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How are you using Luminotes?

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How are you using Luminotes?

Okay folks, this is a general question to get some discussion started. What are you using Luminotes for, and why does it work well for that particular task? Are you organizing notes for class? Planning a novel? Tracking recipes?

Dan

Brain storming

I'm using Luminotes as a brainstorming session catcher. Just start by writing ideas down about a subject. This does not need any structure as thoughts just evolve as you unfold the ideas on the page. As I write things, I 'm aware of branches of new ideas that are triggerd from words or phrases. Double clicking one of those key words, or highlighting a phrase then hitting the link button allows a quick way to create a branch (page) that I can go back on and expand later. The link reminds me to add content to that idea, or I can open the linked page straight away add notes and return to the main page to continue the main flow. This is one way that wiki software excels above any other note taking application. It allows instant digressions into sub-sets of related content, or tangential ideas that are linked.

Other wiki software does similar things and there are visual outliners that also allow an 'organic' growth from brain storming processes. I think that Luminotes excels over many of these because of the speed and simplicity of the linking process. It's a fine example of software that supports the creative process rather than gets in the way by over complication.  Luminotes adds just enough formatting options and does not require wiki markup. A great plus for ordinary users.

Thanks Dan, the KISS priniciple wins yet again!

Richard

Brain storming

Richard, I'm glad to hear that Luminotes is working for you as brainstorming software. I often use it that way myself. If you think of any improvements that would make Luminotes better for brainstorming, feel free to post your ideas here.

Does anyone else use Luminotes for brainstorming, or anything else for that matter?

Dan

Writing Projects

Like a lot of people, I expect, I am using Luminotes for writing projects.  Right now I'm doing different notebooks for different projects. This is my first wiki ever, and I'm still really on the low end of the learning curve in terms of using it. E.g., I just realized today that I could organize all the various notes in the notebook I'm keeping for a novel project by creating an index uber-note with lists of links to various notes, organized under headers (which are themselves now index sub-uber-notes with similar but more specific lists) like 'Characters', 'Scenes' and 'Places', then setting the ubernote under 'options' to 'show on start-up'.  This allowed me to create a quasi-hierarchical note tree or table of contents for the notebook (which I found very exciting).  I realize that that was probably blindingly obvious to experienced wikistas, but it was a revelation to me.

I'm also writing an academic book (which unlike the novel, is likely to be finished and published sometime this century), and right now I'm doing a notebook per chapter for it-- since each chapter involves loads of drafts, research notes and brainstorming.  I think my new wiki-insight should help quite a bit for organizing that material as well.  Though for that project, one thing I would like to either have or figure out how to do is to create links to other notebooks and between notes in different notebooks.  (as well as enjoy the lovely Luminotes interface-- in a lovely accent color other than pastel blue.  Really, I'm not nagging, I swear ;-) )

[EDIT: I just realized that if you can link notes between different notebooks, you don't really need to link to notebooks themselves-- you can just link to the notebook's 'show on startup' uber-note.  One of many examples of why I'd make a lousy software designer.]

Re: Writing Projects

puritangurl: In your defense, I don't think it's immediately obvious to a new user how to do what you just described: Make one uber-table-of-contents note, mark it "show on startup", and magically get a note hierarchy to appear. One thing I'd like to work on (other than the pastel colors) is to make this whole process of organizing one's notes much simpler and more obvious. I haven't quite decided how to do that, but it is a goal I always have in mind.

Your practice of using a notebook per chapter to organize / outline your academic book sounds like a really good idea. And it does seem that if you do that, then naturally you would need the ability to make links between notes in different notebooks.

I'd also be interested in hearing about anyone else using Luminotes to organize their ideas for a book or story.

Dan

School notes

I began using Luminotes to make make my notes about topics I am reading about for my studies.  I have many pages of handwritten notes, but I always wanted the ability to search them and link related topics together. Luminotes fulfills these requirements well.  The ability to embed images and files is also very useful.  I had a little trouble figuring out how to put in small table in one of my notes, but copy-pasting from a Word document worked.  I am very pleased with the utility and simplicity of this application so far.   

Re: School notes

bso1997: I'm glad to hear that Luminotes is working out for your school notes needs; that's definitely one of its intended uses! The trick you figured out about cutting and pasting in tables does indeed work, but at some point I would like to add real support for inserting tables natively.

​Dir hierarchy on a LAN

I had a need to finalize a directory hierarchy for storing projects at a place. Just some structure that would work for everyone that would store all the contract docs, photos, CAD drawings and so on for architects, engineers and subs. The issue had been dragging on for months without a final resolution.

Enter Luminotes. Paste the output of the 'tree' command into one note and clone it in another note called Revisions. Two or three days and done! Everybody happy. Finally.

:-)

​Re: Dir hierarchy on a LAN

That's a cool use of Luminotes I had not thought of before. :)

Dan

​

I never thought I'd need it before either!

Anyhow,

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