I'm indifferent to "folding" -- a concept that I suspect is not simple. But clearly many confederates here enjoy or even demand folding in their software. Since a simple forum search here does not reveal, among the hundreds of mentions of "folding", a topic debating "why folding", I propose this thread.

So, for you: "why folding"? What are the benefits / detriments? How is "folding" best implemented in software? Is there even an analog of "folding" in the physical world.

I'm personally more interested in "zooming" or "hoisting" than folding. I love being able to zoom in on a part of a document and focus on it to the exclusion of other parts and then be able to zoom out and see the document in context. Outliners like Workflowy/Dynalist/Outlinely do this one way, but other apps, like Ulysses, do it in another... both are useful for me, depending on what I am doing. But to answer your question, folding is useful for seeing that larger context without getting lost in the details. One can see section headers with only those sub-headings expanded that you wish to see. So for me the two features are two sides of the same coin.

I agree with Luhmann - yes, I know I witter on about folding all the time, but actually it's about being able to focus specifically on one thing while maintaining a broad overview of a host of other (possibly related) things, so the zooming/hoisting concept is also valid. On another level, it's why mind mapping is interesting: but I find it lacking in precision. I would love to see a knowledge management app that allowed you to move blocks of information/text into prime position without losing their links to their original context. This would make sense for writing purposes, but also for task management and other activities involving prioritisation. There are some clever concepts currently emerging in task management apps, but keeping that combination of zoomed-in detail view surrounded by big-picture overview appears to be a very difficult thing to visualise and implement.

Folding is, I suppose, one of the simplest expressions of this requirement, but it's certainly not the definitive one. Side-by-side views (or clever cross-comparable hierarchies like Gingko's) are other possibilities. Tagging is a way of focusing, but I can't think of any apps that have really mastered the advantages of tagging to the full (pace ConnectedText), because for me, a tagged view should coexist with other views of the same information, such as a list-based overview.

Having said that, more and more information management apps are allowing you to open multiple windows (Things, Bear, Ulysses, Keep It, Scrivener, Notebooks for iOS, etc. etc.), which certainly helps to manage complex masses of info more easily.

For me, the appeal of folding is being able to refer to multiple relevant sections of a document with a chunk of intervening text at once on-screen *by manipulating the document* rather than by manipulating the viewing/windowing interface. If you can split a window into two or more horizontal viewing areas, like you can in Word, you can accomplish the same thing (as you can by opening and positioning multiple windows on the same document), but messing around with windows and splits and whatever is a lot less natural than just manipulating the document itself.

The physical analog is a binder with multiple tabs. Sometimes even though there are tabs, I'll pull out the pages from tab 2 and tab 10 and refer to those outside of the binder, without all the other stuff in the way.

Great topic for discussion, Paul.

Folding is essential to me for certain kinds of outline. For example, in Dynalist I have outlines that break out an entire year into months and days. I then use the hoist feature to zoom in on one month at a time, with all the days of that month spread out below. I then bullet journal under the days. So by the time I have a few days under my belt, it is nice to be able to fold those days, so I don't have to see the detail of preceding days unless I want to. Saves screen space and clutter.

It can also be helpful when composing a document to be able to outline with headers, write content under the headers, then fold them up to keep the structure in view, but not have to be distracted by the content.

A physical analog might be a binder with tabbed dividers vs. all the pages tacked to a white board in columns beneath the divider headings (i.e. in a sort of table). The latter might be useful in certain circumstances, but it is probably easier to zero in and focus on a specific divider topic using the binder.

Steve Z.

Interesting topic. For the sake of clarification of the terms being discussed: My understanding has always been that, whereas "expand" and "collapse" are terms used generally in software that uses the outlining metaphor, "folding" is used more often in the context of plain text editors. Folding is thus an extra feature that makes editing plain text more outliner-like, whereas in dedicated outliners, it's an integral feature that more often gets referred to as "expand" and "collapse". Am I right? And if so, is the question here about folding specifically, or folding and expand-collapse more generally?

Though it might be a separate topic, for illustration in this topic I should ask what are the best examples of "folding" software and the best examples of "hoisting" software -- in your opinion -- on Windows, iOS and/or macOS? However you define "best".

For me, I'm relaxed on the plain text / rich text distinction between "folding" and "collapsing" that @Lucas introduced. I also define "best" as "the feature works by a single click and, ideally, a keyboard shortcut that has the same result".

With that, I think the best collapsing / folding, and hoisting, software is Tinderbox on macOS.

On iOS I would grudgingly go with OmniOutliner. (Agenda's collapse feature in iOS is frustratingly inconsistent.)

On Windows I don't know what is best.

I use folding for in-line comments and reference data. I suppose the real world metaphor would be a footnote in a book.

I've found it useful to keep certain kinds of notes 'live' by adding running commentary to them with time-stamps. That is the signal to myself that I've re-evaluated/re-affirmed/rejected whatever that item/idea is/was. This is particularly useful for procedural stuff like checklists so I can remind myself WHY step #3 is the way it is and that I've asked myself the question before. Then I might add ANOTHER time-stamped comment to it now that could be a pat on my younger-me's back for being so clever or make a slight change based older me's newfound wisdom.

