Importing stuff from other note taking apps

DEVONthink Feedback
21

>After all, if they’re going to bother officially calling it outlining within DT, it should be more than an over/under view and a checkbox.

If you say so. I don’t use outline, I don’t care about outlines, DT ain’t failing me. That’s all.

>but your assumption that he’s accused you of bashing because you’re a woman strikes one as a bit …well…ummm… hysterical.

Smile when you say that. Brave man.

And, frankly, this is something of a gender issue. Testosterone pushes the brain towards systems thinking, estrogen towards empathetic/identifying. See Simon Baron-Cohen’s excellent work. It’s just very strange to me, as a thinker and a writer - and to whatever population it is I represent, and we are legion - this fascination with outliners. But hey, same goes for pro football.

Zo

22

Dearest Zo,

Oh ya?

First of all:

>>If you say so. I don’t use outline, I don’t care about outlines, DT ain’t failing me. That’s all.

  1. a) It’s ALWAYS about you.
  2. b) I have needs too you know.
  3. c) I never said DT was failing me, only that it should come up with new ways to please me. Yes I occasionally flirt with outlining programs, but it’s harmless fun. And if DT could give me a decent outline (and at least TRY to understand my OPML needs) I’d never stray again. I promise.

Secondly,

>>Testosterone pushes the brain towards systems thinking, estrogen towards empathetic/identifying. See Simon Baron-Cohen’s excellent work.

A)1. You really should try
A)2. being more empathetic and
B)1. identifying with
B)1.1. us outliners.

C)1. Everyone knows Simon Baron-Cohen’s a pansy.

And Third,

>Smile when you say that. Brave man.

OOOoooohhh. Now I’m shakin.

Also:

Go Rams Go!,

So there!

Eiron’s Testosterone :stuck_out_tongue:

23

Maybe I didn’t try hard enough but IMHO exporting categories or notebooks from iOrganize creates a single file and not multiple files for each note.

24

Just a personal note:
As a writer and journalist, I’ve always liked and used notebooks but I don’t get the idea behind outling - just don’t know what to do with outliners or how they could simplify my work (or any work).

But nonetheless the outlining possibilities of DT will be improved although the idea behind DT isn’t outling (or at least wasn’t initially). However, DT will never be an outliner providing all possibilities of OmniOutliner or Hog Bay Notebook 3.x of course (as this would definitely create bloatware).

But outlining inside rich text documents might be a good idea (e.g. collapsing/expanding passages).

25

Well that’s all I’m asking for.

Most of all outlining is an indispensible tool for actually avoiding writing in the first place, though I’m finding DT’s great web research capabilities are almost as good for that purpose. It’s amazing how that Capture Page feature makes one feel like one has actually captured information in one’s brain as opposed to just plunking bytes in a database, never to be seen again. People don’t seem to appreciate what a truly excellent procrastination Tool DT is. :slight_smile:

In all seriousness, outlining is about managing complexity. I’m an epic kind of guy and in the early stages of a work at least I don’t DO pithy. So it s essential that I be able to see both the forest and the trees (not to mention the roots and the leaves-- to abuse a metaphor) and only real outlining allows for that. It’s not just about organizing it’s about tracking very complex and subtle relations between ideas in a big document.

I’ve been hoping for the perfect outliner for years. But maybe I’ve been wrong. (though for chrissakes don’t tell Zo I said so) I’d love to hear how writers here do WITHOUT outlining.

26

>DT will never be an outliner

Well. Put that in your shorts and smoke it, boys.

Seriously, it’s good to hear from smart developers, with parameters.

I hear the next release of Office is going to have Tivo capability.

Zo

27

Zo has raised a brave point about the differences between how writers work and think. It may be a gender difference, but it may also be genetic, and that might come from either the x or y side, since plenty of males are intuitive and associational and plenty of females are logical and sequential in their thought processes.

Case in point: my wife and I are professional writers who have published 20 books and over 120 articles/essays. She writes on science, education, military history, politics, and crime. I write on poetry, drama, fiction, food, art, and religion. We both collect mountains of data and ideas. I keep everything on the computer and use DT and an outliner. She prints everything out and relies on intuition and free association to make her connections. Another way to put this: she cooks, and I wash up.

I wouldn’t “bash” her for the world nor anyone who works in her fashion. Every time I help her out of a computer mess, she recites to me from her prodigious store of memorized poetry. The brain is a wondrous creature, and we all use what tools we need to keep her/him/it alive and well.

