ulysses and additional notes/outlines in OmniOutliner (though Zavala could easily be used too).
Unless you self-publish, when working with a publisher, regardless of app authors need to migrate everything to Word anyway to deal with that app's unparalled, industry-standard Track Changes.
Ulysses has been iterating regularly and while a more expensive, subscription app, its iOS app has parity in features. Las month it added Projects, sort of a superceding folder for individual projects which only shows relevant files to that project when working, hiding everything else in the app's sidebar for better focus. It also added 'keyword pools' to let each project use its own discrete tags and colors.
https://help.ulysses.app/kb/en/projects-287895
I've owned and upgraded my copy of Scrivener since 2012. I used it quite a bit in the past, but it never really clicked with me enough to happily settle into it. To me the app's best feature is the automatic corkboard view but aside from that I am able to duplicate all other features I need with Ulysses and additional notes/outlines in OmniOutliner (though Zavala could easily be used too).
Unless you self-publish, when working with a publisher, regardless of app authors need to migrate everything to Word anyway to deal with that app's unparalled, industry-standard Track Changes.
22111
1/27/2023 2:09 pm
Some more info on "vertical vs. horizontal" here, https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9961/20 , and yes, Amontillado, you're right that some writer have become productive with Scrivener ; it's just that its UX paradigm seems so weird that it's not accessible to many of us, and then, well:
Before posting again, above, I had read the whole stream of those whopping 18 (!) pages of negative Scriv reviews on amazon.com (link above), and not only I was comforted in my own "not grasping Scriv", but I also was horrified by the amount of work LOSSES, obviously caused by Scriv.
That being said, I should have made it more obvious above that all the "Scriv" above applies to Scriv-Windows - and most of it, yes, to previous versions, too, but then, *****their policy handling those complaints has to be called appalling***** (sic!).
(I also retrieved those 18 pages, and it's quite "interesting" to see how Amazon has succeeded in HIDING most of the most catastrophic (obviously mostly real) reviews at the end of the stream, of several pages - so that most prospects would possibly not research further - of complaints for their "program activation when bought from Amazon" not working - it's behind (sic!) those testimonies which obviously will be considered not being relevant by all current prospects (since amazon.com currently doesn't resell Scriv anymore), that "things get really interesting" - and that has nothing to do with some "order by precedence" (inexistent anyway), but is obviously pure manipulation by Amazon, and, I can prove it anytime.)
(Some years ago, Amazon allowed comments on reviews - I sometimes "rectified" advertorials by "customers" who had been given the goods they then "reviewed" for free (i.e. even after the confessions of Amazon) - most of those rectifications of mine (of products I had bought myself) then disappeared within days, and in-between, they simply deleted ALL "review comments" at one go - well, Bezos' yacht alone allegedly costs half a billion, so they are not interested in their customers / prospects getting precise, even correct info, but in selling, and no need to add that I withdrew all my reviews over there even before they then killed all review comments. And then, Amazon pricing has become more or less ridiculous in general (rare exceptions excepted indeed, but then, those "pricing errors", as I call them, are expected to change within minutes...), whilst "after-sales" policies have also greatly changed it seems, so... and people who really review (i.e. on third-party sites...) their "Music unlimited" and other services, or whatever they call'em, ain't happy either...)
(Btw, from such a third-party side, I got some - allegedly correct - "catalogue" of Netflix's U.S. offerings - their multiple "national" offerings should probably even much more limited then? -, and, e.g., "Thriller", "Adventure", etc., all combined, for the 11 years, "1940 to 1950", brought zero (!) result, ditto for "comedy 1940 to 1950", and I'm certain I didn't make any mistake in my search, an'thus, an'with all due respect: Netflix's low brow, to put it very mildly...)
Back to Scriv then: Perhaps - possibly? - their current Win tool is as stable as their Mac tool allegedly is (?), but it's clear as day they don't know much about UX, and so, I do NOT grasp why writers don't use some good, GENERIC outliner, which'll give'em much more freedom to write as THEY intend to do, to say the least.
Scriv may be some "complete package" then, with "name lists" - oh, my God! we're in 2023, with lots of, far better, web resources, for such minor, additional tasks?! -, and with a horizontal (but seemingly not very functional!) timeline (and that makes the "fortune" of Aeon, right?!), but then, those "generic" outliners are best I think, since...
at the end of the day, our ancestors "writing": didn't they use, and then individualized, to their respective liking, "generic" stuff, when they used pens, paper? THEIR way, an'not within the quite strict confines "specific" tools like Scriv allow for?
OT of the linked thread said he should probably go back to pen-n-paper... NO, I'd say, try to adopt some vertical, electronic paradigm, it'll be so much easier-n-productive than reverting to paper-n-pen... whilst with today's "horizontally-progressing" tools, you'll encounter too many limitations indeed...
And trying to use TheBrain for a decision tree of some volume, well... I said that before: You're free to introduce additional, visual complexity into your reasoning, in order to feel better about the alleged quality of your thinking, but the results then will reflect your having got lost in - between...
And that's because - I said / implied that before, too - current graphical representations of your "thinking" "forget" not only about your thoughts' comings' order, but also about the order into you bring the results.
And it's the beauty of the (enhanced) tree-form (sic!) to resolve those conceptional problems at least partly; and so be it with "vertical".
(An'yes, "horizontal" is (much) prettier... and that makes the appeal of museums... but we're not in it for just curating: right?)
Before posting again, above, I had read the whole stream of those whopping 18 (!) pages of negative Scriv reviews on amazon.com (link above), and not only I was comforted in my own "not grasping Scriv", but I also was horrified by the amount of work LOSSES, obviously caused by Scriv.
That being said, I should have made it more obvious above that all the "Scriv" above applies to Scriv-Windows - and most of it, yes, to previous versions, too, but then, *****their policy handling those complaints has to be called appalling***** (sic!).
(I also retrieved those 18 pages, and it's quite "interesting" to see how Amazon has succeeded in HIDING most of the most catastrophic (obviously mostly real) reviews at the end of the stream, of several pages - so that most prospects would possibly not research further - of complaints for their "program activation when bought from Amazon" not working - it's behind (sic!) those testimonies which obviously will be considered not being relevant by all current prospects (since amazon.com currently doesn't resell Scriv anymore), that "things get really interesting" - and that has nothing to do with some "order by precedence" (inexistent anyway), but is obviously pure manipulation by Amazon, and, I can prove it anytime.)
(Some years ago, Amazon allowed comments on reviews - I sometimes "rectified" advertorials by "customers" who had been given the goods they then "reviewed" for free (i.e. even after the confessions of Amazon) - most of those rectifications of mine (of products I had bought myself) then disappeared within days, and in-between, they simply deleted ALL "review comments" at one go - well, Bezos' yacht alone allegedly costs half a billion, so they are not interested in their customers / prospects getting precise, even correct info, but in selling, and no need to add that I withdrew all my reviews over there even before they then killed all review comments. And then, Amazon pricing has become more or less ridiculous in general (rare exceptions excepted indeed, but then, those "pricing errors", as I call them, are expected to change within minutes...), whilst "after-sales" policies have also greatly changed it seems, so... and people who really review (i.e. on third-party sites...) their "Music unlimited" and other services, or whatever they call'em, ain't happy either...)
(Btw, from such a third-party side, I got some - allegedly correct - "catalogue" of Netflix's U.S. offerings - their multiple "national" offerings should probably even much more limited then? -, and, e.g., "Thriller", "Adventure", etc., all combined, for the 11 years, "1940 to 1950", brought zero (!) result, ditto for "comedy 1940 to 1950", and I'm certain I didn't make any mistake in my search, an'thus, an'with all due respect: Netflix's low brow, to put it very mildly...)
Back to Scriv then: Perhaps - possibly? - their current Win tool is as stable as their Mac tool allegedly is (?), but it's clear as day they don't know much about UX, and so, I do NOT grasp why writers don't use some good, GENERIC outliner, which'll give'em much more freedom to write as THEY intend to do, to say the least.
