its almost unbelievable, how good you guys listen and how fast you react However, may I modify your proposal slightly? The comment drawer alone would not suffice my needs, because as I keep adding notes, the drawer content becomes more and more confusing, because I dont know which comment belongs to which part of the main text. Therefore, I would like to ask, if you could make the drawerâs content linked to the main documents content?
Either the drawers content could be organized like a hypercard-stack, with each entry linked to the master document or like a html-document with anchors linked to the document. Also, two arrows to take you to the next/previous comment could be useful.
I guess Iâm having a difficult time seeing how these separate multiple comments/notes documents would function any differently than the capabilities already within DTPro. How would they be any different from having your comments/notes in other DT documents as they currently exist (possibly in a âcomments groupâ within your âmy current working document groupâ) that are linked, for example, to words, superscripts, etc., in the main document? Even if searching is the issue you would still find the comment containing the search term and from there it would be easy to know the group and the primary document with which it is associated. Am I missing something?
as for the question if you were missing somethingâŚyes, maybe something like the rest of the thread? This is actually what I was talking about in several posts. Currently I am working exactly the way you sketched above, linking other rtf-documents to annotate/comment the main project. It is however a bit awkward because of several (admittedly minor) issues: Firstly, information that belongs together is stored within different documents. All the (strangely named) little note documents become confusing if they get too numerous. Especially for the AI engine which treats them as single documents, not knowing that they actually belong to a bigger main document, which is the one I might have been looking for. Also, the view of the main document is lost when opening an annotation, which may interrupt the flow of thoughts. Finally, it might be a way for users who want to feed the âknowledgeâ of the AI engine, to enter meta-information. Eg. if you enter the string "#meta-info: and a description of the file#, in which way you think it is important for you, the auto-classify and see-also functions would be (probably) much more accurate.
Adding to my suggestion: A two-way link would be even better: Browsing through the notes/comments (forward/backward) would accordingly scroll/jump through the main document (also something that is not quite possible with the present link-approach). This way, the comment drawer could likewise be a marker menu / structure outliner. Howâs that?
Christian, I like the idea very much, especially if it is resizeable so it could be made quite large
In addition, for a smaller place to add notes, I have thought that a small Comments field of one or two lines could be displayed to the left of the âClassifyâ button in the two split views, the 3-pane view, and the document windows⌠itâs kind of âwastedâ screen space right now. An option to display the Comment filed in that space would be good for adding or reviewing small notes to the displayed document. But, the drawer idea should also be implemented, for larger notesâŚ
I think that sounds like it would be most useful to many of us.
A sliding drawer will be more convenient and visually appealing. Thank you!
P.S.
On a semi-related note, Jerâs Novel writer has marginalia in which you can pin a note to specific areas of text, similar to what Dr Tone mentioned.
Itâs text based so thereâs no fussing with intrusive stickies etc.
OMO, marginalia will be part of the next wave of writingâs future (Itâs more powerful and similar to pen and paper).
I think Mellel 2.x will have columns in which marginal notes can be captured. Iâve tried to use tables in DTP in a similar manner but itâs not such a great work around.
What I keep wishing for in regard to notes is to be able to select a bit of text, and exactly like the current feature of making a link, be able to choose in the contextual menu âTake an (rtf/plain) note.â Whereby a new rtf or plain text document is opened in a group (of my choice?) which, when edited & saved, will be linked to the selected text (perhaps two-way, as was suggested earlier).
Thus have a browseable (sp?) folder of notes, instead of having notes in the info field, which does not give my wonderful notes enough independence .
I too find this discussion very interesting. I particularly appreciate Milhouseâs mention of âmarginaliaâ as useful metaphor for making notes and clarifying texts. A button added next to âClassifyâ and âSee Alsoâ opening a drawer to access the comments field would in my opinion be a wonderful addition to DT.
While I recognise the desire for a more elaborate system of annotating specific passages of text I wonder whether it might not add too much âbloatâ to the system⌠Given how much time and energy we all invest in our databases â I for one will always choose improved reliability over addtional featuresâŚ
What about having the comments field/drawer support rich text?
I read this thread, somewhat haphazardly, as I have some of the same needs. pardon if all this has been suggested before.
If DT supported Metadata, it would be easier to cross - classify documents â and it should be available for captured html pages too.
if notes had a property(call it sticky position or whatever). You could place a sticky note in any position in any document, even a captured html page. It would remember where it was placed on the page. there could be a mini icon in the sticky which would then take you to the Note/Editing view of the note.
In otherwords, all notes could have sticky position information, allowing them to link deep into documents(including captured html).
however, they would exist as regular notes too, with all the properties of regular rtf notes.
I see the Comments pane and Notes pane (as proposed in this thread) as very separate things. I use Comments for metadata - carefully chosen words which, when searched, bring up a grouping of very specific documents. As soon as the comments pane is used for notes, its metadata function is lost (those carefully chosen words are lost in a mass of random notes). While I wholeheartedly welcome the idea of a notes drawer, I donât want this to be amalgamated with Comments. Letâs keep âNotesâ and âCommentsâ separate (and have both!)
Both thumbs up on this one. Like Bill, Iâm already keeping the info panel open much of the time, but iâd prefer a drawer â preferably with multiple metadata fields, hint hint.
While youâre at it please make the âNameâ field multi-lined so that it can entirely display long titles. This would allow us to keep the left hand file list relatively narrow, but still completely see and edit titles.
RTF and Links in Notes/Comments would be brilliant.
And I too would prefer separate comments and notes fields-- though for the moment Iâm distinguishing between METADATA and Notes in the comments field by posting the former in upper case at the beginning of the field followed by a return and notes in lower case. This allows me to narrow my search to metadata by specifying âExact Caseâ in the search.
However, may I modify your proposal slightly? The comment drawer alone would not suffice my needs, because as I keep adding notes, the drawer content becomes more and more confusing, because I dont know which comment belongs to which part of the main text. Therefore, I would like to ask, if you could make the drawerâs content linked to the main documents content?
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