zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[Adam Porter <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 03:09, Jaap Karssenberg
<jaap.karssenberg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 6:35 AM, Adam Porter <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> ... 8< ...
>>  If
>> I put all the quotes on one page, then searching for a tag and clicking a
>> result would show the entire page of quotes instead of just the ones the tag
>> applied to.
>
>> Another use case is a daily log with tags for relevant contexts or topics.
>>  e.g. I could apply tags like, "thesis, school, funny, family, car,
>> computer," etc, and later look up all log entries that mention my car or my
>> family or are funny.  Zim handles this fairly well now, but it could still
>> be better, because loading a tag-search result won't zero in on the part of
>> the note the tag applies to.
>
> How about extending the search view to show the paragraph where the
> match was found ? Kind of like how Google shows a snippet for each
> result ?

That sounds quite useful, especially if clicking the result jumped to
that paragraph or line in the page.  If the search dialog was a pane
or tab that didn't cover up the main window, it'd be great for quickly
looking through search results to find the one you're looking for.

>> An alternative way of organizing the same log would be to store individual
>> paragraphs separately, with their own tags, in a "logbook" tree.  Then to
>> see all the entries for a day, Zim would display all entries from that tree
>> which were created or modified on a particular day.  The quicknote dialog
>> could be used to add a new log entry, with tags, automatically using the
>> right date (which could also be adjusted manually).  Then, if I wanted to
>> search through my logbook for entries that mention computer issues, I could
>> search for the "computer" tag in my logbook and see a list of only
>> computer-related entries--rather than an entire day's content,
>> computer-related or not, for each day in which something computer-related
>> was written about.
>>
>> A UI like Evernote's or the app I linked earlier would make this possible.
>>  Basically, here's how I envision it: the right-pane could display either a
>> single page, as it does now, or it could display all the subpages in a tree
>> (or a search result), one after the other, like Evernote or the app I linked
>> does.  Perhaps the multi-page display could be the default when clicking on
>> a tree entry that has children, and each page could have a button to click
>> which would, in effect, maximize that note in the right pane; it'd also be
>> handy to be able to open notes in separate windows (which Zim can do now,
>> but as read-only notes).  If a tree entry without children was clicked, that
>> page could be displayed in the full-pane view.
>
> I think I could make such a view AND keep it scalable if we can
> display each page on the same size. (That way you can size the widget
> properly without actually loading the content.)  I'm triggered by the
> statement "and each page could have a button to click which would, in
> effect, maximize that note in the right pane". Now I'm thinking about
> an listing where you see ~ 1 paragraph per page and than on the bottom
> there is the "read more" or "extend" item. Or just an inline scrollbar
> - although that might look ugly.
>
> This would make it easier to mix short and long notes. Short notes
> would display entirely in this view. Long notes would not break the
> flow (think about scrolling 5 short notes, and then scrolling through
> one long note that takes the same space as the 5 short notes - woudl
> reduce the usefulness of the view). Still you would see the head of
> the long note and have an option to "dive in".
>
> Would this make sense ?

I think you're envisioning the same thing I've been thinking of!  :)

But it also just now hit me what I've been seeing in my mind's eye:
TiddlyWikis!  I'm sure you've seen them before, but for anyone that
hasn't...  http://tiddlywiki.org/

The UI on that site is quite powerful.  I could imagine a timeline
list like that being quite handy in Zim too!

Here's one that is a bit older but still nice:  http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/

Using TiddlyWikis you can see the idea in action of displaying both
long and short notes in one scrolling view.  I can see some advantages
to your idea of using uniform sizes, and zooming longer notes
individually.  I can also imagine it being useful to have entire notes
visible in the list, even if some were a bit longer.  Maybe there
could be a toggle?

I'm excited to see where you may go with this.  I wish I had the
expertise to help you, but right now I don't.  :)  I'll be happy to
help test anything you might come up with and provide feedback and
encouragement.

Thanks for considering these ideas!

Adam