Client Side #1: An introduction to Project Davenport
Welcome to Client Side, the part of the blog where I talk about what it's like to actually use Davenport. I'm going to kick off by talking about the fundamentals of a Davenport document: Notes, Threads and Drawers. Screenshots would be nice, but I'm saving those until I've completed the performance re-write of the prototype.
In their simplest form Notes are, as you might expect, akin to digital Post-Its that you can arrange and rearrange as you like on your work-desk. A note might be an idea, a question, an outline for a scene - anything you like.
You can use Threads to connect notes, like arrows in a flow-chart or the more literal threads you see crisscrossing rooms when a film director wants you to know someone is dangerously obsessive. More about threads later - for now, think of them as a purely visual aid.
Next, Drawers. Any note can be made into a drawer by selecting it and pressing tab. Think of it as taking that note and slapping it on a drawer - now it's a label for the contents.
Open drawers appear as tabs at the top of the screen, and you can click on them to look inside. A drawer is just another unlimited canvas for you to work on - you can do all the same things there, including making more drawers, giving you the freedom to organise your project however you like. You can have a drawer per character. You can have a drawer per scene, with an outline of the scene on the label and more details and ideas inside - it's entirely up to you.
So far, real-world analogies have served us well - notes, labels, drawers - but if the real world did everything we needed we wouldn't write applications.
One of the problems with the real world is that things can only be in one place, and only be close to so many things. There's no reason for this to be the case when working digitally.
With Davenport, any note you create - including drawer labels - can live in as many different places as you like. So if an idea is related to a particular scene, but also relates to themes, or motifs, or character development, you can put that idea into all those drawers, and connect it differently in those places.
When you do that, the note gains a little extra graphical furniture, allowing you to quickly navigate between all the places where it lives. So if you're considering changes, you can easily remind yourself what the ramifications might be, and any changes you do make are automatically shared.
That's just a quick outline of Davenport's most basic functionality. In the next Client Side update I'll be talking about #tags, the always-on search algorithm, and more!
In their simplest form Notes are, as you might expect, akin to digital Post-Its that you can arrange and rearrange as you like on your work-desk. A note might be an idea, a question, an outline for a scene - anything you like.
You can use Threads to connect notes, like arrows in a flow-chart or the more literal threads you see crisscrossing rooms when a film director wants you to know someone is dangerously obsessive. More about threads later - for now, think of them as a purely visual aid.
Next, Drawers. Any note can be made into a drawer by selecting it and pressing tab. Think of it as taking that note and slapping it on a drawer - now it's a label for the contents.
Open drawers appear as tabs at the top of the screen, and you can click on them to look inside. A drawer is just another unlimited canvas for you to work on - you can do all the same things there, including making more drawers, giving you the freedom to organise your project however you like. You can have a drawer per character. You can have a drawer per scene, with an outline of the scene on the label and more details and ideas inside - it's entirely up to you.
So far, real-world analogies have served us well - notes, labels, drawers - but if the real world did everything we needed we wouldn't write applications.
One of the problems with the real world is that things can only be in one place, and only be close to so many things. There's no reason for this to be the case when working digitally.
With Davenport, any note you create - including drawer labels - can live in as many different places as you like. So if an idea is related to a particular scene, but also relates to themes, or motifs, or character development, you can put that idea into all those drawers, and connect it differently in those places.
When you do that, the note gains a little extra graphical furniture, allowing you to quickly navigate between all the places where it lives. So if you're considering changes, you can easily remind yourself what the ramifications might be, and any changes you do make are automatically shared.
That's just a quick outline of Davenport's most basic functionality. In the next Client Side update I'll be talking about #tags, the always-on search algorithm, and more!
Comments
Post a Comment