Scapple Beta - New Users Please Read

[Ama]

Hi, JMM.

Sorry for not being more clear. Let me start by saying that for me, Align and Distribute are essentially cosmetic functions to make the final product look pretty. Intended, I assume, for neat freaks like me.

In my first few tries with Scapple, I aligned and distributed as I went and wasted a huge amount of time. Now I just brain dump like mad, and try really hard not to worry about appearances until later.
Step 1 - Brain Dump (or, if you prefer something less crude, Brainstorm)
Step 2 - Move stuff around, make connections, add new ideas triggered by the connections, move the dross aside (but don’t delete) et cetera.
Steps 3 to ??? repeat step 2.
Step omega minus one - pretty it up with align / distribute.
Step omega - finish the project.

Let me go through your example.

It sounds like you might be selecting all notes at the same time. If so, this will not work. You need to maintain control and deal with smaller groups and arrange them the way you want them to look.

As above, the high level view of my process is:

• roughly move individual notes into an approximate arrangement, then
• then tidy it up with the Align and Distribute functions

Rough rearrangement - Please see rough_fix.pdf

From this point we can tidy up different groups of notes, one at a time.

VERTICAL ALIGNMENT

• for the 3 primary headings, intro, body, conclusion:
• • Intro first so Body and Conclusion would align with it. This is arbitrary.
• I then Cmd-Clicked Body and Conclusion so that all 3 are selected for alignment.
  – the usable alignment choices are Horizontal Centre, Left or Right edge. Vertical centre will cause a pile up.
• Right Click, select Align, horizontal centre.
  HORIZONTAL ALIGNMENT - Article, Body, and ‘uso de la tercera’
• Select Article first, then Cmd Click to also select Body and ‘uso’
• • Article as the first selected will be the ‘anchor’.
• Right Click, Align, Vertical Centre

Remaining notes are similarly rearranged in horizontal and vertical alignments. For vertical alignments of boxes with connections I align on Horizontal Centre (keeps the lines straight) and for unconnected boxes I use Left side. For horizontal connections of connected boxes I use Vertical centre and for unconnected boxes Bottom side. But I’m a neat freak.

Please refer to final.pdf

DISTRIBUTION just ensures equal horizontal or vertical spacing among selected boxes.

Again, I hope this helps.
Ama

@jmm

1. I select the note I consider to be the anchor. And what do I do with it?
2. I select the rest of the notes.
3. I know there are several alignment choices (Left/Right/Top/Bottom edges or Horizontal/Vertical centers). The problem is that whichever one I choose, the notes come one on top of another.
4. Same as 3.

Would you be so kind as to specify which specific choices I have to make so that notes don’t come one on top of another? I am quite certain I am missing something here. Thanks.

Final.pdf (56 KB)
rough_fix.pdf (56.5 KB)

[jmm]

Thanks so much for your exhaustive support -

[peleve]

I’ve been using Scrapple for the past few days, and it’s an ideal, simple but flexible tool for my purposes, flushing out ideas of things that I want to cover in a complicated data analysis project.

I’m on a mac. Just want to comment that in the quick guide description in the manual the description of the roles under bullet 6 are reversed in practice.

It would be nice to add to the contextual menu the “Add Link” feature.

[KB]

The QuickStart guide is being completely revised, don’t worry - it’s out of date at the moment. I’ve just written a PDF QuickStart guide which will feature in the Help menu of the final version.

Thanks and all the best,
Keith

[Parzival]

In Scapple, how do I change the color of the background canvas? In other words, how do you change the color of the canvas from beige to another color?

[KB]

Under the “Document” pane of the inspector.

[MuadDib2012]

It seems that you can’t expand the canvas neither to the left nor in upwards direction…

[KB]

If you drag notes there, it expands as necessary, but no, you can’t expand it arbitrarily; this works as intended, though.

[AmberV]

To effectively increase the canvas size to the top and/or left, use Cmd-A to select all of your notes and drag them all right and down by how much space you wish to create.

[Frix]

Keith, thank you, this is wonderful.
It is possible to see the margins of the page (the I have set in ‘page set up’) in the map window?
If not in the actual version, do you think it would be possible for the next?
It would be useful (visually) to set the map while I work, and for have it ready for a fast printing in the right paper format without any automatic resize
Thanks again
Frix

[KB]

Hi Frix,

Thanks, glad you like it!

