Sometimes scrolling through a longer notes - several screens on the Mac - isn’t enough to give me a mental overview of the note, i.e. to check the logic of my argument or the flow of a draft workshop plan etc.
I know I could collapse headings etc, but that requires my headings are accurate encapsulation of the text below - and often they are not. (Eg heading might be “Group activity 1”). So if I collapse headings, I can’t read the text.
Here’s a suggestion - rather radical for Agenda, I know. But I used a workround (pasting a note in Pages), and it was really helpful. Here goes…
When a note is open as a single note, create an option to view the text in multiple columns, broken into pages, where each “page” fits the size of the note’s window.
When I set this up in Pages, I had a much higher density of text on the screen. This enabled me to review the entirity of the note, its argument and structure, much more easily.
A bit more background:
For me, Agenda is a thinking tool, as much as it is a note taking and storage tool: dumping initial ideas, structured with dashed lists and indents, and then moving paragraphs up and down, using the keyboard, then adding headings and starting to turn the jumble of words on each line into full sentences. It’s at this point, when more than half the text is scrolled of the screen, that I think my column suggestion would really help me keep thinking within Agenda.
For longer documents where you want a true bird’s eye view, exporting to another format (like you did with Pages) is probably the best option at the moment.
There are tools that are just better for some things than Agenda could ever be. Pages is great for layout of text; Mindnode for structured info; Trello for kanban; Omniproject for Gantt charts. We can’t be good at everything without becoming a Frankenstein product, and have to choose our battles.
That said, the feedback is useful. Perhaps there are simple things we could do to make the solo note view better for this. Thanks for sharing.
I suggested/requested a column layout some time ago but it was maybe 50/50% aesthetic and purposeful. For my use I wanted to create ~3/4 of a doc in a modified L or reverse _| shape to mix 1/4 ish of the doc containing a graphic with a text column to one side of references to it and full width below or similar. Like explaining detail or results of a graph for example or timeline. I started doing this in Ulysses, they do not create a columnar format but do a great job using tables. Pages does a PDG job and has some features that Ulysses doesn’t have. The linkable text boxes I didn’t know about which I can imagine as very useful. Ok, then there’s the elephant in the room which is the most complete by far, but time wise not so great. I too use one of those 3 if necessary for the project/content, distribution, presentation etc.
Agenda can make a good looking document but I do agree with the creators that it wasn’t intended to be a word processor. Even if they did I doubt I would use it, one of those best of breed users. Personally I would rather nag them (in a caring way of course) about continued enhancements of Agendas’ intended use. We’re working sort of the same way it sounds like. I I probably spend more time detailing the first draft so I don’t lose my train of thought. If I have an ooh yah moment I’ll double space a red emoji circle in as a bullet to come back to. It can be hours or days later I think of something and enter it at the current spot. The question I have is could it even be done in the current line system which gives us the continuous note page which is a really good feature in my eyes.
Have you experimented with the “Open in separate window” feature? Then you could arrange two windows showing the same note side by side to mimic the split view in Word. Not exactly what you’re asking for, but it might help.