Outliner/PIM roll call: Fall 2012

Posted by Dr Andus
Sep 17, 2012 at 09:17 AM

reverendmartian wrote:
>Doc I took this from your March 2012 post on how you code in CT
I am lost within
>the first three directions.)

Well, the reason I set up the blog was exactly to have more space to explain this in more detail, so watch that space.

>1. I take a 20,000 word
>document (a transcript of an interview) and paste it into CT as a new
>‘topic’ (document).
>(So you cannot code pdf files in CT; gigantic
>shortcoming considering the predominance of that format.)

Well, there are advantages and disadvantages to coding PDFs within an application and its single project file or outside the application, or not coding PDFs at all. There is also an advantage to having to copy PDF (or any other) content into CT and analyse it there. It means you don’t ever have to go back to the original source again, which saves time and effort. Why bother going back to a PDF if you have already read it and and had extracted the key information? You can still have a link back to the file, BTW. But CT is the central database for content that matters (value-added, processed content).

> 2. I dock the table of
>contents window on the left, and have the edit view of the document on the right of
>it.
>(I cannot even maximize the TOC window much less dock it.)

Yes, docking can be a bit fiddly, especially for the novice. Search the CT forum for some desktop layouts and use those initially. Then you can save your own desktop templates as well.

> 3. I start reading
>through the document and “code” it by adding in headings (up to 5
>levels).
>(No such function as headings. ‘splain what you are talking about. Like do
>you highlight something in the word doc and then select some menu item; if so what is it
>since it ain’t “headings.”

Well, you do need to read the Welcome file to learn the basic mark-ups. It’s a wiki after all. The markup for the headings are the following:
=Heading 1=
==Heading 2==
===Heading 3===
====Heading 4====
=====Heading 5=====

Believe it or not, it’s quicker to type this than have to highlight text and select some icon on a ribbon, like in Word.

> 4. As headings are added, they start showing up in the TOC
>pane in the left, so I can see the hierarchy of the themes (codes).
> >(Yeah so how is this any different than copying and pasting a word doc into the doc window of any two pane
>outliner like UR and then linking the selected text to an outline item.

It’s faster in CT. You can add headings to a text and the hierarchy (which I use as the “codes”) shows now automatically in the TOC in real time as you type. But the distinguishing feature is then the ability to incorporate the codes in other documents using CT’s “include” mark-up. I will really have to explain this on the blog, not over here.