At last -- my review of ConnectedText as an outliner

Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 25, 2012 at 09:56 AM

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>In an outliner, the (limited) outline is a starting frame of
>obvious structure, to which one can create ‘exceptions’, e.g. cloned items or links
>to other points in the hierarchy. In a wiki, the (unlimited) relationships are the
>starting point, and these you must maintain under strict control in order to produce
>an (obviously) structured hierarchy.

Yes, but that is also partly a mindset and a question of available visualisation tools. I.e. you could force yourself to use either as the other, provided the right kind of visualisation tools are available. I’m saying that there is benefit to such unorthodox uses.

>Yes of course, but here’s the catch:
>Where can you actually see and work with all levels of that outline?
>Wikis don’t guide you towards hierarchical thinking. Unless you have a plan in your mind,
>you are most likely to connect everything to everything, with no consideration of levels.

I don’t know of other wikis, but in CT this is exactly what I use the Navigator for. It allows you to see your network as a partial outline hierarchy. It’s partial because only the parent-child relationships are represented, not the sibling order (but it’s still useful). In the Navigator I mostly use the “vertical outline” view (just realised it’s even called an “outline”):
http://drandus.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/navigator.png