Outlining and cloned entries
Started by Amontillado
on 2/5/2023
Amontillado
2/5/2023 3:45 pm
I've often thought it would be nice to be able to have an outline entry appear in more than one place in an outline.
For instance, a flashback to an event already covered in the narrative.
I didn't realize it until today. Curio has provided that facility for some time. You can copy a text block (figure, in Curio-speak) as a synced instance.
You can also copy list, or outline, entries as synced instances, too.
It's intriguing. Every entity in Curio has a note attachment, including list entries. Turn on the notes inspector and a Curio list becomes a two pane outliner.
Synced instances also sync their note attachments.
I can have an outline entry appear in more than one place in the outline, which sounds interesting, and I can also paste any single entry in the outline as a synced instance anywhere else in a Curio project (document).
So, there you are, outlining away, creating topics with notes in a hierarchical list.
Next, you pop up a corkboard (idea space, as Curio folk would say) and start making notes about how to express your story. You've got a text note up as a sketchpad, and your sketchpad can be flanked with synced instances of character notes, location ideas, plot devices, whatever you want, plus you can paste synced instances of relevant individual outline items, too.
Much of that can be done in Obsidian, but not all. As far as I know, Obsidian's Canvas plugin won't allow transclusion of a single outline entry. An idea space in Curio is similar to an Obsidian Canvas.
Even better, it appears the next version of Curio will have a query language. Mind maps, lists, and kanban stacks can be aggregated by query.
For instance, a flashback to an event already covered in the narrative.
I didn't realize it until today. Curio has provided that facility for some time. You can copy a text block (figure, in Curio-speak) as a synced instance.
You can also copy list, or outline, entries as synced instances, too.
It's intriguing. Every entity in Curio has a note attachment, including list entries. Turn on the notes inspector and a Curio list becomes a two pane outliner.
Synced instances also sync their note attachments.
I can have an outline entry appear in more than one place in the outline, which sounds interesting, and I can also paste any single entry in the outline as a synced instance anywhere else in a Curio project (document).
So, there you are, outlining away, creating topics with notes in a hierarchical list.
Next, you pop up a corkboard (idea space, as Curio folk would say) and start making notes about how to express your story. You've got a text note up as a sketchpad, and your sketchpad can be flanked with synced instances of character notes, location ideas, plot devices, whatever you want, plus you can paste synced instances of relevant individual outline items, too.
Much of that can be done in Obsidian, but not all. As far as I know, Obsidian's Canvas plugin won't allow transclusion of a single outline entry. An idea space in Curio is similar to an Obsidian Canvas.
Even better, it appears the next version of Curio will have a query language. Mind maps, lists, and kanban stacks can be aggregated by query.
Pierre Paul Landry
2/5/2023 4:31 pm
Hi,
This is the core of what InfoQube is and can do. Items are like individuals, i.e. you and me.
We exist as part of a hierarchy (parents, children) but it isn't our most important property and life and death is not (generally) linked to that of the hierarchy.
IQ therefore support multiple parents (the proper name for this thread's subject -- clones) with a multitude of display and filtering features to get the most optimal list of items for the current task.
Available on Windows and, through 2-way sync, on all devices (mobile, other OSs) using Evernote and Google Services.
Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer
https://www.infoqube.biz/Home
This is the core of what InfoQube is and can do. Items are like individuals, i.e. you and me.
We exist as part of a hierarchy (parents, children) but it isn't our most important property and life and death is not (generally) linked to that of the hierarchy.
IQ therefore support multiple parents (the proper name for this thread's subject -- clones) with a multitude of display and filtering features to get the most optimal list of items for the current task.
Available on Windows and, through 2-way sync, on all devices (mobile, other OSs) using Evernote and Google Services.
Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer
https://www.infoqube.biz/Home
Amontillado
2/5/2023 5:50 pm
Other OS's? Mac, by any chance?
Pierre Paul Landry
2/6/2023 12:39 am
Other OS's? Mac, by any chance?
I would very much like to, but the toolkits used are Windows only (Codejock, exOntrol)
You can of course run it in a VM...
James Salla
2/6/2023 4:08 am
A program called Brainstorm (https://brainstormsw.com that's been around for a while has this as its main feature. In addition, the outliner Treeline (http://treeline.bellz.org recently added the ability to link identical entries and an editor called Leo (https://leo-editor.github.io/leo-editor has this feature.
Skywatcher
2/6/2023 11:06 am
Sounds like Tinderbox is exactly what you're looking for.
MadaboutDana
2/6/2023 2:13 pm
Hot diggity darn! Treeline is still going – amazing!