It was OneNote where I first learned the joy of collapsing comments (and even attachments/photos if you put them in a 2 cell tables). This practice was inspired by OneNote's (the original desktop version) in-line tagging, which was all about describing the content-in-place...... maybe this is a subject for a new topic.

I have this hangup where I always assume I'm smarter that I used to be and that my new ideas are actually new. This hangup tends to keep me from first reviewing old ideas before taking off with new ideas. When I overcome this dumb habit by looking over my old material I'm usually surprised that 1. I used to have pretty solid ideas and they are still just as valid now as they were then 2. I have a LOT of ideas that I think are original, but they've occurred to me before, sometimes several times.

So my memory sucks, and inline collapsible/foldable text is how I've figured out how to keep young me and old me on the same page, quite literally.

MadaboutDana wrote:

I would love to see a knowledge management app
that allowed you to move blocks of information/text into prime position
without losing their links to their original context. This would make
sense for writing purposes, but also for task management and other
activities involving prioritisation.

NoteCase Pro does this with its flat "list" view of nodes. The list view exists only in memory, not on disk. Add the nodes you want to focus on to the list and then you can reorder them as desired. This does not affect the "tree" view or the node's position in the file. And it's just one keyboard shortcut (or toolbar icon click or context menu item) to toggle back and forth between tree and list view. Nodes in list view are fully editable, taggable, and markable. Nodes in the list view can be printed, copied, or cloned in list view order. But nodes cannot be deleted from file in list view, and new nodes cannot be created in list view.

MadaboutDana wrote:

> I would love to see a knowledge management app
>that allowed you to move blocks of information/text into prime position
>without losing their links to their original context. This would make
>sense for writing purposes, but also for task management and other
>activities involving prioritisation.

Notion.so isn't far away from this. It's very good at embedding pretty much any item within any other item (thus, letting you embed blocks of items into their prime positions). The problem I'm running into is knowing what emdedding/linking actions result in logical links (yay), one way dumb links (meh), or what breaks an item from it's home database or hierarchy. I'm finding that I can achieve transclusion/cloning (item appears in multiple hierarchies) which already puts it ahead of many knowledge managers. Since you can create relational databases where each record IS a normal item that can be its own rich-content, it basically allows an unlimited scope of metadata for any subset of notes you choose.

It's under rapid development, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they add the function where an item tells you what is linking to it (they call embedding links to notion items within paragraphs 'mentions') then this would be a truly impressive app with very few shortcomings. It's already fully cross-platform with offline mode.

Paul Korm wrote:

I also define
"best" as "the feature works by a single click and, ideally, a keyboard
shortcut that has the same result".

With that, I think the best collapsing / folding, and hoisting, software
is Tinderbox on macOS.

On iOS I would grudgingly go with OmniOutliner. (Agenda's collapse
feature in iOS is frustratingly inconsistent.)

One of the things that finally drove me away from two decades of using Acta -> Dyno Notepad -> Opal was having to click twice on disclosure triangles to open and collapse. Drove me absolutely batty, finally. I even contacted the dev to see why he chose that when all the conventions - including the Mac's Finder - use one click, and his response was not satisfactory, at least to me. He said he prioritized selecting text without an extra click, or needing an extra hit target to select a topic, by building the selection into the double-click.

I think the world has pretty much decided though: click to open/close and then decide whether you want to then click again to select focus. He decided to remain idiosyncratic, and I gave up the app. I constantly close/collapse, as I usually have a headline topic then lots of list items or blocks of text that don't need to be seen (or get in the way if they are). And all that extra clicking, after far too many years grated on me and I had to flee... despite having used the app in one name or other starting in 1987 (and with pretty much the same exact features and keyboard commands the entire time, which is a lot of muscle memory to give up).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding

folding is supa important:

- for specific use cases, it's supa needed

- the #1 benefit which may have been said is all about info visibility, info accessibility, & info presentation

- the #1 bad of collapsible text is when it's not needed, there's really no bads collapsiblity

- if there's any bads, then maybe it was done/designed badly

collapsiblity is one of the most important things across all types/forms/kinds/designs of softwares

Is there even an analog of “folding” in the physical world.

yea there's tons, there's billions of examples, not sure if this is physical world in terms of the natural world, or physical in terms of built world, but across all contexts there's lots of examples

Well, I had no idea – I shall have to check it out (again; I periodically install and then somewhat regretfully uninstall NoteCase Pro... no iOS version, you see)


Marbux wrote:

NoteCase Pro does this with its flat "list" view of nodes. The list view
exists only in memory, not on disk. Add the nodes you want to focus on
to the list and then you can reorder them as desired. This does not
affect the "tree" view or the node's position in the file. And it's just
one keyboard shortcut (or toolbar icon click or context menu item) to
toggle back and forth between tree and list view. Nodes in list view are
fully editable, taggable, and markable. Nodes in the list view can be
printed, copied, or cloned in list view order. But nodes cannot be
deleted from file in list view, and new nodes cannot be created in list
view.