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Tree elements' formatting (Scrivener, "Aeon") - The Wolf!
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Posted by 22111
Jan 27, 2023 at 02:09 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?)
Posted by 22111
Feb 4, 2023 at 04:55 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.
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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”...
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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… ;-)
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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.
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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).
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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.)
Posted by 22111
Feb 14, 2023 at 09:16 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.
Posted by Amontillado
Feb 15, 2023 at 03:26 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:
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.
>
Posted by MadaboutDana
Feb 15, 2023 at 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:
>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.