Welcome to IDEALINER! IDEALINER is a text outliner for the Macintosh. IDEALINER should prove useful to anyone doing library research, or assembling the fruits of such research into a document, such as a term paper or a legal brief.
B. Starting an outline
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Since you've got this far, you have already seen some of IDEALINER's features. If you opened IDEALINER by double-clicking this file, you first saw the copyright screen, and next this file. If you opened IDEALINER by double-clicking the application icon, the copyright screen was followed by an open file dialog. From this dialog, you can open an existing outline from disk, or start a new one by clicking the “New” button. Eventually you must have selected the “Open Textfile” command from the File menu. The principle purpose of IDEALINER is the construction of structured outlines, so let's now move to that.
B(1). Open a new outline
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Select “New Outline” from the “File” menu. An OUTLINE WINDOW will open on the left side of the screen. It contains a black circle, called a TOPIC ICON, and a blinking insertion point. Before we get to the contents, let's say a few words about the window itself.
B(2). The outline window
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The outline window has a vertical scroll bar (inactive right now), and a grow box in the lower right corner. Its title is “Untitled”. You can resize the window by dragging any of the “grow brackets”, those little picture-mount things in each corner. In fact, ALL IDEALINER windows have grow brackets, and can be re-sized from any corner.
B(3). The window contents
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OK, back to the contents. The outline window contains one TOPIC HEADER; that's what the insertion point is. If you type something in, it will appear there on the first line. You can backspace but the tab, enter and return keys have special meanings, as we will see.
B(4). Making a new Topic
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Right now, in fact: after typing in some text, press “enter” or “return”. Three things happen: the Topic icon goes gray, a new Topic icon appears on the next line, and the insertion point moves down. You have created a new Topic!
B(5). The active header
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Note the differences between the two Topic icons: the first one is now gray, and the second is black. A black Topic icon indicates the ACTIVE HEADER, the one currently open for editing. If you click on the first header, it will become activated. (Click to the right of the icon; clicking the icon will be discussed further on.) Then click again on the second line to activate the second header. (Mac Plus users can move from one header to another with the arrow keys.) Now type something in there; then hit “return” to make a new header, and type something in there.
B(6). Subordinate Topics
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Now press the tab key. The new header shifts to the right! Press control-tab, and it moves back. (Mac Plus users can use the right and left arrow keys.) Tab again to get it back to the right. The third header is now indented from the second; it is SUBORDINATE to the second header. Click on the second header, and tab it over. The third header moves with it! In general, when you tab a header over, all its subordinates are also tabbed over. Press control-tab, and both move back.
B(7). Special tabbing
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From this position, how can you move the second header right WITHOUT bringing the third header with it? Press option-tab. Now BOTH the second and third headers are subordinate to the first.
B(8). Tabbing limits
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Now tab again. The beep tells you that you cannot indent any further — no more than one tab past the immediately preceeding header.
B(9). Trees
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A TREE is a part of an outline consisting of a Topic and all of its subordinate Topics, and all of THEIR subtopics, and so on. Right now, the entire outline is one tree. Press return to make a new header, type something in, and move it back with control-tab. There are now two trees in the outline.
B(10). Where new Topics go
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Make a new header by pressing return with the third header (the newest one) active. The new Topic is subordinate to the previous one! Every other time we made a new header, it was created with the same indentation as the previous header. The difference here is that the old header had subordinates, so the new header came in as a subordinate. When the active header has no subordinates, a new header comes in with the same indentation.
B(11). Editing Topic headers
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You can use the regular editing commands within individual Topic headers - cut, copy, paste, clear. You can thus transfer text between headers. But you cannot make selections than span headers; selections must be entirely contained within a single header.
B(12). The undo command
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Any work you do on the active header can be undone, provided you select ‘Undo‘ before you make another header active. ‘Undo’ is itself undoable.
B(13). Hiding Topics
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Now move up to the third header (which should be the top of a tree). From the “Outline” menu, choose the “Hide Subordinates” item. The subordinates are now hidden within the active header, and the Topic icon has become square to indicate this change.
B(14). Expanding trees
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Now select “Expand Subordinates” from the “Outline” menu. The hidden Topics reappear, and the icon becomes a circle once again.