Scriv may be some "complete package" then, with "name lists" - oh, my God! we're in 2023, with lots of, far better, web resources, for such minor, additional tasks?! -, and with a horizontal (but seemingly not very functional!) timeline (and that makes the "fortune" of Aeon, right?!), but then, those "generic" outliners are best I think, since...
at the end of the day, our ancestors "writing": didn't they use, and then individualized, to their respective liking, "generic" stuff, when they used pens, paper? THEIR way, an'not within the quite strict confines "specific" tools like Scriv allow for?
OT of the linked thread said he should probably go back to pen-n-paper... NO, I'd say, try to adopt some vertical, electronic paradigm, it'll be so much easier-n-productive than reverting to paper-n-pen... whilst with today's "horizontally-progressing" tools, you'll encounter too many limitations indeed...
And trying to use TheBrain for a decision tree of some volume, well... I said that before: You're free to introduce additional, visual complexity into your reasoning, in order to feel better about the alleged quality of your thinking, but the results then will reflect your having got lost in - between...
And that's because - I said / implied that before, too - current graphical representations of your "thinking" "forget" not only about your thoughts' comings' order, but also about the order into you bring the results.
And it's the beauty of the (enhanced) tree-form (sic!) to resolve those conceptional problems at least partly; and so be it with "vertical".
(An'yes, "horizontal" is (much) prettier... and that makes the appeal of museums... but we're not in it for just curating: right?)
22111
2/4/2023 4:55 pm
Re Amazon: Clarification: Of course, you can "opt" for chronological sort order of their comments, but the default - as you know - is "By relevance"... and that "relevance" is a scam, multiple proof on file, and in our context above: When you "find" - i.e. for 90 p.c. of prospects: NOT - serious, honest, real - but negative - reviews, with some of them dozens (!) of "likes", behind those "deflective" "activation when bought from ama doesn't work" "reviews", on pages 16, 17, 18 of 18 pages in total, that's clearly manipulative;
ditto for hotel reviews and "reviews" on booking.com (and other sites, but I've proof on file for booking.com): there again, default sorting by "relevance" - i.e. allegedly "of the most interest for YOU" whilst in fact "of the most interest for our percentage interest", I would say -, I have seen the same phenomenon for hotels I know from my own experience (!): real (and even recent!) reviews but which listed real (but serious, and even serious, systemic, i.e. of the kind which would kill your expensive-there night's sleep, too, systematically, thus making you "thinking again" about booking) "minuses" were systematically hidden from view, i.e. (obviously) not "censored" but relegated into those "further pages", pages 8, 10, 15..., after a plethora of "super-duper", then "only mildly critical" "reviews" - and that's a fact for hotels in Germany, a country where the respective owners, IF the facts alleged in those real reviews (and which I had to notice myself, I said...) had been libelous, could have withdrawn those reviews within 48 hours...
and I have seen the same phenomenon for Parisian hotels (for rooms about 300 bucks a night; "my" German hotels: about 100-120 bucks a night): really critical reviews are hidden "far behind" all that "super duper" crap plus "just mildly critical, so almost acceptable in the end" stuff:
it's obvious that the default "sort by relevance" is a scam in general and overall; rare exceptions to that rule might apply.
__________
Re B-liner: As said, no programmer present anymore, for many of its later years, ditto for askSam; then both just vanished, and in both cases, this is a PITY indeed.
B-liner was marketed as a Warnier-Orr tool in its time, and while I continue to think that J.-D. Warnier, in the Seventies, did do very fine work indeed, it's obvious that today's sw construction (i.e. "technical design", "architectural") demands have outlived simple, or even somewhat "enhanced", trees (B-liner came with connector lines from one branch (element) to another element (of another branch in case), in order to overcome the strict "decision tree" paradigm, even then, and, for example, within a vertical tree (see above), you would use clones instead, in order to realize such "hooks", "jumps"; "simple" clones though (i.e. single, "leaf", items, not sub-tree parents), which would just work as beacons, since most of the time, you would not want to "carry on" "all stuff from elsewhere", just signal and make available (by {click} or {enter}) the connection).
As said before, B-liner was frail as hell, on my then XP-last-version, 2gb work memory system, it crashed, even with just "light" representations (i.e. some 30, 35 elements in total), every time (!), but I now deeply regret to not having bought a license in time, since for representation means of quite simple matters - everything from left to right -, it was more than just "pleasant" - similar for askSam which for "special" use cases (which don't ask for a "variable tree" (try to re-arrange the order of elements in askSam, and you'll know what I mean) but for better FTS than provided in today's SQLite's "PIM" frontends) might continue your "first choice" indeed (and within very probable total file size limits...).
It seems that some Chinese (?) got B-liner's (abandoned) varatec.com domain, but on https://mindapp.software.informer.com/ (informer.com most of a time being a totally useless site indeed, but not in every single case as it appears), I see that B-liner developer varatek (today's varatec.ca doesn't seem to be connected to them) also might have done some "MindApp", latest version 8.0? I had never been aware of that, but the link gives a screenshot of that sw, and whilst it is - was! - obviously one of the most austere, i.e. "usable" (sic!), "mind map" realizations - see the screenshot: I think it's very "functional", I might say! -... here again, as with every "mind map" sw, the subtrees are all displayed around the "node", i.e. the "source item", whilst B-liner's USP (!!!!!!!) had been that left-to-right paradigm indeed - ironically, today's "social media" "timelines" (or then, their "comment" sections, too...) are all vertical, i.e. NOT in what me might call "the original timeline format"... so I think B-Liner's (or b-liner's or B-liner's or however they spelled it, in their time) demise is a real loss to what "they" call "the community"...
__________
But IS there a "community"? The "Johnny Walker bombshell", as I like to call that scoop-of-all-scoops of the last 3 years of so (if you don't count Prof. Bhakdi who had-said-it-all 3 years (sic!) ago, and who very probably saved my life, together with hundreds of thousand of others'...), briefly - i.e. for 2 hours or some - appeared on the Daily Mail website, then vanished, and MSN (=MS) had allegedly re-published (excerpts from?) that scoop... for some... 20 - twenty! - minutes... while obviously everything "Johnny", "under the influence" (of both alc, and the impression he had found a new mate he obviously was found of, oh yeah! - so let's speak about "morals in journalism" here if you want, but be aware, I'd then bring on the terms "public interest", and even "genocide" - still interested ? I thought so!) - while obviously everything "Johnny" said - and "Johnny" himself is "legit", real, too -, is true, and if you search English resources by non-google, you'll get lots of - verified - data...
At the end of the day, folks, it's not me who's responsible for your families, folks, you are, at least in some traditional - outlived, then? - concept of family values, and whilst I know that most of you are my juniors, not having time to follow... well: not "the news", since "the news" is just propaganda... but what I'd call "real info", additionally, your "national news", every evening, probably is about 25 minutes or so, and couldn't you better employ those 25 minutes than with ingurgitating lies-by-omission-while-they-tell-you-all-sorts-of-junk? Just think about it, e.g. while in some traffic jam... ;-)
__________
I'll be entirely honest here: My Ultra Recall is, and by far, the very best "PIM" (i.e. "personal [i.e. one-seat (sic!)] information manager" there is, BUT that's because it "comes", for me, with thousands of lines of additional (AHK) code.
So, two questions arise:
- how would other "PIMS" "react" to such additional work?
- why don't I "share" my work on UR?
1) There are specifics, in the "construction" of every such sw, which provide more, or then less indeed, "point of actions" for "interventions from the outside", and I chose UR, over other "Windows", competitors, for its wide array of "shortcuts" - which I then intercept by AHK anyway, so them being "user-configurable" or not, is not a criterion for me -, and for its "cloning" feature - of which I make ample, and semi-automated, use.