28

And any writer worth her salt is capable of being both at different times. Use the right tool for the job regardless of gender. And keeping both tools close at hand, in the same application, would be handy. That’s all.  

29

I’ve used two approaches in the past:

  1. Creating a simple note initially and add something people would probably call an outline but only using tabs and bullets - it’s IMHO very easy to modify such a simple "outline" as I always prefer to view everything on one page :wink: If one page wasn’t enough, it’s been time to create new notes.

  2. Starting to write without any idea what will be next ;D

However, version 1.9 or (more likely) 2.0 will add the possibility to expand/collapse passages within rich text documents.

30

My ears start to bleed when I do that.

I’m not one of those writers who claims it’s all simplicity and inspiration. I need to gather all kinds of notes for a scene, including an outline, a thematic description, a dramaturgical analysis of what I want to achieve theatrically in the scene and what effects I can use towards theose ends, notes on where each character is at, what voice she uses, how his language has changed, how the scene deals with any of dozens of threads, themes and motifs that i’m addressing and developing in the beat, scene, act and play as a whole. Then there’s the snippets of words and lines and ideas that might or might not find a home in that scene.

All this has to be easily accessed, prioritized or put safely aside for later before I can begin to write. And outlining helps a lot here.

Finally I try to fully absorb the whole lot, get a good night’s sleep. and start to write on waking, without once looking at my notes until I’m done writing for the morning. Then the notes round starts again in preparation for the next day and later it’s off to the theater for rehearsals, or dramaturgy, or socializing with bleeding actors and remembering that those notes are NOT all that drama is about.

When I put it that way, it sounds a bit crazy.  ::slight_smile:

31

I will confess: the only thing I like about MS Word’s outliner is its ability to expand and collapse topics, so I may see on one screen the entire TOC of a project. When I type RT notes in DT now, I add bold-face heads and sub-heads, but still have to scroll up and down to find them. It would be fantastic if an RT file had the outliner capacity that Christian has just described.

But how about taking that function to the entire DT database? Right now I have 5 main folders, which contain 257 groups. To see them, I have to scroll and click on folder after folder, like the Finder in System 7 (which introduced the triangle-folder metaphor, I think).

But if I could use keyboard commands to expand and collapse a folder and its many sub-folders, that would be fantastic. I’d still rely on DT searches to find all those suprising relations/connections, but more control over the display of the folder hierarchy would be hugely helpful as well.

Control? Uh-oh… :astonished:

32

You can already use left/right arrow keys to collapse/expand single groups or Command-Option-9/Command-Option-0 (see menu "View") to expand/collapse multiple selected groups (contrary to the right arrow key, Command-Option-9 expands groups and all their subgroups).

33

You just stopped my ears from bleeding. I’m at work on a historical novel, my first, and I’ve been flying by the seat of my pants, but doing pretty much what you’ve described above. In my case, I’m trying to get all the context right: what did they wear? could they have eaten pears in March? because a novel is scenic and descriptive, and (thank the gods), not everything happens in dialogue. But characters are hugely important, so I’m building resumes and assembling timelines and trying to make sure they look, feel, and sound like people from 1887, not papier-mache puppets I built in 2004. Which they are, of course, but lately they have started talking to me, in what seem to be their own voices, so either I’m going nuts or they have at last taken an interest in telling their stories. But I don’t have to deal with actors who are performing the words. That’s a huge challenge and also a test of one’s saintly patience. Thanks for your thoughts, eiron.

34

Yes, I am aware of those commands, and they are helpful. But how grand it would be to show all levels 1-3 or 1-5 or 1-7, as one can now in MS Word. Each of the levels is a different style (font + tab), and the expand/collapse command just means "show all Heading 1-3 lines". I’ve never found any other outliner than can do this.

35

>I’m not one of those writers who claims it’s all simplicity and inspiration.

Nor do I. This is greatly misunderstood. I simply take dictation from the universe.

Really, it’s the risk-discovery of the connections that already exist, the particular weave of the lumpy fabric that already supports us all in time and space (speaking of string theory.) Risk, because it’s trusting that there’s water in the pool, every time. And there always is, because we are alive. In the end, I think we are all working in highly personal ways that show us, in a sense, what we most need to see. And there’s always a bit of craziness/magic about how the work gets done. I find that most of the thinking gets done off the page. Which allows for a great deal of guilt-free lazing time. Whatever pops your cork.

I think I probably bring up this quintessentially Feminine way of working in an, um, assertive manner because when I was a girl, the only way [i]to[/] write was as you described the first part. Therefore, I couldn’t possibly become a writer. Lots of wasted years.

