Note outline

From Lumeniki

A note outline is a lumenati invention designed to be the easiest way to create an infinitely organizable outline for notes.

[edit] Attributes of note outlines

Note outlines have the following attributes:

• The top headings of the outline are indicated with a hyphen/minus symbol (-) at the beginning of the line. This lets the reader know that any line that is not indented, is not a top level heading unless it begins with the minus symbol.
• Subheadings are made with one space for each level of the subheading, much like any outline.
• Text editors should be set to replace each tab with a space and indent only one space per tab. This can be done in Windows with Notepad++ or Metapad. In Linux it can be done with Kate. These text editors are also able to tab-in (select and press tab) or tab-out (shift tab) entire sections at a time. They allow you to drag and drop selections. These features enable you to quickly move sections and reorder headings anywhere you choose.

• Collapsing is possible with JEdit, if sections become too large (see "Collapsing note outlines" below). Otherwise you have to move things to new documents so sections are not too large .

• Depends on word wrap to keep lines from running out to the right of the visible window.
• Only basic (ASCII?) characters. No "smart quotes", special formatting, etc.
• No numbering or lettering is used for the outline headings because this requires too much effort and they would have to be redone if any part of the outline is reordered, unless perhaps software is found that creates these numbers auto-magically, but the other purpose is so that the outline is readable on the most basic devices, such as a tiny, "cheap" MP4 player.

[edit] Examples of note outlines

These are some examples of note outlines that Lumenos posted in this wiki, however Lumenos doesn't always use the minus "-" for top-level headings; ey often omits them if not many of the lines are long enough to wrap to the next line:

• Lumenos zoonosis notes
• Lumenos minilivestock pathogen notes

[edit] Software considerations

[edit] MediaWiki markup

[edit] Displaying note outlines in MediaWiki

You may notice if you post a note outline in MediaWiki, it is not displayed properly. You may also notice from the given examples, the "poem" tag can be used to make it display properly.

[edit] DavidCary's comments (rearranged by Lumenos)

There are dozens of allegedly "simple" formats to mark up text so that (1) the text is relatively human-readable on a low-end plain text reader, and (2) the text can be interpreted as having headings, sub-headings, etc. Describing any of these formats in a wiki (rather than in a plain text file) is a little tricky.

How do I make MediaWiki display my text just like it does in the edit box or in a text file? Three ways:

• slap a "<poem>" tag at the beginning, a "</poem>" tag at the end.
• slap a "<pre>" tag at the beginning, a "</pre>" tag at the end. MediaWiki makes a big dotted line box around all the preformatted text.
• slap "<source lang="text">" tag at the beginning, a "</source>" tag at the end.

Perhaps we can show this in MediaWiki like this:

- top-level heading

some text

.... subheading

........ sub-subheading

some text . .

........ sub-subheading

.... subheading

some text

- top-level heading
some text
    subheading
        sub-subheading
some text
.
.
        sub-subheading
    subheading
some text

- top-level heading
some text
    subheading
        sub-subheading
some text
.
.
        sub-subheading
    subheading
some text

[edit] Further reading

• Wikipedia: reStructuredText
• Wikipedia: Markdown
• | Markdown wiki

[edit] Lumenos replies

Much thanks to DavidCary for posting an example of using the "poem" tag.

I would like to put the box around the note outline but I need it to wrap lines. (Sorry, I couldn't even understand much of my previous comments.) The main problem is solved, but if you like answering this stuff please share. Lumenos 07:13, June 4, 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Collapsing note outlines

For long note outlines it can be useful to hide text, for example, to make only the first level headings visible, or make all the first and second level headings visible. JEdit (jEdit) is a Java text editor that can do this. It makes the outline navigational like the folder tree you see, if you right-click a folder and click "Explore", in Windows. You can expand or collapse any level with the click of the mouse.

[edit] Other outlines and note storage techniques and locations

Lumenos also uses various wikis running MediaWiki, to make "outlines" (ie the table of contents) for publicly viewable notes. Other public notes are stored in internet forums.