Corkboards for Writemonkey, just a teaser

[josip]

[Kensai]

Okay, that looks like a ridiculous amount of fun.

And I've IDed your John Doe ;-p

Kensai

[josip]

Hehe, I think he did it.

I am just wondering ... should individual boards be somehow attached to individual files/projects?

i.

[Kensai]

He must have done something or all those people wouldn't have been
chasing him.

Would probably be most useful if they could be attached/changed in a
way similar to how the files themselves are tagged. Perhaps just
something like this at the head of a file:

//`PoV notes
//xx% color coded stars
#chapter/scene heading

and have that heading be the hook you use to connect boards to the
file. This way, you could easily have several boards to a file, but
not vice versa. You could simplify down and simply use anything that
shows as a tag in a file head as a tag you can put on a board. That
way you can do things like put a character bio or pic on a board and
label it with the character's name so it will be attached to ever file
where that character appears (assuming you've tagged your files
appropriately). This will cause more complication, though, as you'll
need a mechanism for picking which file you want to go to when you
click on a board that links to more than one file. Probably just
using the Files tab on Jumps, I'm sure, but would be cool to have it
skip that step if you click on a board that only links to one file.

[Brabo]

*feels teased*

=)

On Saturday, March 23, 2013 11:28:35 AM UTC-3, josip wrote:

[StefanG]

Whoa, now the monkey is really taking off like one of those space monkeys in the first rocket launches.

This will probably lead to science fiction-like user wishes for extraterrestrial usage scenarios, but hey, I am all for it. It will certainly keep the discussion alive.
I like Kensai's suggestion of being able to tie boards to files.

[samokhov]

Yay Christmas!

But if it comes to that, maybe you'll have to take more control over the Jumps window. Maybe dump the Windows GUI and make it part of that same fullscreen layout. Just dreamin' :)

Anyway, man, do I welcome a corkboard that doesn't try to look like physical corkboard (*cough* Scrivener *cough*). No cork texture, no pins, no lined cards. Just your notes.

суббота, 23 марта 2013 г., 18:28:35 UTC+4 пользователь josip написал:

[josip]

Playing with colors. Fun part.

[Kensai]

I want to play, too ;-p

[josip]

He he, I should discontinue this plugin on the spot as it is probably the greatest procrastination tool ever made. I mean really, how not fun can it be to move pretty colorful boxes around the screen, applying some stickers on them, fun, fun, fun :) Maybe selling this to LEGO is a better way to go.

i.

[josip]

Should boards with solid backgrounds be allowed?  Smth like this ...

On Monday, March 25, 2013 9:52:41 PM UTC+1, Kensai wrote:

[Kensai]

I don't see why not, though the slightly transparent ones will likely
be more useful during bouts of creativity using these. Maybe that
would be a good indicator that you've locked something down?

And yeah, maybe LEGO. Or maybe Moleskine needs a Moleskine licensed
editor ;-p They've got notebooks meant for use with one brand of
electronic pen. They've got the bright colored covers, the multitude
of formats. They're losing customers to certain trends to go all
digital or at least to convert all handwritten stuff to digital at
some part of the process. I could totally see them buying you out for
some obscene amount once pictures of this in action get into the
wild ;-p

Anyhow, while we're blue skying, and assuming that you will be
snubbing any advances from Moleskine and their ilk because, you know,
Writemonkey's just gotta be free, we probably should try to nail this
down while you're just mocking things up. What's your thinking as to
whether or not to allow solid cards? I would have imagined solid to
be the default, mainly because everything else in the world that kinda
sorta does this stuff is all solid. However, I think you're instincts
toward transparency are spot on. I know I took the transparency out
of your Rounded Monkey plugin, initially, but after working with it
for a few hours, I realized that you had it right. The transparency
not only helped relieve some of the closed in feeling I was getting
from it and helped me keep track of what I was doing with my other
applications while WM was windowed, but had a noticeable positive
effect on eyestrain for me. So, if you're thinking of just going one
way or another without allowing them to be individually set (I
understand you still got to try to find some minimalism here, even
though you've just admitted how not minimal this might be if let
loose), transparent is likely the way to go, especially since the
whole app can be made transparent (I actually use an AHK script
somebody compiled to get that exact functionality out of anything I
feel the urge to; I like atmosphere my desktop slide show brings to
most of my work; Akitu Taira rocks, just sayin').

