Graphic display of outlines in Scapple etc?

Bike Outliner
1

is there a character (hidden) that functions as node delimiter?
and is that the same character when exported as OPML or even as txt…?

thanks

2

I’m not sure that your question is easy to interpret in terms of Bike HTML or OPML, both of which consist of nested XML tags. An XML serialisation of a nested structure can be pretty-printed for legibility, but as long as the tags are properly nested, they can all be on a single line without creating a problem.

Plain text is closer to having the delimited record structure which you seem to be wondering about, and the delimiter, on Unix-based systems generally, will tend to be linefeed ( \n )

It’s very possible, however, that I haven’t understood your question.

Is there a particular problem that you would like to solve ?

3

I am trying to export from Bike (via OPML or txt) to Scapple (freeform by Scrivener); Scapple accepts only txt files (or openoffice)… the problem is that that way Scapple imports line by line where I want import by bigger units (node by node, beg your pardon…).
importing the following as a whole and not separated line by line

  • Vienna
    • Bachmann
      • Testi
        • Celan-Bachmann
        • altri

perhaps Pandoc can help?

4

The problem there is that the Scapple engine has no model of parent-child relationships – only of the physical positions on the screen of each text snippet.

As far as it is concerned, all lists are flat and unindented, and if the list elements are not in semantically interesting positions, then you have to drag them to positions which make more sense to you.

(but it still doesn’t contain a model of any cluster larger than a single line, and the Scapple export will still give you only flat lists, without any nesting of children under parents)

5

you mean “get rid” of Scapple?

6

Scapple is not really built for nesting / outlining.

OmniGraffle is more flexible, and things like iThoughtsX and MindNode understand what an outline is.

7

it is always the same problem: lack of structure vs too much structure!
Scapple make one to feel “free” :innocent:

8

In OmniGraffle you can switch Automatic Layout on or off, and move things manually.

That what I really mean by most flexible. The downside is that it’s not so cheap, and not very lightweight.

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