This being said, it's obvious that I could apply most, or even anything, of my (UR's) "individualization" to some other sw, even on Mac's side, since in/for that system, there should be some similar scripting language available (most commercial "macro tools", "here" and "there", ain't powerful enough though) - at the end of the day, I could even pimp up "Scrivener" almost (sic!) that way - but why should I? Since:
2) There is no "thank you" of any kind, from anybody; the term of "community" meaning, "we take, you give", and that works both in general terms, as for "outliner sw", as in specifics, e.g. within the UR forum: UR users give-a-heck about anything somebody could "add", and be it with the utmost, most precise analysis: They don't say, yeah, that's true, please, our developer, amend that, fix this: no! They all live with the state-of-affairs, and it's the same phenomenon as becomes evident on/in the polls: They continue to vote for the(ir) status-quo...
even if that status quo will have (been) deteriorated considerably, since "last time" - in politics... whilst in sw, the same, technically, not being possible, but in our field, the sheer mentioning > reading of faults, of missings, of detriments, should have increased their "expectancy of functionality", thus rising their "demands to functional sw"... but no:
Inertia, on (98 p.c. of) "customers'" side, is, at the end of the day, one of the best-guarded secrets of anybody's offerings of any kind... an'then to hell, with those remaining 2 p.c. of malcontents...
That's how sw "functions", and that's how politics "function", an'thus, any "help from the outside", in ANY "field", is casting pearls-before-swine - please note this is an idiom to design "it's totally futile", and not, in any, no, way, some hidden invective.
__________
Currently, I've got much better, i.e. much "nobler", things to do, than to learn Net 7, etc., but be assured that I have discovered all the secrets in/of IM in-between (incl. the "response" to all our "third-dimensional" queries of any kind, and on both the technical and the conceptual (sic!) sides, instead of my ("above"-detailed) "taxonomy in-betweens", which had just been some "production engineering minute", but then again, today's "consumers" pay subscriptions (sic!) for, yes, even inferior sw, so "sharing code" that would make co-"consumers" really productive in the end: why should anybody, and indeed, nobody currently does... and I'd be a fool to do so.
That, folks, is the ugly-truth behind the inertia of today's sw development in general: Any coder out there has "got" it: folks don't value real value: they even - now - pay for your it's-as-good-as-it-is sw: so what, they say to themselves, and any look by them into politics will fortify their impression: so what, for people who obviously don't make the difference anymore: between treated as real customers - voters who empower their delegates to decide THEIR way -, who have expectations, who have rights, who have dreams (e.g. of that mythical "better life" for their children... right? remember? when you were young?) -, and then "consumers", who, from now on, here in the EU, will even eat... bugs... (and again, without thinking).
__________
Some days ago, I viewed "Mirage" (Dmytryk 1965); and that "Save the Cat" moment of which Snyder (see "above") wrote, came early: the janitor of the highrise in which the hero (Gregory Peck) works, tells him (my words, from memory): "Of all the clerks around here, you're the only one who recognizes me [and gives me the time of the day]." (i.e. subconsciously, for the audience: "whenever you doubt of'our'hero: remember"...)
Obviously, Snyder (57-09) wasn't a fool either, and I bet he would not have had "shot" his offshoot.
(Oh, and in https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9858/0/by-what-do-you-in-parallels-structure-woof-woof , when I spoke of the "essence": of course, you're free to just have some "synopsis-in-front", i.e. to work on the "essence" in some place, then write-it-out in some other sw: it's just a matter of your memory('s capabilities) if you need those "reminders" within your "body text" you then write, or if, e.g. you print out multiple copies of your "essence directions", then continuously switch between reading'n'writing; just bear in mind: work on the "essence" of your story: amend it, optimize it, PERFECT IT; THEN do the (re-)writing(s).
An'yes, an'very sorry again: That "essence" will necessarily be a MESH, NOT an "outline", any "outline" then comes "later on", as some "stringent result" only; and that's the character of ALL things good, and that's more or less the opposite of what "they" call an "agenda": Since real (sic!) work on that "essence mesh" will lead you to the right outline then, and the right "timeline", too.
Be them pretty horizontal or functionally-ugly vertical then, they will not comprise shots - be them final or not - against laboratory-puffed-out mirages...
In other words: outlines as come-first are either a fallacy or even a crime: use'em just as an instrument to get your mesh into time, into what they call "instrumental order", but be "open", i.e. honest and communicative, about your mesh, and everything will be fine, since:
"Agenda" is a Latin plural and means, "the things to do", and thus was a purely technical term, which should have been developed into a synonym for "outline" - whilst in fact, it's become a synonym for what I call "mesh", i.e. the conceptional stage, and that's where "le bât blesse", as the French say: where it all goes wrong: including for your brats if you don't stop'em that is.)
ditto for hotel reviews and "reviews" on booking.com (and other sites, but I've proof on file for booking.com): there again, default sorting by "relevance" - i.e. allegedly "of the most interest for YOU" whilst in fact "of the most interest for our percentage interest", I would say -, I have seen the same phenomenon for hotels I know from my own experience (!): real (and even recent!) reviews but which listed real (but serious, and even serious, systemic, i.e. of the kind which would kill your expensive-there night's sleep, too, systematically, thus making you "thinking again" about booking) "minuses" were systematically hidden from view, i.e. (obviously) not "censored" but relegated into those "further pages", pages 8, 10, 15..., after a plethora of "super-duper", then "only mildly critical" "reviews" - and that's a fact for hotels in Germany, a country where the respective owners, IF the facts alleged in those real reviews (and which I had to notice myself, I said...) had been libelous, could have withdrawn those reviews within 48 hours...
and I have seen the same phenomenon for Parisian hotels (for rooms about 300 bucks a night; "my" German hotels: about 100-120 bucks a night): really critical reviews are hidden "far behind" all that "super duper" crap plus "just mildly critical, so almost acceptable in the end" stuff:
it's obvious that the default "sort by relevance" is a scam in general and overall; rare exceptions to that rule might apply.
__________
Re B-liner: As said, no programmer present anymore, for many of its later years, ditto for askSam; then both just vanished, and in both cases, this is a PITY indeed.
B-liner was marketed as a Warnier-Orr tool in its time, and while I continue to think that J.-D. Warnier, in the Seventies, did do very fine work indeed, it's obvious that today's sw construction (i.e. "technical design", "architectural") demands have outlived simple, or even somewhat "enhanced", trees (B-liner came with connector lines from one branch (element) to another element (of another branch in case), in order to overcome the strict "decision tree" paradigm, even then, and, for example, within a vertical tree (see above), you would use clones instead, in order to realize such "hooks", "jumps"; "simple" clones though (i.e. single, "leaf", items, not sub-tree parents), which would just work as beacons, since most of the time, you would not want to "carry on" "all stuff from elsewhere", just signal and make available (by {click} or {enter}) the connection).
As said before, B-liner was frail as hell, on my then XP-last-version, 2gb work memory system, it crashed, even with just "light" representations (i.e. some 30, 35 elements in total), every time (!), but I now deeply regret to not having bought a license in time, since for representation means of quite simple matters - everything from left to right -, it was more than just "pleasant" - similar for askSam which for "special" use cases (which don't ask for a "variable tree" (try to re-arrange the order of elements in askSam, and you'll know what I mean) but for better FTS than provided in today's SQLite's "PIM" frontends) might continue your "first choice" indeed (and within very probable total file size limits...).
It seems that some Chinese (?) got B-liner's (abandoned) varatec.com domain, but on https://mindapp.software.informer.com/ (informer.com most of a time being a totally useless site indeed, but not in every single case as it appears), I see that B-liner developer varatek (today's varatec.ca doesn't seem to be connected to them) also might have done some "MindApp", latest version 8.0? I had never been aware of that, but the link gives a screenshot of that sw, and whilst it is - was! - obviously one of the most austere, i.e. "usable" (sic!), "mind map" realizations - see the screenshot: I think it's very "functional", I might say! -... here again, as with every "mind map" sw, the subtrees are all displayed around the "node", i.e. the "source item", whilst B-liner's USP (!!!!!!!) had been that left-to-right paradigm indeed - ironically, today's "social media" "timelines" (or then, their "comment" sections, too...) are all vertical, i.e. NOT in what me might call "the original timeline format"... so I think B-Liner's (or b-liner's or B-liner's or however they spelled it, in their time) demise is a real loss to what "they" call "the community"...