Okay, I'd been thinking about linking the cards and the files.
Figured it didn't really matter at this stage of the game, but now
that I've started writing another book on the forum, guess I'll just
go ahead and get back to that. After my initial fun, but overwrought
thoughts about it, it really seems simple now. Everything in WM needs
to be tagged. We //tag the beginnings of our files. There needs to
be corresponding tags in our cards (though likely they need to not be
displayed with the card contents so as not to obscure anything, make
it less pretty or make the cards unnecessarily large if the user
doesn't want that). When you open a file, you get the cards stored in
that folder that have any matching tags. If you click on a card, it
should bring up Jumps>Files basically pre-searched to the terms in an
OR fashion. Now I'm imagining that you'll need to keep data about
cards, such as position and whatnot, as part of the file (maybe
another END OF FILE type section after the Repository), so in that
section you should also be able to indicate included cards that don't
have matching tags or excluded cards that do. We'd also need a tag
you could use that would A) allow you to draw all cards into a single
file or B) cause a card to be included into any file that is opened.
Other than that, I think we'll just need more brains to figure out if
there are any significant use cases where this would fail.

Alright, done for now ;-p

Kensai

[josip]

I was just kidding about LEGO, but the truth is that plugins will be available only to donors and corkboards can be a real eye catcher and can help to put some money into my pocket. I admit this is one of the main reasons I decided to go with it. On the other hand, these empty containers, as it seems, can be quite useful as there are countless ways one can utilize them. The functionality of individual cards/boards is almost done, what remains is the way to tie them to the working process. And this is the most important part.

Right now there is a global user setting for opacity of a card not in focus, i.e. the focused card is always 100% opaque. One will be able to have all cards opaque, but I like translucent ones more.

I have been thinking about storing boards into repository section of the file, but I am not sure this is the right way to go. Wm already have repository for a file scope stuff. I am thinking the boards should be global, accessible from anywhere. That doesn't mean boards can't be attached to files & projects using header tags. //somename.board would automaticaly open the board when the file is opened.

On the other hand it would be nice to have a self contained wm files with text and board(s). Heck, I don't have an answer yet.

I don't think I'll allow individual cards to be part of different boards as  that would bring many prbls. with it - the most obvious one - the cards would need to be repositioned all the time and it would be hard to tile them on the screen without overlapping and keeping their sizes.

i.

[josip]

Tutorial ...

[Kensai]

That's not teaser-y at all, is it? ;-p Guess there's no helping that
just yet, eh?

Anyhow, the way its looking right now is that if you're wanting to use
this new functionality for brainstorming or research or outlining or
whatever, a function that might come in very handy would be to have WM
create a new file, with the card you have selected as either A) a card
in the new file or B) as text in the new file to allow for quick set
up of new working files for scenes/chapters/whatever.

Am I right in thinking that you've decided to gather the cards into
"collections" that are going to be file independent so you can build
and save card layouts as well as close them and open others in the
same file, and then being able to open any set of card layouts into
any open file? That's actually a pretty slick mechanism. I can see
all sorts of uses for that.

Very slick. WM is certainly going other with this, but its not
functionality that you would ever need to be concerned if you're not
interested. Should be very interesting in how this effects, well,
everything ;-p

Kensai

[Google]

Wonderful! Suggest considering a color stripe, top, bottom, edge to code board. Maybe also a board title/name?

Not sure where you are heading with this, but might be useful (?) if each side could be independent (2 boards visible - I have a large monitor)...


On 4/6/2013 8:07 PM, josip wrote:

Tutorial ...

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[josip]

It is teasery :) There will be a NB in a day or two. Things are simple and straightforward right now:

- Boards are kept in .board files.

- One can keep all board files in one dir or store them in project folders.

- Board file can be opened via Jumps window or via "Open with Writemonkey" in file explorer or by dragging the file into wm main window.

- Each file stores one board collection.

- Each collection can have multiple boards. For now navigating boards inside collection can be done by Next, Previous commands.

- On startup, wm will automatically load last used collection and show last used board. 

- Board collections are saved automatically - no need to save them manually at any time.

- New card command (mouse or keyboard) will create a new card on the current board.

- Copy/paste card or board mechanism will be implemented in the future.

- You are right, boards are global, file independent; switching files won't have any effect on currently opened board.

[josip]

Yes, create new file from card is a very good idea.I haven't grasp the usability of that till now. A repository of templates of a kind if I understand you right.

i.

On Sunday, April 7, 2013 6:48:56 AM UTC+2, Kensai wrote:

[Kensai]

Actually, that's not what I meant. You just came up with a new way to
use the things ;-p

What I was thinking about was if you had a card that you'd been doing
research or dev work in and realized that you needed a file that
builds/expands from the info on that card, you could just right click,
have it make you a new file with that text in it, then just start
editing/composing. Basically a quick fire for getting certain scenes/
chapters from development into composition.

