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Collapsible outline



Thanks to everyone for the suggestions about a possible collapsible
outline feature for XyWrite. I'll attempt to answer the following
request from Robert Holmgren:

In short, what do you mean, Manuel? (It's that word "collapse" that
bothers me -- it implies something quite active, something that
"happens", i.e. with one push of a button it squashes down to nothing
or falls into a black hole.) To begin to write code, you need a
complete spec in your head, start to finish. For example, would you
be able to rely that the material (text) you begin with would always
have a particular organization? That would be a precondition, within
limits. How much of this outline preparation requires eyes and active
intelligence, and how much can be automated?

My needs are very simple. In our case, the purpose of that feature is
for movie scriptwriting. It's very useful to have a structured vision of
the story, i.e., the possibility of switching the viewing of the script
in progress to the headings of every scene, hiding the rest of the text
(narrative, dialogues and so on). Then I would need only the possibility
of hiding body text and to see only headings during the flow of writing
(two levels and without special formatting needs beyond standard XyWrite
possibilities). Further more, it would be very useful to have a third
"collapsible" area for notes, technical comments and so on. It could be
the third level in our "collapsible" outline. Then I could "collapse"
the third level (notes) or the second level (script scenes) or both (to
see only the headings) at my ease. I hope this explanation is clear
enough.

I have tested several suggestions but the only really viable procedure
for my purposes is the Norman Bauman one: "I start every section with a
boldfaced or underlined headline, so I wrote a macro to copy every
boldfaced or underlined line to a separate file."

Thanks again.

Manuel Castelao