__________
But IS there a "community"? The "Johnny Walker bombshell", as I like to call that scoop-of-all-scoops of the last 3 years of so (if you don't count Prof. Bhakdi who had-said-it-all 3 years (sic!) ago, and who very probably saved my life, together with hundreds of thousand of others'...), briefly - i.e. for 2 hours or some - appeared on the Daily Mail website, then vanished, and MSN (=MS) had allegedly re-published (excerpts from?) that scoop... for some... 20 - twenty! - minutes... while obviously everything "Johnny", "under the influence" (of both alc, and the impression he had found a new mate he obviously was found of, oh yeah! - so let's speak about "morals in journalism" here if you want, but be aware, I'd then bring on the terms "public interest", and even "genocide" - still interested ? I thought so!) - while obviously everything "Johnny" said - and "Johnny" himself is "legit", real, too -, is true, and if you search English resources by non-google, you'll get lots of - verified - data...
At the end of the day, folks, it's not me who's responsible for your families, folks, you are, at least in some traditional - outlived, then? - concept of family values, and whilst I know that most of you are my juniors, not having time to follow... well: not "the news", since "the news" is just propaganda... but what I'd call "real info", additionally, your "national news", every evening, probably is about 25 minutes or so, and couldn't you better employ those 25 minutes than with ingurgitating lies-by-omission-while-they-tell-you-all-sorts-of-junk? Just think about it, e.g. while in some traffic jam... ;-)
__________
I'll be entirely honest here: My Ultra Recall is, and by far, the very best "PIM" (i.e. "personal [i.e. one-seat (sic!)] information manager" there is, BUT that's because it "comes", for me, with thousands of lines of additional (AHK) code.
So, two questions arise:
- how would other "PIMS" "react" to such additional work?
- why don't I "share" my work on UR?
1) There are specifics, in the "construction" of every such sw, which provide more, or then less indeed, "point of actions" for "interventions from the outside", and I chose UR, over other "Windows", competitors, for its wide array of "shortcuts" - which I then intercept by AHK anyway, so them being "user-configurable" or not, is not a criterion for me -, and for its "cloning" feature - of which I make ample, and semi-automated, use.
This being said, it's obvious that I could apply most, or even anything, of my (UR's) "individualization" to some other sw, even on Mac's side, since in/for that system, there should be some similar scripting language available (most commercial "macro tools", "here" and "there", ain't powerful enough though) - at the end of the day, I could even pimp up "Scrivener" almost (sic!) that way - but why should I? Since:
2) There is no "thank you" of any kind, from anybody; the term of "community" meaning, "we take, you give", and that works both in general terms, as for "outliner sw", as in specifics, e.g. within the UR forum: UR users give-a-heck about anything somebody could "add", and be it with the utmost, most precise analysis: They don't say, yeah, that's true, please, our developer, amend that, fix this: no! They all live with the state-of-affairs, and it's the same phenomenon as becomes evident on/in the polls: They continue to vote for the(ir) status-quo...
even if that status quo will have (been) deteriorated considerably, since "last time" - in politics... whilst in sw, the same, technically, not being possible, but in our field, the sheer mentioning > reading of faults, of missings, of detriments, should have increased their "expectancy of functionality", thus rising their "demands to functional sw"... but no:
Inertia, on (98 p.c. of) "customers'" side, is, at the end of the day, one of the best-guarded secrets of anybody's offerings of any kind... an'then to hell, with those remaining 2 p.c. of malcontents...
That's how sw "functions", and that's how politics "function", an'thus, any "help from the outside", in ANY "field", is casting pearls-before-swine - please note this is an idiom to design "it's totally futile", and not, in any, no, way, some hidden invective.
__________
Currently, I've got much better, i.e. much "nobler", things to do, than to learn Net 7, etc., but be assured that I have discovered all the secrets in/of IM in-between (incl. the "response" to all our "third-dimensional" queries of any kind, and on both the technical and the conceptual (sic!) sides, instead of my ("above"-detailed) "taxonomy in-betweens", which had just been some "production engineering minute", but then again, today's "consumers" pay subscriptions (sic!) for, yes, even inferior sw, so "sharing code" that would make co-"consumers" really productive in the end: why should anybody, and indeed, nobody currently does... and I'd be a fool to do so.
That, folks, is the ugly-truth behind the inertia of today's sw development in general: Any coder out there has "got" it: folks don't value real value: they even - now - pay for your it's-as-good-as-it-is sw: so what, they say to themselves, and any look by them into politics will fortify their impression: so what, for people who obviously don't make the difference anymore: between treated as real customers - voters who empower their delegates to decide THEIR way -, who have expectations, who have rights, who have dreams (e.g. of that mythical "better life" for their children... right? remember? when you were young?) -, and then "consumers", who, from now on, here in the EU, will even eat... bugs... (and again, without thinking).
__________
Some days ago, I viewed "Mirage" (Dmytryk 1965); and that "Save the Cat" moment of which Snyder (see "above") wrote, came early: the janitor of the highrise in which the hero (Gregory Peck) works, tells him (my words, from memory): "Of all the clerks around here, you're the only one who recognizes me [and gives me the time of the day]." (i.e. subconsciously, for the audience: "whenever you doubt of'our'hero: remember"...)
Obviously, Snyder (57-09) wasn't a fool either, and I bet he would not have had "shot" his offshoot.
(Oh, and in https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9858/0/by-what-do-you-in-parallels-structure-woof-woof , when I spoke of the "essence": of course, you're free to just have some "synopsis-in-front", i.e. to work on the "essence" in some place, then write-it-out in some other sw: it's just a matter of your memory('s capabilities) if you need those "reminders" within your "body text" you then write, or if, e.g. you print out multiple copies of your "essence directions", then continuously switch between reading'n'writing; just bear in mind: work on the "essence" of your story: amend it, optimize it, PERFECT IT; THEN do the (re-)writing(s).
An'yes, an'very sorry again: That "essence" will necessarily be a MESH, NOT an "outline", any "outline" then comes "later on", as some "stringent result" only; and that's the character of ALL things good, and that's more or less the opposite of what "they" call an "agenda": Since real (sic!) work on that "essence mesh" will lead you to the right outline then, and the right "timeline", too.
Be them pretty horizontal or functionally-ugly vertical then, they will not comprise shots - be them final or not - against laboratory-puffed-out mirages...
In other words: outlines as come-first are either a fallacy or even a crime: use'em just as an instrument to get your mesh into time, into what they call "instrumental order", but be "open", i.e. honest and communicative, about your mesh, and everything will be fine, since:
"Agenda" is a Latin plural and means, "the things to do", and thus was a purely technical term, which should have been developed into a synonym for "outline" - whilst in fact, it's become a synonym for what I call "mesh", i.e. the conceptional stage, and that's where "le bât blesse", as the French say: where it all goes wrong: including for your brats if you don't stop'em that is.)
22111
2/14/2023 9:16 pm
The Outlining Fallacy
Some people say, AI ain't "there" yet: it can't "think" yet...
But what's "thinking" then?
Fact is: What you've already got*, will limit you.
*=and if you then treat it the traditional way...
And that, you might call, the "outlining fallacy".
And, I've said it, here, before: Spatial representations - even the current "three-dimensional" ones - don't also represent the (multiple) timelines: all those changes within humans' relationships' "colors"'s adjustments, rearrangements, and within some high quality "narrative" (i.e. novel, movie...), that's another "mesh", too...
And you, then, want to "put it into an outline"?
I discovered that whenever I consider my "outline", I then "think" within the confines of that outline, and that means, "amending", and so on, and, forgive me, amending's the contrary to creation.
On the other hand: Whenever I just "thought" about "things", i.e. "had not present" "the outline", but just "some aspects", I've been able to "shift the horizon"... and, most of the time, this would imply "rewriting"... IF you had made the mistake to "write out" what you've got in mind, at any given time.
