It's like this: I'm in the midst of overhauling the structure of my blogging notebook in preparation for the next installment to this, the techno-equivalent of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And, as I was working out the pre-fab structure of my newly minted page-per-day approach, well, my attention wandered down to my desktop's dock. Lurking there was a brace of Graphic Visualization Stuff, including the NovaMind and the superlative OmniGraffle (which has produced most of the charts on this site).
I looked at the simple outline I was creating in NoteTaker and then at the GV Stuff. I looked at the GV Stuff and then at the NT outline. And even though I realized I was meddling with things Man Was Meant To Leave Alone, the urge clearly had me--there was no going back: I had to see my NoteTaker outline in glorious Technicolor and CinemaScope.
I began by exporting my NT outline as OPML (XML). The next step was firing-up NovaMind, my favorite mindmapping software. Then came The Moment: Opening up the NT-generated OPML with NovaMind. And damn--it worked; NoteTaker was now a mindmap. Simple as that. For your viewing pleasure, here's the result:

Of course, by now I was thoroughly drunk with power (aka It's Alive! It's Alive!). If I could easily mate NoteTaker with NovaMind, creating a litter of OmniGraffle/NoteTaker puppies would only take a few moments. Or not.
I couldn't get OmniGraffle to recognize the NoteTaker OPML document that NovaMind had no trouble with. On the other side of a couple new attempts to generate new NoteTaker OPML, all to no OmniGraffle-esque avail, I was chastened. Obviously, I was only a demi Mad Scientist; a half-baked Dr. Moreau. And then I saw OmniGraffle's dock mate, OmniOutline. Perhaps family members would be on better speaking terms . . .
Encouragingly, OmniOutliner had no trouble importing the NoteTaker OPML document. And after saving the imported outline, lo, OmniGraffle immediately liked the look of FrankenDocument. The resulting visualization initially took the form of a tree outline, but after the Technicolor and CinemaScope Treatment, the following was achieved:

It's about at this point that the inevitable Moral of the Story pops up. And yes, even though two other applications need to be tapped, the whole widescreen NoteTaker thing is both cool and useful. But I gotta be honest, the real point of this odd interlude is that I won the equivalent of a bar bet with myself.
Next on NT Blogging: Cross-breeding Excel and GarageBand to compute future royalties on the song being composed. Or not.
Thursday, December 16, 2004 1:21:29 AM
Hi the picuters in this doc doesnt load.
Jochen
Posted by: Dr. Reichel | December 16, 2004 at 02:42 AM