Welcome to IDEALINER! IDEALINER is a text outliner for the Macintosh. It follows the Macintosh User Interface guidelines for the most part (the only intentional deviation is the open file dialog at startup). 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 SECTION 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 the grow box but it will only grow to the right. You cannot make any smaller than it already is, and you cannot change the height. Also, it is fixed on the left side of the screen; you cannot drag it anywhere.
B(3). The window contents
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OK, back to the contents. The outline window contains one SECTION 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 section
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Right now, in fact: after typing in some text, press “enter” or “return”. Three things happen: the section icon goes gray, a new section icon appears on the next line, and the insertion point moves down. You have created a new section header.
B(5). The active header
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Note the difference between the two section icons: the first one is now gray, and the second is black. A black section 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 sections
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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 section and all of its subordinate sections, and all of THEIR subsections, 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 sections go
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Make a new header by pressing return with the third header (the newest one) active. The new section 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 section headers
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You can use the regular editing commands within individual section 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 sections
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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 Subsections” item. The subsections are now hidden within the active header, and the section icon has become square to indicate this change.
B(14). Expanding trees
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Now select “Expand Subsections” from the “Outline” menu. The hidden sections reappear, and the icon becomes a circle once again.
B(15). Clicking the button
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Another way to hide/expand subsections is by clicking the section icon. If there are any hidden subsections, they will be expanded; if not, the subordinate sections will be hidden. (If there are no subsections, 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 “Tree” menu. Now move up to the second line, and select “Paste Tree” from the tree 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; the “Undo” command on the menu is not implemented (neither is the “Show Treescrap” command).
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 section window
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Select “Open Section” 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 SECTION WINDOW for the section. You can have as many as six section windows open at once, for sections from anywhere in the outline. In a section 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 section window.
C(2). Closing section windows
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Move to another header, and select “Open Section” 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 section windows - select “Close Sections” from the “Outline” menu. They both close. This command will close ALL open section windows.
C(3). Using the section icon
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Double-clicking the section icon will open the section window or, if it is already open, make it the front window.
C(4). Text stores
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Text stores 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 text store, you have to choose which one to use, so they are a bit slower than the clipboard. Text stores 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 the text stores
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Open a section 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 store; it is then created, and the text copied to it. To see it, choose “Show Textstore”, and select the store 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 section 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 sections), 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, don't forget to pay for it — see the notice on the “About Idealiner” screen. If you could only hear the valves on my pick-up, you'd understand immediately how important this is!
So be sure to send in your money, and also your suggestions.