It's similar if you treat the "mesh" as a "synopsis", since that last term implies some sort of "order" already, and ANY order will kill your imagination, very unfortunately - even those graphic arrangements (i.e. "orderings") those graphic tools, like "Scapple" or any other, 2-dimensional like the aforementioned, or allegedly 3-dimensional ones (and which ain't able to represent the time dimension either, and don't speak to me about the "spatial" one, the one which would represent (e.g. psychological) "distance": all that's not enough, and by far), will act the same: they will limit you, instead of "raising your horizon".
And that's the fallacy in all those "cardboard", "corkboard", whatever (physical or electronic) card collections: Any outline will have to "come afterwards", and I'm so sorry - really! since for me, too, "everything" would be oh so much "easier" if not -, folks, to, by this, spit in your soup again!
No: Fact is: You have to consider your atom elements as nuclei, and then "think", feel "around'em", combine'em with any existent or imaginable element within your reach (i.e within your creative "perspective"... but perhaps that will be enhanced before your falling asleep, or just before waking up, or then - I hope you will not be forced to reach out to such extreme means - with what they call "drugs" of multiple kinds?), and then again contemplate your findings / gatherings, and their possible, necessary, in case multiple effects (and here again, it's the Germans who've got the ultimate term: "Weiterungen"): "i it worth it?" i.e. to "rewrite", to "re-outline"? or then, is it not?
And again, to complicate things further: You won't be able to answer these questions but after some days, weeks, months, i.e. after having contemplated many more nuclei in your "mesh"...
An'so, at the end of any (multiple) "days 1 to 6" - an'yes, you're "God" in this "play", but wouldn't you seriously try to exterminate (the possibility of) elements like Hitler et al. BEFORE day 7?), you'll just expand your list / ordered / somewhat hierarchized-in-order-to-not-forfeit-any-order-n-overview list (aka "outline") somewhat...
but you will not yet know about your real, your day-7, outline: the one you will present to "the world", i.e. what, hopefully, some day, the "audience" (cf. "vox populi vox dei") will have to digest?
And that's why almost all of the greatest "creators" in any field said, in these or similar terms, "I'm just an instrument", "of God" / "of Him", whatever: all'of'em were NOT the masters of their creation, but then had just been some sorts of "architects", i.e. of "representational organisators" of what had already come to them...
And here again, the Germans are those who have got, at least approximately, the term which nails it: they call musical interprets (vs composers) "nachschaffende Künstler"... obviously not being aware that even the composers are perfectly determined by that term, since even them: they just bring order in what will remain alien to them... but which will, ideally, and after their - in case arduous, or then even totally fluffy - "translation work", finally enthrall us, i.e. any "audience" of their kind of what we call "creation".
And that's why dedicated "writer's software" doesn't work: Since their creators missed that writing's organisation can just be an ancillary "science"; in other terms: promises to help with creation are snake oil.
Some people say, AI ain't "there" yet: it can't "think" yet...
But what's "thinking" then?
Fact is: What you've already got*, will limit you.
*=and if you then treat it the traditional way...
And that, you might call, the "outlining fallacy".
And, I've said it, here, before: Spatial representations - even the current "three-dimensional" ones - don't also represent the (multiple) timelines: all those changes within humans' relationships' "colors"'s adjustments, rearrangements, and within some high quality "narrative" (i.e. novel, movie...), that's another "mesh", too...
And you, then, want to "put it into an outline"?
I discovered that whenever I consider my "outline", I then "think" within the confines of that outline, and that means, "amending", and so on, and, forgive me, amending's the contrary to creation.
On the other hand: Whenever I just "thought" about "things", i.e. "had not present" "the outline", but just "some aspects", I've been able to "shift the horizon"... and, most of the time, this would imply "rewriting"... IF you had made the mistake to "write out" what you've got in mind, at any given time.
It's similar if you treat the "mesh" as a "synopsis", since that last term implies some sort of "order" already, and ANY order will kill your imagination, very unfortunately - even those graphic arrangements (i.e. "orderings") those graphic tools, like "Scapple" or any other, 2-dimensional like the aforementioned, or allegedly 3-dimensional ones (and which ain't able to represent the time dimension either, and don't speak to me about the "spatial" one, the one which would represent (e.g. psychological) "distance": all that's not enough, and by far), will act the same: they will limit you, instead of "raising your horizon".
And that's the fallacy in all those "cardboard", "corkboard", whatever (physical or electronic) card collections: Any outline will have to "come afterwards", and I'm so sorry - really! since for me, too, "everything" would be oh so much "easier" if not -, folks, to, by this, spit in your soup again!
No: Fact is: You have to consider your atom elements as nuclei, and then "think", feel "around'em", combine'em with any existent or imaginable element within your reach (i.e within your creative "perspective"... but perhaps that will be enhanced before your falling asleep, or just before waking up, or then - I hope you will not be forced to reach out to such extreme means - with what they call "drugs" of multiple kinds?), and then again contemplate your findings / gatherings, and their possible, necessary, in case multiple effects (and here again, it's the Germans who've got the ultimate term: "Weiterungen"): "i it worth it?" i.e. to "rewrite", to "re-outline"? or then, is it not?
And again, to complicate things further: You won't be able to answer these questions but after some days, weeks, months, i.e. after having contemplated many more nuclei in your "mesh"...
An'so, at the end of any (multiple) "days 1 to 6" - an'yes, you're "God" in this "play", but wouldn't you seriously try to exterminate (the possibility of) elements like Hitler et al. BEFORE day 7?), you'll just expand your list / ordered / somewhat hierarchized-in-order-to-not-forfeit-any-order-n-overview list (aka "outline") somewhat...
but you will not yet know about your real, your day-7, outline: the one you will present to "the world", i.e. what, hopefully, some day, the "audience" (cf. "vox populi vox dei") will have to digest?
And that's why almost all of the greatest "creators" in any field said, in these or similar terms, "I'm just an instrument", "of God" / "of Him", whatever: all'of'em were NOT the masters of their creation, but then had just been some sorts of "architects", i.e. of "representational organisators" of what had already come to them...
And here again, the Germans are those who have got, at least approximately, the term which nails it: they call musical interprets (vs composers) "nachschaffende Künstler"... obviously not being aware that even the composers are perfectly determined by that term, since even them: they just bring order in what will remain alien to them... but which will, ideally, and after their - in case arduous, or then even totally fluffy - "translation work", finally enthrall us, i.e. any "audience" of their kind of what we call "creation".
And that's why dedicated "writer's software" doesn't work: Since their creators missed that writing's organisation can just be an ancillary "science"; in other terms: promises to help with creation are snake oil.
Amontillado
2/15/2023 3:26 am
Well, you may be painting with an overly broad brush.
Writer's software doesn't write, with the exception of ChatGPT. An outline can crush the life out of a story, but when that happens to me it's not the outliner destroying my tale. It's my technique. An outline, in my view, is a shorthand way to tell a story. If I abandon narrative order, the story dies.
ChatGPT will not replace writers, by the way. If it did, and if all the content it had to feed on was its own output, I don't think it would be a trustworthy tool.
When I think of ChatGPT taking over, constantly learning from its own work product, I keep getting an unwholesome picture of a closed loop alimentary canal. It's not a pleasant thought. Please help me get that image out of my head. I'll binge on kitten videos, anything.
22111 wrote:
Writer's software doesn't write, with the exception of ChatGPT. An outline can crush the life out of a story, but when that happens to me it's not the outliner destroying my tale. It's my technique. An outline, in my view, is a shorthand way to tell a story. If I abandon narrative order, the story dies.
ChatGPT will not replace writers, by the way. If it did, and if all the content it had to feed on was its own output, I don't think it would be a trustworthy tool.
When I think of ChatGPT taking over, constantly learning from its own work product, I keep getting an unwholesome picture of a closed loop alimentary canal. It's not a pleasant thought. Please help me get that image out of my head. I'll binge on kitten videos, anything.
22111 wrote:
The Outlining Fallacy
And that's why dedicated "writer's software" doesn't work: Since their
creators missed that writing's organisation can just be an ancillary
"science"; in other terms: promises to help with creation are snake oil.
