Understanding how Outlines are displayed

Q & A - getting started with Tinderbox
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Happy to take this excellent framework to heart and re-examine my Note structure to more closely conform with the truer architecture as you’ve brought up here, and as is provided by Tinderbox. I will also peruse APTO (which seems kind of an amazing effort!).

Currently, my 2 (self-imposed) paradigm limitations are:

  • I am used to Outlining “upwards” if that makes sense. I may start with a long rambling text (or collections of text scraps all lumped in one Text body), and will then promote certain lines to sub-heading status, with the intention of moving/dropping chunks of text in the form of children of these newly-created sub-headings. I’m able to do this in those other-mentioned text/outlining environments (TaskPaper, Obsidian), but have not seen how mirror this process in Tbx without constantly flicking between Text and Preview modes. This workflow also allows me to fold away chunks as needed, and avoid much scrolling. I may be missing something workflow-wise, of course.

  • I have gotten accustomed to the visual affordance of “directory structure on the left pane PLUS foldable text on the right pane”. Combined with the above-described “upward outlining” process, this works very well in structuring my data into meaningful Notes, and promoting chunks into individual files as I work through bundles of text; and THEN importing them into Tinderbox where the $Attribute structuring takes place. Wondering how I can achieve that while editing and assembling text in Tinderbox, WITHOUT having to switch back and forth.

All the above might mean that I need to stick with my current system, which delays “point of importation” into Tbx. The issue is that my structural edits (all my Key Attributes, as well as the niche ones like $Xpos/$Ypos, etc etc) also get delayed, which is a great pity and also time/focus lost.

Thanks to your advice here (as well as that of @satikusala in the predecessor thread to this one), I’m getting the germ of a fresh idea wherein I might concurrently maintain 2 different types of outline structures within Tbx, and visually demarcating these structures by means of $Attributes like Color, Badge, etc. Not sure if I can pull it off, but going to trial something of the sort.

Would be happy for an off-line chat sometime at your convenience about this re-visioning process, @mwra!

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