A friend is starting to use the outliner to narrate his work. He writes about an "impenetrable wall of text." I wrote up some tips, and of course felt they should be public. #
Re the impenetrable wall of text -- try collapsing things, where the detail isn't of immediate concern, so you can see the structure. It would help me too as a reader, to see the old stuff collapsed, and be able to expand it as I need to. #
Also hoist and dehoist are there to help manage complexity. You can hoist a section, by placing the cursor on a head with subs, and click on the pushpin icon in the left margin. It'll be the one that's enabled. Then when you want to return, click the other one. It's like a stack (it actually is a stack, of course).#
Imagine a bookshelf of notebooks. You don't have every notebook open to all pages at the same time. It doesn't even make sense. You'd go crazy trying to find something. Same idea here. You've got tools to manage clutter, they take time to learn to use. #
Here's what my blog outline looks like as I'm writing today's notes. #
Last update: Sunday October 25, 2020; 1:45 PM EDT.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)