MadaboutDana
2/15/2023 10:16 am
Brrrrrr – that is indeed a seriously unwholesome picture. Check out this wonderful Oatmeal cartoon instead... https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
Enjoy!
Bill
Amontillado wrote:
Enjoy!
Bill
Amontillado wrote:
When I think of ChatGPT taking over, constantly learning from its own
work product, I keep getting an unwholesome picture of a closed loop
alimentary canal. It's not a pleasant thought. Please help me get that
image out of my head. I'll binge on kitten videos, anything.
Amontillado
2/15/2023 2:39 pm
Thank you. I feel much better already.
22111
2/27/2023 7:56 pm
Explaining the outlining fallacy
When I write about "mesh", I'm aware that's a little bit approximate, and when I deride dedicated writers' software, it's the checkboxes, etc I'm criticizing: "eye color", and all that, but also, "person x: childhood, etc., etc." - within some creational work, those persons ain't "atoms", and for their precise size, we give a heck...
The outlining fallacy described above, is a a real one, and I for some time fell into that trap, as do all makers of writers' electronic cork boards (Scrivener et others), and to say it all, the aforementioned "What Women Want"* specialist, not convinced the iterative model was the right one but saying writers, especially non-literary ones, should do some serious "outlining" - well: I now understand that by: "conceptional work" -, before starting to write, had made me further rethink my conceptions (which had already included, as said, what I call "mesh", but which hadn't yet made a very clear distinction between the two: "before outlining", and then, that mythical "outline").
(*=When someone has sold millions of books, I would be a fool to not listen to their "advice": not to replace my own findings with theirs, but by reviewing mine even further... and without rejecting then any idea "coming from the outside"... since I always (!) give credit, "assimilation" with then telling people that had all my own idea, would appear as an obscenity to me.)
As you know, I had insisted on the need for tree formatting, even to to point of probably "going on the nerves" of some readers)... and I continue to do so...
but I have to better explain that "mesh", and I have to correct myself by saying, be quite sure of your "outline"'s content, before applying too much work to it... and a multiplication of "specially-formatted items, within your outline" (as I had, more or less, advocated here some months ago) is NOT "the" solution - thanks, again, to Tucker Max (and his thinking, motivating me to better distinguish among pre-outline and outline - or whatever you call those).
You'll remember that some months ago, here - where I do "sketching" indeed, but some kind of "high-brow sketching" if I may say so -, I spoke about the "too much of a distance, between elements which belong together though, within a spreadsheet "outline"": I said that some elements / columns could be adjoined, whilst other columns - and necessarily the elements within them - would then be too much "taken apart", actively remoted from their "intimately-connected elements"...
Unfortunately, the same is true if you try to spread your "essence" (you'll remember: I said, "construct your outline (principally) around your essence, not around the elements of a timeline" (all these citations of myself true to the "essence" (again!) of what I had said, not verbatim - which remains true, but cannot be but a second step -):
Spreading around your essence (into whatever) will, at the same (i.e. eo ipso) DISCONNECT those intimate connections of essence's "atomic elements" - I also said, something like a "synopsis", i.e. some pages of "description", whatever, since they necessarily and already constitute some "result of ordering", are counter-productive...
whilst what I called "mesh" is indeed to much of a "Bitches Brew", in order to not become quickly unwieldy, i.e. when it will have become "too much of inscrutability" of its own...
Whilst on the other hand - I said that, too - those "cork boards" and similar devices are just another graphical form of an "outline"... of a timeline:
Since that's what they are: they are timelines, and so, the essence is lost, or, at the very least, very deeply hidden... and thus, it very seriously risks to fray out... even into oblivion... and about 90 p.c. of (any time's) novels, movies... bear witness of that loss.
So, yes, you have to put, at SOME time, even some order into your "mesh", but beware of doing it the standardized way "writers' software" invites you to do it: do NOT fill out forms of ANY kind: think again, and again, of any detail, of any "atom" within any element, AND of any "atom" within the connection of any (core) element to any other (core) element, and don't be afraid to be redundant, to be inconsistent... but review and re-review your notes, and re-think the problems which arise, and in a constructive way: those (!) "problems" may be indications to "solutions", to do it even better, indeed!
In other words: Real creativity is best preserved within some, yeah, "mesh", "when it all clings together", instead of "it being spread all over the place", e.g. some hundred "scenes" and two hundred "items", BUT you'll have to "preserve track", too, and that's why I advocate, from my own experience, some
~pre-outline~
or whatever you call it, not really an outline that is, NOT trying to "bring order" into your ideas, since at this stage, that would be far more than just "counterproductive", it would literally kill your inspiration: Try to "hold it simple", create perhaps a dozen, 15, certainly not more, "items", so as "to know where to look it up" when you want to review, to add, to "correct": don't have it all within some ancient paper roll, but try to "resize" your "pages" so that you can switch between them on screen, without much scrolling: group them perhaps, by "themes" - thus the aforementioned "risk" - necessity even, to some degree! - of being "redundant", but then, it's this seeming "redundancy" where you will probably get stuck, in order to "resolve" problems, not only real problems, of incoherence, but also that "first world's writers'" "problem" of not having been "good enough" up to then, of having allowed "facility"...
This being said, it's obvious that even in this stage, you will be tempted to write / "write out" some "scenes", etc: why not... IF you're willing to later on sacrifice them if the above-described "essence" which will have crystallized in-between, "tells" you "otherwise"?
You will remember that some months ago, I told you about - and linked to - some writer's STACKS of file cards, spread over their table - that writer (of which I don't remember the name anymore) very probably was aware that a simple spread-out of index-cards highly risks to sell out the "essence", and thus they probably tried to integrate much more than just the "scene", the "timeline element", into every one of their "file card", making it a stack instead...
and technically speaking, it's obvious that those "writers' software" could do some "expansion" of their "card board" cards, for such additional, "side car" elements of their cards - as well as in any outline as we know outlines, from our software, we could have level 1, and then, all those "additional considerations", on level 2, every item with its own, precise, immediate "family"...
And yes, thus, those "additional considerations" (which in effect are the "essence") are not "very visible", and that's why I had had the idea - and had seriously tried - to spread those all over the outline, not hiding them into level 2, but retaining them on level 1... well, that's not entirely true, since tried to resolve the "endless-list-then" probleme by just retaining "chapters", "sequences" on level 1, BUT then, relegating from level 2 just discarded items, and even making those "essence" items "stand out" from their "illustrations", i.e. from the "timeline", the outline, by special, bold, colored formatting...
And then, there's no way out: "Visibility" is one thing (and that's better indeed that those aforementioned stacks of cards on that table you could admire if you followed my link here some months ago), but for
it all to hold together
it has to stay together, hence that sort of "advanced mesh" in which, yes, you will have to find your way even when your concept(ion) grows in complexity (hence several "pages" instead of just one long "page", quickly becoming too long indeed), but which retains its "compactness", it's "immediate family" character, so spreading it all over the place, be it all over the (vertically outlined) timeline, be it over multiple cards, even stacks of cards, be them physical or electronic: That's not a viable solution...
And neither is, here (sic!), transclusion, since of course, you could try to multiply to "occurrences" of your ideas, but even that action - whilst it will not even do any good btw - will fray out (again!) that "essence", while you're trying to gather it: it will melt away from your hands...
and at the end of the day, I think you have to respect the glue that holds it all together - IF you let it do it's work: What's intimately together in your writing, then before your eyes, then, by reading, re-reading, editing, re-editing, will crave its nest within your head, your "thinking" (I don't like this term at all, in our context!), your "free-flowing", your "Erleben" (again no equivalent in lesser languages...) -
that super-glue's your friend, since it does MORE than just adhesing those elements: it INTEGRATES them...
well: if you do your work, too, but we're speaking of optimizing your chances.
And yes, then you "write out" that, "put it into words": You do "illustrations-by-numbers"*, by anything you put into the timeline: ANY element in there will be just the optimized expression of what will have been "already there"...
