LLLActive@GMX.Net said the following on 10/18/2011 09:53 AM:
On 18/10/11 15:28, Anton Aylward wrote:
LLLActive@GMX.Net said the following on 10/18/2011 08:37 AM:
Incidentally, I cannot use OO-org, because there is no Outline tool in OO-org. It has been a requested issue for 10 years now, to no avail. That' s a problem?
Not for me.
I use a mindmapping tool as an outliner. The graphical representation makes it much easier to work with!
There are many mind-mapping tools available for Linux:
* XMIND * View-your-mind * Freemind and Freeplane
Those last two allow you to write 'notes' in each node of the map that when you export the map to text (.odt, .html or .pdf) and that means you can compose a lot of your document in the map before you export the outline.
There's more capability in this kind of tool that I can describe in a few words, and more than you will find in just a few minutes trial. It really is an excellent 'idea manager'
Hi Anton,
I use it for writing a PhD, other books and technical papers. I use Freemind as a start, but when it comes to books, there is no better tool like Outliner in M$, sadly! I have to work with lots of text content, and mind mapping tools are the start, but not easily usable tools for my purpose. Freemind gets so big that you loose perspective. It works well for topics and headings, less well for body texts. I even tried outliners for Mac, which was quite OK, but propriety. I need an outliner for students who are migrating to use Linux and open-source, in place of M$, Mac and closed-source. Mind mappers are a good start. We need something beyond the idea development phase.
In that case I suggest you look to the 'authoring' tools that have been developed for writing *shock* *horror* NOVELS. These have tools (panes, panels, stacks) for keeping track of plot threads, characters and character development, scenes, background and more. There are things like 'StoryBook for Linux, and a plethora for Windows that might or might not run under WINE. Personally I think your comment "We need something beyond the idea development" short-changes computer-based mindmapping. I say this because I've been using mindmapping since the 70s, when it was black-boards and flip charts. But just as VISIO transformed blueprints (I recall the hours it took to redraw merely to insert one logic gate), so too has the computer revolutionized mindmapping. Mindmaps are now applications, not drawings. With XSLT I can assign attributes like probabilities and cost to nodes and then make decision trees that are not just diagrammatic but actually calculate. Having a node-as-a-database (even if it is a XML one) unleashes a great deal of power. Now the thing is that your OpenOffice document is a really (under the hood) and XML file. And so it the Freemind map. A small XSLT script can convert one to the other ... or if you want to write a GUI in Perl or Python or Ruby, the "outliner" that stores its data as the XML which gets transformed into one or the other. I suspect I'm a lot more experienced with computer based mindmaps, having been using them regularly for over 15 years now; so for me the idea of writing a book (or anything else) in a modern mindmapping tool (I have my preferences) is not daunting. Experience counts. That is true with any tool you chose. Try 'Storybook'. This is the wrong forum to ask about writing tools. Hmm. I wonder what 'outliner' Steven King uses. -- The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree. - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Metaphysics -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org