What you suggest would be useful for anything you use frequently,
stuff with boilerplate materials, or, probably most importantly to the
kinds of writers using WM, forms that ask the questions you need to
keep in mind for things like character building, world building, note
taking, interviewing, or any other sorts of research and development
work that you might find a good checklist or set of reminders helpful
for. And with them being cards on a board you could easily stay in WM
as you move through your day as a student, novelist, blogger,
journalist, etc., and any time you come up with refinements to your
processes, you just make the changes once to your cards so they'll
stick with you as you do the tasks moving forward. Not going to be
useful to me, just thinking off hand, but you never know. However, I
know lots of writers who like to sketches for characters, places,
items, for every damned thing in their stories (alot of the sort who
are more favorable to Scrivener than WM right now, I hate to say) that
this would be ridiculously useful for.

Would be very useful for folk who would prefer to use WM over
Scrivener, who see the advantages of plain text, of tagging and markup
and search and all the goodies we use every day, but who are afraid
its too overwhelming to use right off. These template cards could be
populated with the various //tags that will make them instantly useful
for generating files that will come back to them in a search or
delineate themselves in Jumps immediately. For example, you build a
Character Sketch card/template that already has the //repo `cha string
in it so it will show up beneath your draft files, along side all your
other R&D stuff and and will pop up immediately, along with all your
other character sketches with a quick `cha in the search bar. Stuff
like that. Then we could probably get together and build a decent
board file that includes a good set of basics for a given task, such
as fiction writing, note taking, researching, etc. that could be
either slipped into the package as templates or made available for
down load on the forum or site proper. Just having one of those in
your project folder would change WM from the fairly generalized app we
normally see to something a bit more focused on a narrower task which
might help ease more people into working with it.

Anyway, I'm playing with it a bit right now. It'll probably be a bit
before I have a coherent set of thoughts on working software here
(real life is being fairly intrusive today), but I will have them at
some point. Right now, though, its already more functional than a ton
of other software I've already slogged through, and that's just the
new stuff, not counting the core Writemonkey functionality. Oh, and
its really freaking cool, too ;-p

Kensai

[josip]

I definitely will do smth with // tags. In cards and in main text header. A lot of potential for more serious usage scenarios. And I am still playing with the thought to optionally allow storing boards locally in repository section of the file. Useful stuff I think. Among more exotic ones: There is a web service called Zemanta that do semantic data processing from huge pile of sources. Among other things they offer a service that provide some kind of live info stream based on the text already written. You can fine tune what you want, pictures, info snippets, links, and how you want it and when. I can imagine a little smarter board card, a plugin inside plugin :), that scans your text quietly in the background, maybe only last paragraph / sentence??, then do its semantic magic (zemanta servers) and provide useful info snippets. Maybe there is a way to do this subtle enough to be unobtrusive and actually useful. The AI (though not yet Skynet level :) works quite well, the data you get is usually relevant. But it would be just another card on the board. There shall be a visual cards, that should provide you with pictures = visual stimuli, I don't know if sounds can be arranged (that would be wonderful), but there must be a card with live text based data snippets of course. So one can set the board for times when the primary brains are less than capable. Or for some kind of hypnotic semi shamanic immersion into the subject. I don't know, maybe works. Heehe, better stop here.

i.

[Kensai]

Oh dear lord, you're trying to teach the monkey to write my next
novel ...

... or suggest in a subtle, interactive way what it might be about ;-p

I love your use of the word shamanic in this discussion. First
possibly viable expression of a "techno shaman" I've come across, and
that makes me happy.

Of course, I've heard of Zemanta, but I've never played with it, and
know more about it now that I've read your post above, so I we can
just consider me a newbie regarding it. I have a high level
understanding of what might be going on there, but in a practical
sense I have no clue what would really show up on screen using it.
Definitely seems that this takes WM into scarcely tracked "other"
territory, well beyond the new boards. This is stuff I could see alot
of the big tech and productivity blogs picking up on, especially if
there might be a way of generating a credible and particularly
interesting demo for it (like vidcapping yourself using it and editing
up some particularly compelling bits of response from the system).
Its a big giant NEW hook. "Sure, we know Scrivener? Yeah, we've got
a corkboard. And project management. But we're prettier, more
friendly, more flexible, and on a good day, we can actively help you
think!" ;-p

I am intrigued.

And amused by your plugin within a plugin project (and yes, I am
channeling A Bug's Life).

Kensai