We've got to the secret of writing now: "Put it into words", I said, but that's the stage in writing which many a times, and with the help of outliner software of the "writers' software", where you fill out forms or not, but then "put into scenes", instead of first "putting into words", then illustrate them... is butchered:
You feel, you devise, you plan, then you write out scenes... having left out the "put it into words" stage, and he were are again: Many of the best writing teachers are unanimous: Write short stories...
Since, they may have added, in a perfect short story, essence, and writing out, become one.
*=Wait: That draughting-by-numbers'll be by yours then.
When I write about "mesh", I'm aware that's a little bit approximate, and when I deride dedicated writers' software, it's the checkboxes, etc I'm criticizing: "eye color", and all that, but also, "person x: childhood, etc., etc." - within some creational work, those persons ain't "atoms", and for their precise size, we give a heck...
The outlining fallacy described above, is a a real one, and I for some time fell into that trap, as do all makers of writers' electronic cork boards (Scrivener et others), and to say it all, the aforementioned "What Women Want"* specialist, not convinced the iterative model was the right one but saying writers, especially non-literary ones, should do some serious "outlining" - well: I now understand that by: "conceptional work" -, before starting to write, had made me further rethink my conceptions (which had already included, as said, what I call "mesh", but which hadn't yet made a very clear distinction between the two: "before outlining", and then, that mythical "outline").
(*=When someone has sold millions of books, I would be a fool to not listen to their "advice": not to replace my own findings with theirs, but by reviewing mine even further... and without rejecting then any idea "coming from the outside"... since I always (!) give credit, "assimilation" with then telling people that had all my own idea, would appear as an obscenity to me.)
As you know, I had insisted on the need for tree formatting, even to to point of probably "going on the nerves" of some readers)... and I continue to do so...
but I have to better explain that "mesh", and I have to correct myself by saying, be quite sure of your "outline"'s content, before applying too much work to it... and a multiplication of "specially-formatted items, within your outline" (as I had, more or less, advocated here some months ago) is NOT "the" solution - thanks, again, to Tucker Max (and his thinking, motivating me to better distinguish among pre-outline and outline - or whatever you call those).
You'll remember that some months ago, here - where I do "sketching" indeed, but some kind of "high-brow sketching" if I may say so -, I spoke about the "too much of a distance, between elements which belong together though, within a spreadsheet "outline"": I said that some elements / columns could be adjoined, whilst other columns - and necessarily the elements within them - would then be too much "taken apart", actively remoted from their "intimately-connected elements"...
Unfortunately, the same is true if you try to spread your "essence" (you'll remember: I said, "construct your outline (principally) around your essence, not around the elements of a timeline" (all these citations of myself true to the "essence" (again!) of what I had said, not verbatim - which remains true, but cannot be but a second step -):
Spreading around your essence (into whatever) will, at the same (i.e. eo ipso) DISCONNECT those intimate connections of essence's "atomic elements" - I also said, something like a "synopsis", i.e. some pages of "description", whatever, since they necessarily and already constitute some "result of ordering", are counter-productive...
whilst what I called "mesh" is indeed to much of a "Bitches Brew", in order to not become quickly unwieldy, i.e. when it will have become "too much of inscrutability" of its own...
Whilst on the other hand - I said that, too - those "cork boards" and similar devices are just another graphical form of an "outline"... of a timeline:
Since that's what they are: they are timelines, and so, the essence is lost, or, at the very least, very deeply hidden... and thus, it very seriously risks to fray out... even into oblivion... and about 90 p.c. of (any time's) novels, movies... bear witness of that loss.
So, yes, you have to put, at SOME time, even some order into your "mesh", but beware of doing it the standardized way "writers' software" invites you to do it: do NOT fill out forms of ANY kind: think again, and again, of any detail, of any "atom" within any element, AND of any "atom" within the connection of any (core) element to any other (core) element, and don't be afraid to be redundant, to be inconsistent... but review and re-review your notes, and re-think the problems which arise, and in a constructive way: those (!) "problems" may be indications to "solutions", to do it even better, indeed!
In other words: Real creativity is best preserved within some, yeah, "mesh", "when it all clings together", instead of "it being spread all over the place", e.g. some hundred "scenes" and two hundred "items", BUT you'll have to "preserve track", too, and that's why I advocate, from my own experience, some
~pre-outline~
or whatever you call it, not really an outline that is, NOT trying to "bring order" into your ideas, since at this stage, that would be far more than just "counterproductive", it would literally kill your inspiration: Try to "hold it simple", create perhaps a dozen, 15, certainly not more, "items", so as "to know where to look it up" when you want to review, to add, to "correct": don't have it all within some ancient paper roll, but try to "resize" your "pages" so that you can switch between them on screen, without much scrolling: group them perhaps, by "themes" - thus the aforementioned "risk" - necessity even, to some degree! - of being "redundant", but then, it's this seeming "redundancy" where you will probably get stuck, in order to "resolve" problems, not only real problems, of incoherence, but also that "first world's writers'" "problem" of not having been "good enough" up to then, of having allowed "facility"...
This being said, it's obvious that even in this stage, you will be tempted to write / "write out" some "scenes", etc: why not... IF you're willing to later on sacrifice them if the above-described "essence" which will have crystallized in-between, "tells" you "otherwise"?
You will remember that some months ago, I told you about - and linked to - some writer's STACKS of file cards, spread over their table - that writer (of which I don't remember the name anymore) very probably was aware that a simple spread-out of index-cards highly risks to sell out the "essence", and thus they probably tried to integrate much more than just the "scene", the "timeline element", into every one of their "file card", making it a stack instead...
and technically speaking, it's obvious that those "writers' software" could do some "expansion" of their "card board" cards, for such additional, "side car" elements of their cards - as well as in any outline as we know outlines, from our software, we could have level 1, and then, all those "additional considerations", on level 2, every item with its own, precise, immediate "family"...
And yes, thus, those "additional considerations" (which in effect are the "essence") are not "very visible", and that's why I had had the idea - and had seriously tried - to spread those all over the outline, not hiding them into level 2, but retaining them on level 1... well, that's not entirely true, since tried to resolve the "endless-list-then" probleme by just retaining "chapters", "sequences" on level 1, BUT then, relegating from level 2 just discarded items, and even making those "essence" items "stand out" from their "illustrations", i.e. from the "timeline", the outline, by special, bold, colored formatting...
And then, there's no way out: "Visibility" is one thing (and that's better indeed that those aforementioned stacks of cards on that table you could admire if you followed my link here some months ago), but for
it all to hold together
it has to stay together, hence that sort of "advanced mesh" in which, yes, you will have to find your way even when your concept(ion) grows in complexity (hence several "pages" instead of just one long "page", quickly becoming too long indeed), but which retains its "compactness", it's "immediate family" character, so spreading it all over the place, be it all over the (vertically outlined) timeline, be it over multiple cards, even stacks of cards, be them physical or electronic: That's not a viable solution...
And neither is, here (sic!), transclusion, since of course, you could try to multiply to "occurrences" of your ideas, but even that action - whilst it will not even do any good btw - will fray out (again!) that "essence", while you're trying to gather it: it will melt away from your hands...
and at the end of the day, I think you have to respect the glue that holds it all together - IF you let it do it's work: What's intimately together in your writing, then before your eyes, then, by reading, re-reading, editing, re-editing, will crave its nest within your head, your "thinking" (I don't like this term at all, in our context!), your "free-flowing", your "Erleben" (again no equivalent in lesser languages...) -
that super-glue's your friend, since it does MORE than just adhesing those elements: it INTEGRATES them...
well: if you do your work, too, but we're speaking of optimizing your chances.
And yes, then you "write out" that, "put it into words": You do "illustrations-by-numbers"*, by anything you put into the timeline: ANY element in there will be just the optimized expression of what will have been "already there"...
We've got to the secret of writing now: "Put it into words", I said, but that's the stage in writing which many a times, and with the help of outliner software of the "writers' software", where you fill out forms or not, but then "put into scenes", instead of first "putting into words", then illustrate them... is butchered:
You feel, you devise, you plan, then you write out scenes... having left out the "put it into words" stage, and he were are again: Many of the best writing teachers are unanimous: Write short stories...
