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Making an outline from unstructured text??? Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Given a text document with a loosely implied hierarchical structure, what is the most efficient way to turn it into a formal outline in OmniOutliner?

For a simple example, here is some text:
-------
Main Title
Some explanatory introductory comments.
Head 1
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Head 2
Yada yada yada yada. Yada yada yada yada. Yada yada yada yada yada yada. Yada yada yada yada yada yada. Yada yada yada yada yada yada. Yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada.
-------
What I want to do is
1. select "Main Title"
2. Click a command that makes "Main Title" a new line in the outline with the rest of text in the body.
3. Then select "Head 1"
2. Click a command that makes "Head 1" a new line in the outline with the rest of the text in its body.
5. Finally select "Head 2"
6. Click a command that that makes "Head 2" a new line in the outline with the rest of the text in its body.
Done. A 3 line outline created in six simple steps.

But as far as I can tell what I have to do is this:
1. Copy the text "Main Title"
2. Create a new line
3. Paste "Main Title" into the new line
4. Copy the body text: "Some explanatory introductory comments."
5. Open the body for the new line.
6. Paste in the text.
7. Copy the text "Head 1"
8. Create a new line
9. Paste "Head 1" into the new line
10. Copy the body: "... blah blah blah ..."
11. Open the body for the new line.
12. Paste in the text.
13. Copy the text "Head 2"
14. Create a new line
15. Paste "Head 2" into the new line
16. Copy the body: "... yada yada yada ..."
17. Open the body for the new line.
18. Paste in the text.
Done. The same 3 line outline but it took 18 steps!

What am I missing?
I cannot believe that OmniOutliner is so inefficient that requires me to do three times as much work as I need to do!!!
(Clearly, my example above is just a simple 3 line outline. The real text file I want to convert has dozens of lines each with accompanying body text.)
 
hitting control return will split the text at the cursor with the text preceding the cursor remaining in its own row, and the following text in a new row.

easy peasy. btw you can change this in the keyboard preferences.

it's not immediately obvious - there really should be a 'split' command in the edit, or 're-organise' menu ... IMHO

hope this helps
 
Not sure how close this script will get you but I use it to do much the same thing. The first line is the primary topic and then all other lines are sub topics. I use this when I want to flesh out a subject on the fly. You would have to enhance it to deal with multi-headings.

tell front document of application "OmniOutliner Professional"
set passcount to 1
repeat with currentLine in every paragraph of (the clipboard as string)
--- on first pass make the first line the project starter
if passcount = 1 then
set passcount to 2
set theProject to currentLine
display dialog "About to add project..." buttons {"Cancel", "Add"} default button 2 default answer theProject with title "Project from Clipboard"
if button returned of result is "Add" then
set parentRow to make new row at beginning of rows of (first child whose topic is "Inbox") with properties {topic:theProject}

else
exit repeat
end if
else
make new row at end of parentRow with properties {topic:currentLine}

end if
end repeat
end tell
 
 


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