James Salla
2/7/2023 5:01 am
Treeline implements cloning differently from Brainstorm. In Brainstorm a cloned node has a button next to it that looks something like "[]." For these entries, the right and left arrow keys will let you hope from one instance of the node in the outline to another. Treeline puts a window at the top of the screen that shows every location where that node appears.
22111
2/27/2023 4:29 pm
Two citations from above:
"This is the core of what InfoQube is and can do. Items are like individuals, i.e. you and me."
"Sounds like Tinderbox is exactly what you’re looking for."
Perhaps.
It's the specifics which make the difference, and so I - but that's just me, really... - I always give'em.
You know I work with Ultra Recall, so here's my report: It's not about single items, being cloned - that's quite easy (whilst developers like "RightNotes"', e.g., don't even provide that, and, btw, RN's "tagging" feature (which is often mentioned as "sort of a replacement", in RN's context) is a joke (and proves RN's developer doesn't know much about the users' interaction with software) -,
but it's especially about whole subtrees being cloned "forever", and then staying "equal", wherever they are, and wherever they go.
(This being said, SQLite's in-real-life-limits (whilst not being acknowledged by SQLite evangelists, relentless citing theoretical limits, but obviously none'o'em administers about 400k items, totaling about 10 gb...) will somewhat thwart your verve to set up "the perfect IMS" for yourself...)
As you know, any ontology is "just by ONE (albeit "major", "principal", "basic", whatever...) trait, and thus, the necessity of "cloning" arises... BUT the "good news" is, most - I don't say: all - such needs then will not concern single items / records, but entities comprising quite a lot of "descendants" (I prefer the terms "ascendants" and "descendants", to "parents" and "children" / "child items", since the former terms only comprises the notion of hierarchy within that group of records).
Thus, pay attention to any (possibly unwanted) "effects" your then, seemingly, "free choice" of the occurrence of that cloned entity might have, for any editing, addition, re-arrangement, etc., and then, how "robust" it'll be, i.e. if you can really rely upon it.
And yes, this (currently) excludes "subscriptionware" like "Ulysses App" if I'm not mistaken, but then, when somebody's right, I'm delighted to acknowledge they are, and thus, see https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/43444/how-to-do-a-global-find-and-replace-in-ulysses where "RJStanford" says, "Considering that Ulysses is designed to hold all of your writing for all time [well, well, well: wait!, I'd say... but then:], a true global F&R would almost always be the wrong solution." - so true, as far as I'm concerned...
As far as "the third dimension" is concerned, UR's my choice for Windows, haven't found any better yet.
"This is the core of what InfoQube is and can do. Items are like individuals, i.e. you and me."
"Sounds like Tinderbox is exactly what you’re looking for."
Perhaps.
It's the specifics which make the difference, and so I - but that's just me, really... - I always give'em.
You know I work with Ultra Recall, so here's my report: It's not about single items, being cloned - that's quite easy (whilst developers like "RightNotes"', e.g., don't even provide that, and, btw, RN's "tagging" feature (which is often mentioned as "sort of a replacement", in RN's context) is a joke (and proves RN's developer doesn't know much about the users' interaction with software) -,
but it's especially about whole subtrees being cloned "forever", and then staying "equal", wherever they are, and wherever they go.
(This being said, SQLite's in-real-life-limits (whilst not being acknowledged by SQLite evangelists, relentless citing theoretical limits, but obviously none'o'em administers about 400k items, totaling about 10 gb...) will somewhat thwart your verve to set up "the perfect IMS" for yourself...)
As you know, any ontology is "just by ONE (albeit "major", "principal", "basic", whatever...) trait, and thus, the necessity of "cloning" arises... BUT the "good news" is, most - I don't say: all - such needs then will not concern single items / records, but entities comprising quite a lot of "descendants" (I prefer the terms "ascendants" and "descendants", to "parents" and "children" / "child items", since the former terms only comprises the notion of hierarchy within that group of records).
Thus, pay attention to any (possibly unwanted) "effects" your then, seemingly, "free choice" of the occurrence of that cloned entity might have, for any editing, addition, re-arrangement, etc., and then, how "robust" it'll be, i.e. if you can really rely upon it.
And yes, this (currently) excludes "subscriptionware" like "Ulysses App" if I'm not mistaken, but then, when somebody's right, I'm delighted to acknowledge they are, and thus, see https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/43444/how-to-do-a-global-find-and-replace-in-ulysses where "RJStanford" says, "Considering that Ulysses is designed to hold all of your writing for all time [well, well, well: wait!, I'd say... but then:], a true global F&R would almost always be the wrong solution." - so true, as far as I'm concerned...
As far as "the third dimension" is concerned, UR's my choice for Windows, haven't found any better yet.