I love the idea of detailed notes one very sincerely makes . . .and the next- morning self completely ignores. This is the sort of twist by which we must outfox ourselves, surprise ourselves into making the New. Nobody goes gladly into that great unknown, do they?

What I really like is that DT does not impose, and yet keeps things gently organized. I arrange and rearrange my groups, letting the most interesting things rise to the top. But then, I use it more like a b-i-i-i-g shelf. The Finder is mechanical, DevonThink is relational - and that is -  sorry, guys - my milieu. Not that I haven’t been proven right by quantum physics or anything. . .

Zo

36

Much of the writing I’m proudest of has been done a bit differently. Basically, I’m a procrastinator. One reason for that is that I seem to think of entirely too many possible alternative ways of dealing with a topic (especially an assigned topic), so that I sit staring at the keyboard instead of writing. That’s a block.

To break the block, I set myself a deadline, then work up to the last possible minute researching and thinking about what I’ve got to do. By that time I’m tired – exhausted is even better. Then I get something to eat, sit down at the keyboard (usually, about 10 PM) and type straight through until I’m finished. Some projects take a few hours, some a few days. The trick is to produce final product the first time – no time for editing or rewriting.

This approach works best for me when the deadline is real, such as a publication date or a public hearing in Washington. Desperation is the best breaker of mental blocks I’ve ever found! Needless to say, though, this approach is tough on the body. >:(

More enjoyable is writing for the fun of it – and it can be fun. That’s when I can take Christian’s second approach and simply start writing without really knowing where it will take me – no schedule, no editorial directives – just exploring ideas. The topic is whatever I want it to be, a kinder, gentler way of breaking writer’s block. Sometimes I like what I’ve done, sometimes I don’t – but it’s entirely up to me.

Fortunately, my circumstances are such that I don’t have to respond to outside directives or orders. Writing is fun.

I don’t use outlines under either approach to writing. But I do like to write using NoteTaker or NoteBook, because it’s so easy to rearrange text.

37

You’re so lucky Zo, most of the time when I take dictation from the Universe, all I get is dead silence or something like “;(&@;$%%^&@;*)#>>>>>>…$…!”; Though on those rare days when the signal is good, what comes through sounds a bit like “Maybe you should have a muffin”.

Nonetheless, opportunities for creative uncertainty are legion in the theatre, and that is indeed part of the fun.  But it’s also a problem.  

Stage dialogue is necessarily a very dense form; any one line or speech has a LOT of work to do on many different levels – at least if the author aspires to anything more than your run of the mill romantic comedy, kitchen sink drama, street rant or pulitzer-prize-winning middlebrow porn where a passing reference to chaos theory or Picasso passes for "ideas". (To me anything that cheaply tries to push our hormonal buttons is porn, so that means Larry Flint, George Bush, Mel Gibson, Madison Avenue, God, Barbara Streisand, Hummer, Nutrasweet, Walmart and Disney are all pornographers in my book; as am I, occasionally)

In order to do such heavy lifting a line can be informed by:  a word culled from a chat room; the inflections of my butcher’s speech; a character’s complex, mysterious motivations; the desire to underline a coup-de-theatre; the availability of a prop or the rights to a piece of music; my brother’s death; a stumbled-upon newspaper piece on Baboon culture; two lines in the AI entry of the MIT encyclopedia of cognitive science; an actor’s tone of voice; an audience members’ indigestion; the angle and color of a shaft of light; a noisy candy wrapper and, yes, that muffin the universe ordered for breakfast.

In short, I have enough serendipity informing my work, thank you very much. I’d kill for a little order.

Nowadays, most (though not all) creative writers who over-rely on "inspiration" (whether the source is God or Cosmic Strings or the leather-clad muse at Kinko’s)  end up stringing together personalized versions of the cliché memes that trumpet out from popular culture and its various tribal subsets (genY, dinner theatre, "Womyn’s Lit", post 1980s rap and hip hop, the New York Avant Garde, NewAge cafeteria spirituality and Celine Dion - it’s all much the same because it all eschews the hard groping uncertain work of just being human and mechanically refuses to move beyond such pieties as "listen to your heart,"-  the only message of American "art" since the Sound of Music.)

"But," drones the creative writing teacher,  "if you write about what you know, inspiration will guide you."

