OT: best FOSS wiki for this classroom scenario?

[H]

On February 24, 2020 12:57:41 PM EST, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Feb 2020 at 16:38, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> Um - I think you are underestimating what I mean by a large-scale
>> personal project. Or maybe I am underestimating what Outline View is
>> capable of.
>
>It depends. The last time I used it for something serious, I produced
>a ~265 page technical product manual from scratch in about 3 months,
>entirely done in outline mode from beginning to end, from taking notes
>to final layout by applying suitable stylesheets.
>
>With photos, the manual ended up as a >1 GB MS Word file. The
>compressed PDF of the end result was about a quarter of that.
>
>> And on that note (heh) we have departed from Ubuntu and thus from
>this
>> forum...
>
>Yes and no. Outliners are a phenomenally powerful and useful tool, if
>you know how to use one. They were a common standalone PC/Mac app
>category in the 1980s. A notable Mac one was called MORE! which
>ultimately grew into a complete presentation package (and thus was
>killed off by Powerpoint.) PC ones included PC-Outline and Grandview.
>
>They have almost completely disappeared now and the only modern one I
>know is in MS Word.
>
>I've spent a lot of time looking for a FOSS one and failed. This
>process did reveal something I'd previously been unaware of, though.
>There are 2 conceptually different types of outliners:
>one-pane/single-pane/in-line outliners, and 2-pane outliners.
>
>There are a number of FOSS 2-pane outliners, such as TreeLine,
>KeepNote, KJots, and TiddlyWiki (which brings us back around). See:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TreeLine_(outliner)
>
>These are not the way I work and I find them useless. They give you a
>tree structure, with branches ending in leaves. Each "leaf" is a
>separate document in which you can put notes. I don't need that -- if
>I wanted that, I'd probably just use folders and text files.
>
>The old PC-Outline mode is a single text file, in which paragraphs
>have structure. They can go underneath other paragraphs, and you can
>collapse levels as you wish, either revealing only high-level headings
>and subheadings, or showing the whole structure but with final-level
>text hidden, or showing the whole document.
>
>So, for example, in that big manual project, I started out with laying
>out the structure of an existing manual from another product from a
>different company. Then I copied the file, and changed all the main
>section headings to the ones for the product I was describing. Then I
>adjusted the subheadings to match the main assemblies and
>subcomponents. Then I put in some structure under those: description,
>function, disassembly, removal, replacement, reassembly. I duplicated
>that across all subcomponents. Then I started adding steps.
>
>In the end I had over 100 pages. To navigate with search or by page
>would be impossible, but I could "zoom out" to headings, move to the
>chapter I wanted, expand subheadings, and thus zoom in on the
>subsection of a subsection of a subsection I wanted.
>
>It's both a structure and a means of navigation. You can edit in the
>small, at paragraph level, or at overview level or any point in
>between. With a couple of drags you can restructure hundreds of pages
>of text while intelligently keeping suitable formatting and so on, and
>it makes it very easy to quickly generate tables of contents, indices
>etc.
>
>The structure maps _very_ well onto HTML and indeed XML, and could be
>useful for all sorts of work, from roughing out web pages to editing
>the structure of complex config files. The conceptual model is quite
>easy to learn.
>
>I am dismayed there's no decent FOSS one, and I've considered trying
>to learn enough Python to write one myself.
>
>I am told "org mode" in EMACS is somewhat similar, but I am not an
>Emacs user -- I've tried -- and Org-mode embeds structure in markup in
>the document, meaning that it's a file format as well. The advantage
>of the one in Word being embedded in Word is that at all times your
>document is just a word doc, and can be viewed or opened  in
>LibreOffice Writer or whatever, without conversion.
>
>-- 
>Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
>Email: lproven at cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
>Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
>UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
>
>-- 
>ubuntu-users mailing list
>ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
>Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
>https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users

I have been looking for an outlier as well for quite some time for exactly the same reasons as you. Further, I would want it to be keyboard-driven rather than relying on a mouse which is way too slow and cumbersome. I do remember PC Outline with much fondness...

I would also like it to be able to read/write in markdown format, perhaps using that as its native format. In addition, it should read/write files in OO format as well as in HTML.

I have been resorting to using Impress as an outlier but it is a very poor substitute...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/attachments/20200225/99775de9/attachment.html>