B(15). Clicking the button
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Another way to hide/expand subordinates is by clicking the Topic icon. If there are any hidden subordinates, they will be expanded; if not, any subordinate Topics will be hidden. (If there are no subordinates, nothing happens except a chiding beep.) Don't click too fast, since double-click means something else (see below).
B(16). Tree editing
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Let's move some stuff around. Select “Copy Tree” from the Edit menu. Now move up to the second line, and select “Paste Tree” from the Edit menu. The first command copied the second tree, and the second command pasted it into the outline. The “Cut Tree” and “Clear Tree” similarly work as analogs of the standard edit commands. (The control-codes shown are control-option-X, control-option-C, control-option-V.) Select “Clear Tree”. That warning is for real — Tree operations cannot be undone.
C. Adding text to the skeleton
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So far, all we've created is the skeleton of an outline — just the headers. Now we'll see how to add text to the bones.
C(1). Opening a Topic window
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Select “Open Topic” from the Outline menu. A new window opens; its title is the same as the active header, and it has a insertion point in it. This is the TOPIC WINDOW for the Topic. You can have as many as six Topic windows open at once, for Topic from anywhere in the outline. In a Topic window, you have the full range of text editing options: type, backspace, cut, copy, paste. Type something in, then click on the outline window. The icon is now solid - this shows that there is text in the Topic window.
C(2). Closing Topic windows
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Move to another header, and select “Open Topic” again. Go back to the outline window, and repeat the process. The window has a close box; type something in and click the close box to close the window. There are still two Topic windows - select “Close Topics” from the “Outline” menu. They both close. This command will close ALL open Topic windows.
C(3). Using the Topic icon
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Double-clicking the Topic icon will open the Topic window or, if it is already open, make it the front window.
C(4). Textstores
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Textstores are application clipboards. They function like the usual edit clipboard except (1) you can have as many of them as you need; and (2) you can edit them directly. When you use a Textstore, you have to choose which one to use, so they are a bit slower than the clipboard. Textstores cannot be used from the outline window. The Textstores are saved in the “Ideastore” file when you quit IDEALINER, and reloaded when you return.
C(5). Using Textstores
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Open a Topic window, and type something into it. Now select some of this text, and then “Copy to Textstore” from the “Store” menu. You will be asked to name the Textstore; it is then created, and the text copied to it. To see it, choose “Show Textstore”, and select the Textstore you created. It appears in the lower right corner of the screen. Note the insertion point; you can edit this text, type, cut, copy, paste. Make some changes, click the Topic window, and paste back with “Paste from Textstore” from the Store menu.
D. Saving and printing
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IDEALINER wouldn't be of much practical use if you couldn't save your work, and it is often convenient to print it as well. The save and print commands have a lot of options, to let you save or print a document in the manner most useful for you.
D(1). The save commands
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There are two save commands on the “File” menu: “Save” and “Save as”. The first simply saves your document under its own name, as an outline. The second allows you to decide just how much to save, and in what fashion. You can save your outline as a plain text file, or as a Macwrite file, in addition to saving it as an IDEALINER outline file. Note: if your document is new (never before saved), then “Save” defaults to “Save as”.
D(2). The Preview command
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The “Preview Outline” command on the File menu launches a WYSIWYG preview mode. You can view any page of your outline, print any page individually or the whole thing, and save any page as a Macpaint or Macdraw file.
D(3). Scope
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Both the save and the preview dialogs have a row of radio buttons that let you restrict the save or the printout to the ‘visible’ outline (excluding hidden Topics), or to the tree starting with the active header. Most of the remaining options are self-explanatory.
E. Afterword
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I hope that you like IDEALINER, find it easy to use, and useful as well. If you do, pass it on to your friends — non-commercial distribution is both authorized and encouraged!
Oh, and should you find any <<<bugs>>>, please report them! The address is:
Clifford Story
Attic Software
P.O. Box 59229
Schaumburg, Illinois 60159
Be sure to tell me what System and Finder version you are using, what kind of Mac, and how to re-create the problem. I promise to fix any bug I can re-create.
