On Saturday 01 August 2009 00:12:51 Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:
> [rant-mode]
> I might be a keyboard centric computer user who is always having
> difficulty dealing with the point N click style "dogma" that seems
> to say that if you make it easy for mouse centric users to click
> instead of keypunching, then it's OK if you can't do something
> anymore without resorting to that {many paragraphs of expletives
> deleted} rodent...
>
> But that doesn't mean that I think mouse centric users should be
> denied point n click methods I just don't want them pushed on me.
> [/rant-mode]
You, my friend, are a prime candidate for two free software offerings I use on
a daily, no, a minutely basis: Umenu and VimOutliner.
Umenu is a keystroke driven menu, which on my system is invoked by the Ctrl+9
keystroke combination. Then you keystroke through the menu. Unlike many lame
menu systems, Umenu doesn't require you to needlessly press Enter after each
choice -- simply pressing the letter corresponding to the command or submenu
does that command or submenu. Umenu has prompted argument substitution, so it
can ask you for arguments which you type in. I use Umenu a heck of a lot more
often than the system menu that comes with my distribution, and because the
EMDL file is part of my data, it survives reinstallations.
Umenu is configured with an Easy Menu Definition Language (EMDL) file, which is
nothing but a tab indented outline. The fastest way to author EMDL is with
VimOutliner.
VimOutliner is an outline processor atop the Vim engine. It has almost all the
classic outliner features: Collapse/Expand, Promote/Demote, body text,
checkboxes, executable lines. It's built from the bottom up for authoring
speed, so it's LIGHTNING FAST for the touch typist. The slick thing about
VimOutliner is you can record and organize your thoughts as fast as you can
think, so you don't "lose that thought."
Every book I've written since 2003 began its life in VimOutliner. LyX now has
an outline mode, and I thank the developers to the heavens for that, but
VimOutliner is MUCH faster in authoring, so I outline books in VimOutliner.
Because LyX has such a human readable and parsable native format, I was able
to develop a script to convert a VimOutliner outline into a LyX document. So
preliminary outlining is done in the lightning fast VimOutliner, and the
writing is done in the lightning fast LyX.
We keyboard types haven't gotten the respect we deserved ever since Windows
3.0 raised its ugly head, but these two programs were built from the bottom up
for touch typists.
http://www.vimoutliner.org
http://www.troubleshooters.com/umenu
Viva la Keyboard!
SteveT
Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
