An idea that might be foreign to people who write in text editors.
You can use an outliner to write multiple documents.
Try creating a headline called My Diary.
Then every day, add a subhead with the day's date.
;)
And under that write a paragraph about something you learned or did that day.
Do it for a few days until the strangeness wears off.
Does this make sense?
Here's a screen shot of my "worknotes" diary, which is one level deeper.
You can think of every major head under a day as a separate document.
In fact the CMS sees it that way. So I have one document which in turn contains many documents. Actually thousands!
For many people this will be a new way of thinking about writing.
;)
Chuck, the OPML Editor that you download from home.opml.org has all the bits you need for writing.
;)
Then you need the worldoutline server software.
All the docs you need are at howtos.opml.org.
You can store the outlines anywhere you want as static OPML. The worldoutline software just does rendering, and has very lightweight management of OPML in Amazon S3. But it's very easy to couple up an OPML file stored anywhere into a root managed by the worldoutline software.
I didn't want to recreate the world of Manila, where we had a database of all the content. On the worldoutline, the data is supposed to be completely decoupled. And we're almost there. I keep adding features like this one, OPML Comments, that creep back toward tight coupling. Then I figure out how to get it loose, and do it. There's a new philosophy here that I'm sure you'll immediatley understand. We've only been talking about it for 20-plus years. :-)
Another thing you can do is stay right here. Oddly enough this is a fairly generalized OPML environment, here in the comments. :-)
Try clicking on your name to get an idea. And then try changing the nodetype of the top level headline in this branch. RIght-click to get the menu of choices. Remember to save.
If I wanted to have a persistent outline like this, somewhere on the web (say my web server or even my local machine), how would I go about it?
Does this version of the OPML editor have all the parts in it for me to play with the "World Outline" stuff on my own site?
Is there a "poet's guide" somewhere?
;)
;)
;)
