Feature Suggestions Page (FSP)

A graphic model does not follow the same organisation principles af an outline or the contents of a book or an article. First of all, the succession in the directions of a graphical model need not be the same as the succession of headings in a article. It should be possible to move the nodes without changing the succession in the outline. The whole idea of Compendium is to use two dimensions freely to expose structure – this freedom should not be restricted by wanting a specific view of the generated outline.

Moreover, it not always that the automatically added heading levels in the outline is appropriate. The wanted heading level should not put restrictions on the graphical model of the text. For instance, if you have just one answer to a question it is often relevant to have both question and answer on the same heading level in the web outline.

This problem could be solved, if it was possible to add pair of numbers to any node where the first number controlled the heading level and the second number controlled the succession of headings at a the level. It should be possible to combine this with the automatic outlining by first ‘placing’ nodes controlled by a number pairs and then let automatic outlining do the rest. If the first number of a pair is zero, the node should be ignored in the outline.

A special (and graphical restricting) problem turns up if you break with a strict tree structure (by letting one node recieving two of more arrows from a higher level). Then the node, including details, is repeated in the outline, and if you are producing an article it ackward to have the same subsection at several places. You would never want an article like that. So, it should be possible to mark which arrow should be the primary one that determines where to place the node. It might be possible to make reference to the subsection from the secondary arrows.

Summing up, it should be possible to elaborate your graphical model and, whenever you want, to generate a nice outline, which may be used in work process without further formatting. That is, it should be possible finish all the content in Compendium so that the final formatting should be performed with another program.