As for margins in the map window, no, this isn’t possibly, sorry–please see my explanation here:

https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/feature-idea-preview-of-printing-borders/21997/1

All the best,
Keith

[Dunesman]

Just dl’d the trial version of this SCAPPLE thing. After about five minutes it was clear that I would be buying it. I’m a list-maker, note-taker, and idea-doodler and Scapple looks an awful lot like a digital napkin to me. Many thanks!

[AmberV]

That’s the idea! Glad you like it. 8)

[pipegold]

Hi, I just started using Scapple after finally binning Freemind. Love it. Currently using it for storyboarding my novel. Two points have arisen so far:
First, an irritating little glitch is if you have customised the page colour, when you open the program/document, it loads with the default colour (which is not to my taste) for a second before flicking into the customised colour. Not a big issue, but it diminishes the otherwise stable, reliable, polished feel of Scapple.
Secondly, as a big part of my process is to use particular pieces of music as inspiration for scenes I’m writing, it would be nice to be able to add local hyperlinks (I think they’re called?) to a music file - especially nice if it starts the file playing in my iTunes library. Not sure if that is possible, but in Freemind I could link to a music file held on my laptop.

Thanks for a very helpful, easy to use tool, though.

[AmberV]

…if you have customised the page colour, when you open the program/document, it loads with the default colour…

I’m not seeing anything like that. I wonder if it is a performance related issue. Three potential factors:

• Age of computer. If it’s pretty old maybe it’s just slow and it takes a moment to load the settings.
• Size of the file. If you have some pictures dragged into that might slow things down, especially if the pictures are high-resolution. Likewise there could potentially be drawing slow-downs with massive boards. Several hundred notes with many links, for example, might cause slowdowns.
• File storage location. Is the .scap file stored on slow media like a file server, flash based thumb drive, or over a WiFi connection?

Secondly, as a big part of my process is to use particular pieces of music as inspiration for scenes I’m writing, it would be nice to be able to add local hyperlinks…

Yes, you can create hyperlinks in the software. The easiest way is to just hit Cmd-L while you are editing the note, but you can also use the Edit/Add Link... menu command. This just takes any valid URI, so that includes file:// protocol links to the hard disk. So one easy way of adding a file link is to type in “file://” and then drag and drop the file into the edit link URL box. That’ll print the path name for you.

[pipegold]

Thanks for your response, AmberV
My machine isn’t very old, maybe two or three years. It’s a simple and small .scap file, with no pictures or links, at 29KB. The file is stored on the machine itself.

Model Identifier: MacBookPro7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Mac OS X Version 10.6.8

On the link thing - that doesn’t seem to work for music files. I did what you said a few times, producing this for example: file://Users/Matt/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/beach boys/sounds of summer_ the very best of the beach boys/01 beach boys - california girls.mp3
It just gives that duff error beep. So far tried with files set to start with iTunes or Quicktime.

[AmberV]

Make sure it looks like “file:///Users/Matt/…” rather than “file://Users/Matt/…”. The “://” is a part of the protocol, and then the third slash following it is actually a part of the system path. File types shouldn’t cause a problem unless they don’t normally load when you double-click on them in Finder. After you click the link, there is little difference between a double-click and a link click, technically.

[pipegold]

Three slashes! It seemed odd to have three, so I ‘meddled’ with it That does seem to work. Great, thanks very much for your help. Cheers

[DianaCQ]

Sounds like a great program! I’ll be buying it as soon as I get off work and can get to my computer.
I’m one of those who would also love an iPad version

[sciman]

For those of you, like me, looking for an integration of MindMapping with Scrivener and Scapple even, MindNode 5 provides an inexpensive and very powerful solution. This software works like iThoughts and perhaps others, though MindNode prices strikes me as more reasonable.

One can attach notes to one or multiple hierarchical nodes in MindNode, and these come into Scrivener as title and content on separate cards and outline elements. Even more impressively, if one takes a Scapple and exports, with the option proved to create notes field in the opal export, the first line of scapple node appears as node, with secondary lines appearing in an editable notes pane which appears for each separate node as a sidebar to the diagram. So one can easily click around the mind map adding context and description to simple titles. A simple outline can be quickly enriched in MindNode, then the OPML taken directly into Scrivener. This is what I’ve wanted.