If you haven’t used AHK before: 1) download, install and run AutoHotkey_L on your PC 2) create a new text document in Notepad (or your favourite text editor – I use NoteTab) 3) copy and paste the script below 4) save the text as e.g. I did try to use MS Word 2010 with its navigation pane for this (by using headings), however I found that Outline 4D as a single-pane outliner with inline note capability was better suited to the task of real-time reverse outlining, thanks to its multiple options to collapse different sections or view only headings or only text or a custom-mix of both. Hence it’s necessary to engage in reverse outlining to keep track of the emerging logical structure. New ideas may emerge from the draft as well. To put it differently, there is still abstraction and conceptual development taking place during the writing process and not everything in the mind map will make it into the draft. However, I find that the draft usually develops its own implicit logical structure which won’t be identical to the one in the mind map. However, the benefit of using Freeplane is that it gives an airier spacial view of the outline and it also has its own inline note capability, which CT’s Outliner doesn’t have.Īs for step 6, you could use any old word processor or editor to complete the writing. This workflow could of course be further simplified, as you could simply use CT’s Outline pane and its view pane as the dual-pane outliner in steps 4 and 5, altogether leaving out Freeplane. All the while I’m following and ticking off the branches of the mind map and copying across selected quotes and notes from the associated CT topics. as soon as I write a larger chunk of text, I add headings and sub-headings to it to crystalise the final implicit logical structure (outline) of the emerging draft. In my main monitor, I fire up Outline 4D (aka StoryView) and start writing my draft, while also using O4D’s outlining functionalities for almost real-time reverse outlining, i.e.Effectively Freeplane and CT have been integrated to form a funky “dual-pane” outliner, where the first pane is a mind map, and the second pane is the viewer for the note/quote attached to individual mind map items. my outline) and the corresponding quotes and notes in CT. When I’m finished with outlining and am ready to begin to write the draft, I tile Freeplane and CT vertically in my second (22in) monitor, so I can look at both the mind map (i.e.I can add further notes using Freeplane’s own Notes functionality and develop and restructure the outline, if I wish. Nodes with links remain clickable, which means that clicking on a particular Freeplane node with a link opens up the corresponding quote or note in CT. The CT outline has been thus transformed into a mind map. I export the CT outline as a Freemind (.mm) file and import it into Freeplane (a mind map application).Clicking on the outline item opens the corresponding quote. Whenever I create a new topic with a quote or note using the process described in point 2, I add a corresponding item to the outline and drag and drop this new topic on it, which creates a hyperlink between the outline item and the selected quote or note. Simultaneously to this process I create an outline for the intended draft using CT’s own Outline tool.When I come across an important or interesting quote or note, I select the text and type CTRL+ALT+/ to activate Manfred Kuehn‘s “copy to new topic with link” AutoHotkey script (see below), which copies the selected text, creates a new CT topic with it, and also inserts a link under the original text to this new topic. As I am reviewing the document, I identify key quotes and notes that I would like to consider as material for the draft.I import quotes and notes into ConnectedText (CT) as I’ve described elsewhere, using my latest reading notes template.However, recently I’ve come up with a simplified workflow that ‘only’ requires three pieces of software: ConnectedText, Freeplane, and Outline 4D (aka StoryView). I’ve experimented with various set-ups to tackle this process in the past that involved a lot of different pieces of software (see here and here). Haven’t used much (but still on my favourite list):Ī large part of the academic writing process has to do with taking notes, collecting quotes, analysing and evaluating them, coming up with your own interpretation, then developing an outline, and finally writing up the material into a draft. Used occasionally but indispensable for specialist tasks: Software I’ve been using for many years (old faithfuls) in italics.Software I started using in 2012 in bold.
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