One small problem.  Thanks to long lifespans, education, travel, books and TV; thanks to multiple sex partners and multiple roles in multiple relationships in multiple worlds real and virtual; thanks to cognitive science and family therapy and ecstasy and prozac and a culture of obsessively narcissistic introspection; thanks to the fact that I can know Juliette Binoche (whom I’ve seen naked) a hundred times better than I know my aforementioned butcher; thanks to Email, Webs, Chats, FAQs, Tinderboxes, Circus Ponies, virtual spiral notebooks and Devonthink; thanks to modernity we all know at least something about EVERYTHING!

We live in a gloriously complicated world; and if a creative writer is going to write about that world rather than merely about himself and his little tribe, he’s going to have to deal with  a lot of information. As I see it, an artist’s job is to open up the lines of communication between culture, mind and emotion, to be a kind of living Rosetta Stone. She must not tell us WHAT to think (we all know prejudice is bad and Texans are morons.) She must help us investigate and understand HOW we think and feel. Good theatre, in particular, aspires to be this kind of Virtual Mind, to provide a chance to inhabit a different way of thinking, perceiving and feeling for an evening.

Much of the time, a writer simply can’t cope with all the information that will potentially fill the "mind" of his work. He has to rely on chance, interest and intuition to winnow out the chaff so that his work is both simply entertaining and richly challenging.

Occasionally, this writer will turn to software for help.  

As I gather and organize the millions of bits of info that may affect the composition of my next opus, my greatest fear is that some note, factoid, article or intuition - that I believed three weeks ago might someday mate with others of its kind and give birth to a small true moment of human recognition onstage – will get lost in the shuffle. I sure as hell don’t want to rely on a two-inch search field or a See Also button to find it for me, leastwise not until DT uses a thesaurus as big as the one in my brain to hunt things down or the Powerbook G5 comes out.

Nope, what I need is a way to put that damn note where it belongs (and replicants, aliases or clones wherever else it might belong) and often that place is inside another note. I don’t care how you do it: let me import, display and edit OPML, CPNotebook, word outlines, tinderbox Notes, novamind outlines, whatever.

Even better, give every DT folder a real text field just like any other note, and while you’re at it give me the option of seeing in that field not some essentially imformation-free icons, but all the text in the notes that folder contains, all in order, and editable. Now THAT"s a feature. (Tinderbox and Word approximate this, so it’s at least conceivable)

What I need is Devonthink Creative Pro 12.2 (or even 12.2b)

But I’ll settle for Christian’s idea of allowing collapsible text in a field.That would give me outlining AND search AND all my documents and articles in one place. I don’t care how he does it.

People like Christian and Mr Google-- who are trying their best to give us tools to handle the morass intelligently – are doing the most important work of their generation. I’m not kidding. Without such tools we will all soon be forced to choose between A) being overwhelmed, B)letting others (republicans/fundamentalists/microsofts) decide for us what’s important. or C) escaping to the woods – what’s left of them.

I don’t need order because I’m male, I need order because almost everything I do is complex, relational, intuitive and in flux or – simply put in Zo219’s terms – female.

(BTW Zo, this is why I get impatient with easy sexual stereotyping. I have, but I am not, testosterone. Gender differences, while indeed often rooted in genetic and phenotypic differences, are incredibly reactive to environment (I see startling proof of this every day in the theatre) and easy assumptions about "how males think" provide a particularly fertile environment for the kind of stupidity we see in sitcoms, football stadia and Palestine.  Any writer who can’t link ideas intuitively and flexibly better keep his day job at the Piggly Wiggly or Fox News.  Your assumptions go against the evidence provided by 90% of the (published, hence male) playwrights and poets of the last 3000 years. Moreover, my partner – a woman, a scientist and French to boot!-- loves outlines, bullet points and all the rest much more than I do!)

Nuff said.

Eiron.

>>p.s. Jesus, he does burble on. No wonder he can’t hear me - the universe

p.p.s. Jeez (s)he’s right - Bill this is what happens when I just let loose and write without a plan. Look at all those lists! If I had outlining here, I could have pared this down to 2 sentences and a >:(

Sorry,

as you were

38

Just writing this to stop that last bloated monster note from cluttering up  the recent page.

I feel better now. Ears have stopped bleeding.

Eiron

39

Well, if DEVONthink Pro should ever reach version 12.2, it’s probably going to fulfill all your needs - maybe it’s even going to write for you? ;D

Just kidding… or maybe not ???

Because although a lot of people claim that current computers are fast enough for most common tasks, they’re definitely not. I guess we’ll see some interesting new software in the next few years (I’d like computers being able to learn like a human being but of course much faster)

40

Then there won’t be any need for us writers at all. The blessed computers can do the thankless job.