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Can I structure a document like this in OOP? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I’m a big Omnigroup fan, I make regular use of OmniFocus and OmniWeb and have licenses for pro versions of Outliner and Graffle. Have traditionally used Notebook from Circus Ponies for my outlining needs but am giving OOP another try. But I'm struggling with the document setup metaphor and need some advice. Here’s what I'd like to create, can I do it in OOP?

I want one document that contains all my notes for a given topic I'm spending time training in. In this case, I'm trying to become more proficient at Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology, bought a membership at their Connect site and am methodically going through their educational materials. So, for example, I'd like my document to look like this:

file name: GTD Training Notes

then within that, I have sections, like:

Getting Started Series

Webinar Notes

Misc Podcasts

then within those sections is where I actually have notes, so within the Getting Started Series section I would have outline pages for...

“Introduction”
“Basic Productivity Tools”
“Calendar”

and so on.

Under the Webinar Notes section, I'd have outline pages for the individual webinars. You get the idea.

I know how to easily do this in Notebook, but am really struggling trying to set this up in OOP. Can I get there from here?

I appreciate any suggestions, thanks.
 
Something like this?
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yes, but I have no idea how to do that, and that seems kind of weird to me that it would be that hard. This is getting really frustrating.

Created a new file, and at the very top of it in the utility top window I titled it “GTD Training Notes”. I clicked the plus button to add a new something, no idea what that something is called. Named that Getting Started Series. Added two more for Webinars and Podcasts. Then tried to add pages as children to the Getting Started Series page. Can’t figure out how to do that. When I clicked on the Getting Started something on the left, on the right pane it says ‘topic’ so I figure maybe that’s where I do it. I title that Introduction and now I see “Introduction” whether I'm clicking on Getting Started or Webinars or Podcasts.

Maybe this is intuitively obvious to some, but for me this is getting really, really frustrating.
 
Derek....if you could point me to a tutorial that walks through this aspect of the functionality, or if you could give me a step by step list of how I create what you did, I'm be grateful.
 
Ah, ok so I'll try to clear up some confusion here. Notebook has a much more visual notion of "pages" then what OO has. In OO you would instead work with one long outline with the ability to limit your view to sections (what would be a page in Notebook).

To get a feel how OO works, do this:
-Create a new file
-In the outline view, create rows for "Getting Started Series", "Webinar Notes", and "Misc Podcats"
-In the section list of the utility drawer, you will now see those 3 listed there.
-Select the "Getting Started Series" row in the outline view and push return to create a new row underneath
-To make that new row a child of "Getting Started Series", just push tab and then type in "Introduction".
-Create another row for "Basic Productivity Tools"
-Now click on "Getting Started Series" in the utility drawer.
-In the outline view you should now only see the two child rows "Introduction" and "Basic Productivity Tools".

If you want to limit your view to just the "Introduction" section, you can do that be either select the row and Hoist command (View -> Hoist) or by expanding the list in the utility drawer. To expand the list, right click on "Getting Started Series" in the drawer and select "Show Subsections". Now you can click directly on "Introduction" or "Basic Productivity Tools".

"Topic" is the name of that column which the same column used through the whole file so if you rename it, it will be named that in every section.
 
Derek, this was helpful, thanks.

I wish that in the utility drawer it just automatically showed subsections and then had a control icon like an arrow in the outline view where I could expand or collapse individual sections without having to right click and select a menu item.

There are things I like about OOP better than Notebook, but this isn’t one of them. OOP seems to do well with integrated outlines but if one wants to store a lot of different material on different subjects and organize it by pages, this is where (at least for me) Notebook has a clear edge.

I appreciate your help, you’ve given me enough to be able to test to see if I'm going to be able to use OOP or if I need to stay with Notebook. Thanks again.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by rmathes View Post
Derek, this was helpful, thanks.

I wish that in the utility drawer it just automatically showed subsections and then had a control icon like an arrow in the outline view where I could expand or collapse individual sections without having to right click and select a menu item.

There are things I like about OOP better than Notebook, but this isn’t one of them. OOP seems to do well with integrated outlines but if one wants to store a lot of different material on different subjects and organize it by pages, this is where (at least for me) Notebook has a clear edge.

I appreciate your help, you’ve given me enough to be able to test to see if I'm going to be able to use OOP or if I need to stay with Notebook. Thanks again.
I have a massive action list in OOP with many topics and many levels. There is no convenient way that I could do this in NoteBook. A large part of the outline relates to my web site (a couple of thousand topics). The unwieldily part is filing new random ideas. I've found it handy to prefix row types with a special symbol character so I can recognize. All web pages begin with a star character. Book titles begin with the ace of spades character. Projects begin is a another special character.

I make extensive use of the utility drawer. Once get its expansion level set the way I want it rarely have to fiddle with expanding and collapsing the main outline. Never noticed it be an burden. I use Smart Scroll so I can position the mouse over the drawer and spin the scroll wheel to locate what I'm looking for. The coasting is a real benefit in working with long pages.

The file is a combination of idea filer and action list

I add "tags" for flagging a few special rows. The tags are purposely misspelled so I can find them. They are also sortable. rr-mouse-thkg = constant horizon scanning for trouble and opportunities; rr0 = today; vv1essential = very high on a value pyramid; vv0core is top of the pyramid. I can search for vv or rr and find all of them.

If OmniOutliner had the filtering ability of TaskPaper and the moving ability of Scrivener it would be getting closer to what I really need.

For me NoteBook shines at its clipping ability. I use it to take outline summary notes from articles and books. The date and time stamps in OmniOutliner are a pain and unusable for this kind of work. There are some work arounds for this but they rarely fit my situations.

My two cents

Bob
 
Bob, I can totally see that. And I think some of that depends on the content of the outline, and some on how the person using it wants to see their data.

For me, using this example, I don’t want all my GTD Training Notes in one massive outline where I use the Utility pane to focus in on what I want. That just feels awkward to me. I really do like (for at least THIS kind of material) the notebook metaphor. I have one notebook for the topic, then discrete sections or tabs for each basic type of material, then different pages within each section. Helps me organize the contents and quickly find what I need.
 
Not seamless, but you could have a different document for each section, plus a master document as the table of contents with links to the other documents. This also sidesteps the limitation of having the same column structure for the entire document.
 
whpalmer4........that’s an unacceptable solution for me. Might work for others, though. Defeats the concept/purpose of having everything related to that topic in one ‘notebook’ or one digital place.
 
 


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