Since, they may have added, in a perfect short story, essence, and writing out, become one.
*=Wait: That draughting-by-numbers'll be by yours then.
22111
2/28/2023 2:44 pm
Addendum
So you see, any "chronological" outlinine appears very "charming", since the outlining itself, in that one, doesn't bear much difficulty, and even most "textbook" outlines don't really represent much further complications than that - "chronology" in them being the chapter order, the page count...
Btw: There have been two standard textbooks about algorithms, e.g., both of them highly regarded, and having been "the standard reading" for a long time - and yes, they differ somewhat, in their chapter / (standard) subject order, but it's obvious that both had no real problem, finding their ("detailing-it") "chronology"
On the other hand, it's interesting to see that in areas where transclusion is important, more and more (even) (comprehensive, i.e. not: beginners') textbooks (within these our transition years: also) are available "online", i.e. by subscription, e.g. in the legal field (whilst on the other hand, CD-, then DVD-"rom" commercial offerings, due to licensing (i.e. "piracy") problems, AND (but not only) the "need" / wish for (well: often and in practice: just quite relative) up-to-dateness, were quite short-lived, but fact is: whenever you really need (sic!) transclusion, (adequate) electronic is, and by far, preferable to "print-out" (i.e. to "chronology", in case with "linking"...)...
NOT SO in what you could call, "conceptioning" (named that way in order to assign a special term to that active, "early", but necessary (see above: inescapable IF you want brilliant (or just: viable?) results that is...) stage of "thinking it all, and thoroughly, over", BEFORE then the "writing the resulting specifics, illustrations, putting-it-into-work-,-into-action" proceedings follow...
You'll remember I wrote about "agenda" above, in political contexts, or even in contexts where "politics" should NOT have their way, e.g. in peoples' (s9c!) sanitary matters, and here again - I said it before -, we've got that amalgam between "thinking it out and over" (today, wrongly: "agenda"), and the "putting it into practice" (which should have been called "agenda" indeed, but which we then, in writing (for all "sorts"), call "outline", "timeline", and in which concepts, to 90 or more p.c., both latter terms are real synonyms.
Thus, how to call it correctly in the end, that "mesh"? If you call it framework, or spine or something, you introduce the notion of order again, and that would have been some intermediate state - call it
the core
perhaps?
But the reason I had to write this addendum: I had, inadvertently, left out some general hint:
Do EXACTLY the same with your life, your situation, your plans, your dreams, your threats:
try to integrate them
before trying to work them out... and as early as possible: in the very earliest young age you get such advice - and yes, there IS that notion of iteration. or better, of iterative back-n-forth, between "core", and "outline", between that "never being finite but always-developing, in case even "auto"- (well: with a little help from the subject in charge...) correcting" and the, not only longed-for but seriously striven-at, "make it work"...
but the essence here is, for "writing" ((on) whatever (subjects)) as well as for "living": Try to put a max into the "core", or whatever you'll call it, so that within the "outline" (or whatever you call that then), just a minimum, ideally just some tiny, "adjustments" you'll have to make then.
And yes, you can do a dozen "rewrites" to any text if you're maso, but life's rewrites we, at the end of the day, almost all dream of, remain inexecutable, and to whatever degree your application and devotion and possible urge to "pay the price" may soar, while they won't have invented perpetual life (including avoidance of physical ageing) yet. (Thank you, tightbeam: "His posts are cholesterol": as said, I always give credit where it is due!).
Thus, whatever ordering, outlining sw be currently yours: Just put some short, concise, mini-, subtree or whatever your ordering principle may be, on top of your main file (be it a db, or just an even plain text file): just some 6, 8, up 10 possibly even 15, "pages": Try to hold'em within your "work memory", i.e. what I once called (here? might even be...) your "presence": within that part of your "thinking" that's responsible for your dreams:
make those elements integrate.
I.e. rethink'em, sleep'em over, discuss them with those rare people who really love you back AND who have got some real "experience" of life of their own; in other words: Learn from "creative writing", for yourself, for your family, your career, your well-being, and the ones you (hopefully) feel responsible for; in even other words again:
Don't start the real agenda prematurely.
So you see, any "chronological" outlinine appears very "charming", since the outlining itself, in that one, doesn't bear much difficulty, and even most "textbook" outlines don't really represent much further complications than that - "chronology" in them being the chapter order, the page count...
Btw: There have been two standard textbooks about algorithms, e.g., both of them highly regarded, and having been "the standard reading" for a long time - and yes, they differ somewhat, in their chapter / (standard) subject order, but it's obvious that both had no real problem, finding their ("detailing-it") "chronology"
On the other hand, it's interesting to see that in areas where transclusion is important, more and more (even) (comprehensive, i.e. not: beginners') textbooks (within these our transition years: also) are available "online", i.e. by subscription, e.g. in the legal field (whilst on the other hand, CD-, then DVD-"rom" commercial offerings, due to licensing (i.e. "piracy") problems, AND (but not only) the "need" / wish for (well: often and in practice: just quite relative) up-to-dateness, were quite short-lived, but fact is: whenever you really need (sic!) transclusion, (adequate) electronic is, and by far, preferable to "print-out" (i.e. to "chronology", in case with "linking"...)...
NOT SO in what you could call, "conceptioning" (named that way in order to assign a special term to that active, "early", but necessary (see above: inescapable IF you want brilliant (or just: viable?) results that is...) stage of "thinking it all, and thoroughly, over", BEFORE then the "writing the resulting specifics, illustrations, putting-it-into-work-,-into-action" proceedings follow...
You'll remember I wrote about "agenda" above, in political contexts, or even in contexts where "politics" should NOT have their way, e.g. in peoples' (s9c!) sanitary matters, and here again - I said it before -, we've got that amalgam between "thinking it out and over" (today, wrongly: "agenda"), and the "putting it into practice" (which should have been called "agenda" indeed, but which we then, in writing (for all "sorts"), call "outline", "timeline", and in which concepts, to 90 or more p.c., both latter terms are real synonyms.
Thus, how to call it correctly in the end, that "mesh"? If you call it framework, or spine or something, you introduce the notion of order again, and that would have been some intermediate state - call it
the core
perhaps?
But the reason I had to write this addendum: I had, inadvertently, left out some general hint:
Do EXACTLY the same with your life, your situation, your plans, your dreams, your threats:
try to integrate them
before trying to work them out... and as early as possible: in the very earliest young age you get such advice - and yes, there IS that notion of iteration. or better, of iterative back-n-forth, between "core", and "outline", between that "never being finite but always-developing, in case even "auto"- (well: with a little help from the subject in charge...) correcting" and the, not only longed-for but seriously striven-at, "make it work"...
but the essence here is, for "writing" ((on) whatever (subjects)) as well as for "living": Try to put a max into the "core", or whatever you'll call it, so that within the "outline" (or whatever you call that then), just a minimum, ideally just some tiny, "adjustments" you'll have to make then.
And yes, you can do a dozen "rewrites" to any text if you're maso, but life's rewrites we, at the end of the day, almost all dream of, remain inexecutable, and to whatever degree your application and devotion and possible urge to "pay the price" may soar, while they won't have invented perpetual life (including avoidance of physical ageing) yet. (Thank you, tightbeam: "His posts are cholesterol": as said, I always give credit where it is due!).
Thus, whatever ordering, outlining sw be currently yours: Just put some short, concise, mini-, subtree or whatever your ordering principle may be, on top of your main file (be it a db, or just an even plain text file): just some 6, 8, up 10 possibly even 15, "pages": Try to hold'em within your "work memory", i.e. what I once called (here? might even be...) your "presence": within that part of your "thinking" that's responsible for your dreams:
make those elements integrate.
I.e. rethink'em, sleep'em over, discuss them with those rare people who really love you back AND who have got some real "experience" of life of their own; in other words: Learn from "creative writing", for yourself, for your family, your career, your well-being, and the ones you (hopefully) feel responsible for; in even other words again:
Don't start the real agenda prematurely.