Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!prism!russ
From: russ@prism.gatech.EDU (Russell Shackelford)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Positional note-taking
Summary: how about Ready!
Message-ID: <1466@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Date: 13 Aug 89 21:55:46 GMT
References: <1440004@hp-ptp.HP.COM>
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 44

In article <1440004@hp-ptp.HP.COM>, garye@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Gary_Ericson) writes:
> There is a technique used by many people I know, including me, for taking notes
> or jotting down ideas, and it has to do with including positional information
> in the text to symbolize relationships between ideas.  Two of the mechanisms I 
> use are indentation, to indicate an outline, and clustering, grouping words and
> phrases together physically on the page to indicate their relationship.
> 
> I have always taken this for granted (maybe *everybody* takes notes this way, I
> don't know).  I have also taken for granted the fact that I just can't do this 
> on a computer as easily as I can on paper, especially in real-time (e.g., when 
> taking notes during a phone call).  The keyboard channels the user into a 
> serial stream of input, while note taking like this requires a two-dimensional
> approach.
> 
> Has anyone studied this method of recording ideas or information from a 
> cognitive process point-of-view?  Do any computer systems exist that help the 
> user do this kind of note-taking/thought-organizing in real-time?  
> 
> Gary Ericson - Hewlett-Packard, Workstation Systems Division
>                phone: (408)746-5098  mailstop: 101N  email: gary@hpdsla9.hp.com



it's an apparently natural (to western minds, at least) way to org things.

have you tried Ready! from Symantec (Living Videotext Div, I think).  It's
mem resident and is a wonderful little outliner.  expand amd contract, move
things around etc.  Grandview is the same idea taken to a further degree:
each item in the outline can "hide" and entire document and/or another
outline.

i am assuming here that an outliner does what you do on paper, with
use of CR's to define clusters in space at a given level of indentation.

hope an interesting discussion involving many follows.

this is a good topic that affects most folks.


-- 
Russell Shackelford
School of Information and Computer Science
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332
russ@prism.gatech.edu         (404) 834-4759