Hello all,  

I have a question about Tinderbox that I'm not quite sure how to phrase, so please bear with me when I fumble it.

I would like to find a way to draw on both the map and outline view of Tinderbox for the same set of data. Unfortuantely, I can't quite figure out how to get the two to "play" nicely with each other. In an ideal world, I could use the map view to organize my hierarchies and the outline view to navigate through them quickly. I realize that the easy way to do with would be to use containers in the map view. Unfortunately, though, the containers for my project would have to have their own sub-containers. Drilling down into the information consequently becomes a bit awkward as I cannot see the whole apparatus at once.

On the other hand, if I organize the files so they "work" at the level of the map view, then the outline is fairly useless as all the information is at the same level of the hierarchy.

I'm sure someone else has asked a similar question and would appreciate both links as well as any feedback you might be able to offer.

Have a good one,

~A

That said, I should also say that this is an area where substantial contributions to computer science might well be made by students, graphic designers, or just about anyone.

So, if you have an idea for a better map view that shows more information more clearly, by all means sketch it.  Draw it on the back of an envelope.  Post it, or email it, or put it in a box and send it.  

Jean and Mark,

Thanks for the ideas. I do have a couple of thoughts but should I post them here or in the wish-list since I would be asking for new functionality?

Have a good one,

~A

Mark,

Great, I'll keep an eye out for the posts.

I should probably also clarify that at the moment I'm looking to draw on hypertext to organize my own materials, not necessarily to use it as a presentation method in the classroom.

I have also posted a suggestion for a new feature request in the "Off the wall" section.

Have a good one,

~A

So we decided we were going to add some articles to the wiki, and we already had a bunch of information from the work we've been doing lately.  So I made some adornments for different topics we were thinking about and the starting placing notes based on which topic they related to, with overlapping notes/adornments incorporating all the subjects they touch. The farther out of the adornments a note is, the less relevant it was.



As you can see I have a prototype legend at the top. I used different gradients and color families to represent different sources.  

The outline view was also important, though, since the document also included a To Do list and post listings for the articles I was thinking about.  Since everything is more or less on the same “level” for mapping purposes, I separated common notes with Separators.



You’ll notice also that both of these views do, as Jean suggested, use adornments and separators to create a pseudo-hierarchy.

Also since there is so much information, I'll continue working on this tomorrow.  Hope this helps a bit!

Stacey,

That is a very cool map. I can see how it allows you make some conceptual observations about the notes. This adds a whole level of complexity that I hadn't considered when I was talking about the map view.

I am having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around the ideas though. What portion of your outline are you showing in the map?

Thanks,

~A

What you're seeing in the map view is the whole document except for my ToDo list. All of the notes (except the To Do list) keep to the top "level" of the hierarchy.

I personally like to keep my To Do list as a list; the map view doesn't really help me organize my list as well as the outline view on this project, as there's no visualization or mind-mapping necessary for that part, and the list is pretty short.

So for this case, I just moved those notes off to the side. A lot of times in cases like this, I put the "To Do list notes into a separate container just to get them out of the way in my map view.

The part I did want to use the map view for was organizing my ideas and sources for the wiki pages. So for those notes, I used the map view to figure how how they fit together.  For this, I haven't figured out a hierarchy yet, so I just need to kind of keep them separate on the outline view, keeping everything on the same hierarchical level.

Keep in mind, you don't always need to use both views.  For things like a To Do list, sometimes just using the outline view will keep things on track.  Similarly, if you're just mind-mapping something to gather your thoughts, adding too much hierarchy before you need it can be counter-productive. If I find that I am needing more structure as the document gets bigger and I have more and more notes, I can start to drop notes into other notes (thus making containers).  

Sometimes setting up too much hierarchy from the start can really make a complicated mess of things that haven't gotten complicated yet.  Robert Brooks mentioned at TBX weekend London that people often make oil paintings when they want sketches. Start with a sketch and if it turns into an oil painting, so be it; if it doesn't, you probably got the job done faster because all you needed was a sketch.

I added an "Information Gardening" page to the wiki.  This is the basic process I used to create the example I posted earlier.

http://www.eastgate.com/wiki2/wiki.cgi?InformationGardening