by MummerX » Tue Jul 21, 2009 6:53 pm
Here's the spec I promised.
I envisage a combination of an outliner with note selection by tags. In my imagination, it looks something like TuxCards, but with a tag cloud across the bottom.
How would it work?
• It operates with all the usual functionality of an outliner; so we'll skip that.
• Tagging is used to identify matching notes.
• If you click on a tag in the cloud, that tag is highlighted in a unique colour, say red.
• At the same time, for each note containing that tag, a red flag appears next to the note's title in the hierarchy map.
• Click a 2nd tag in the cloud. This is highlighted in a different colour, say blue. A blue flag now appears in the hierarchy map along with the red flags. Some titles may even have red and blue flags if they contain both tags.
• I'm happy for tag colours to be dictated by the system, and I accept there would have to be a finite number of colours (I'd suggest 6 colours would be the absolute minimum set I could work with).
• Clicking an already highlighted tag in the cloud should un-highlight it, and remove its same-coloured flags from the hierarchy map. There'd probably be a menu entry to de-select all tags at once.
• Opening a note should show any selected tags it contains in their allocated highlight colours. I don't really care how tags appear normally in notes when not selected (a different font would do).
• Obviously, if a title is moved in the hierarchy map, any flags it has should move with it.
• [[Update:]] If a sub-tree in the hierarchy is collapsed, then I'd like to see any lower level flags migrate up to the visible level.
• [[Update:]] As the flags might be only simple blobs of colour, then perhaps hovering the mouse over the note could produce a tool-tip like box listing the tags. All tags, or just the selected tags? I'm not sure. If listing all the tags is workable, then the selected tags should be emphasised; but I'd settle for just listing the selected tags.
• [[Update:]] Normally a tag cloud is alphabetically sorted. I suggest it would be useful if selected tags would shuffle to the front of the cloud. Thus all selected tags are visible without scrolling the cloud, providing a colour key for the flags in the hierarchy. Otherwise, with a large cloud, the tag "Sally" will not be visible if there's only room to display tags starting A-N.
How is this useful to a writer?
Plotting is one of several possible uses.
• The hierarchy of notes can be used to keep track of notes on the plot, the top-most level perhaps being the chapters of the book. Moving these plot notes around the hierarchy changes their order in the story.
• If I select the "Harry" and "Sally" tags in the cloud, then coloured flags will appear in the hierarchy map to identify all bits of plot featuring these two characters, individually and together.
• It may be of critical interest when these two meet. So, a plot note flagged with both names (for their first date) which appears above/before the description of their meeting may indicate an embarrassing mistake I have made in plotting.
• Similarly if "004" steals the "Plans" from the "Comms room" using the "Password" that she got from the captured "Atlantic courier", then I want to see flags for these tags appear in the right order in the hierarchy map. The capturing should come quite early, escaping with the plans quite late.
• [[Update:]] Plotting is only one example. Such note selection would be useful for managing the collection of ideas and research notes too.
Re your feedback chaps (for which many thanks):
I had a look at Notecase, even downloaded it temporarily. IIRC, it's tagging feature solely concerns HTML tags, not tags-as-in-cloud. Not at all what I want. Happy to be told otherwise; it was only a quick look.
The referencing of LyX is (forgive me if I am wrong) not as dynamic as the scheme above. Great for static paragraph cross-referencing (I know this technology, I use it in my day job).
I use TomBoy for other reasons, and it is no outliner. Yes, it has a form of note linking but this does not quite give me what I want. Shame.
Unless my spec (above) triggers any thoughts I suppose I must conclude there ain't no such animal; and I don't have time to code one myself.
[[Spec updated with late additions (marked)]]
Last edited by
MummerX on Wed Jul 22, 2009 5:46 pm, edited 4 times in total.