@ThatNerd If you make an app between Scapple and Curio that would be very interesting! I think there’s an opportunity there.
It’s a hard decision for any developer re: what to include, hide, etc. in terms of the interface. I think it’s particularly difficult with something like Curio. So I think you’re correct: maybe simplifying would be a bigger problem. Markdown links are easy peasy. Often when I’m creating something I do like to have visuals (an image, a figure, etc.) that serve as the link, except when writing for the web.
This is where you learn to use the software. It seems natural to me, because I’ve spent time learning the software. Vocabulary is always really important, and one of the first things to learn when approaching a new field or system.
This is pretty common, even here on Discourse, copy a URL, highlight a word in a reply and click the link button or press Cmd-K, then paste in the link. Same in Word and other programs.
CheatSheet is really helpful for this. Just hold down the command key and a window of shortcuts pops up.
No obligation
I just used it to create composite images of figures to show my advisor for quite a while.
Here’s a small project I’ve started to keep up with art and art-ly things I’m interested in.
Again, nothing ground breaking, but one of the nice things is, since working with this information and creating these few pages, I remember more of the material. Compare this to just saving a bookmark to a website, where little if anything is retained. The text on the Jean Léon Gérôme page is a copy-paste, as I was short on time, so I retained very little more than I already knew.
I also started experimenting with tags, so if you click on #France/Paris, you will see a quick search with Centre Pompidou, Jean Léon Gérôme and Musée d’Orsay.
Curio Pro includes functionality for references, which aren’t citations of academic articles (unless you’ve put them in your Project), but references to other Figures within a Project. The references have types, and the references to and from items can be seen from the figure’s right-click menu. It looks like it would be useful for, say, building a legal case where something supports or rebuts an argument, or if you’re world-building, a reference could be a friend or foe, etc. This isn’t something I’ve used myself, so I’ll reference the documentation.
Another useful feature is the ability to create Master Templates (their word, not mine). If you have an idea space set up and you want to use the layout again, then control-click the idea space in the left sidebar (the organizer), and “Save as Template…”.
To use that master template, click “add” in the toolbar and choose the template from the list of things you can add. A new idea space based on the master template is added to the organizer.
The templates can be edited by clicking this icon in the toolbar above the left sidebar organizer:
Edits to the template are immediately propagated to any idea spaces in the document that use that template.
Idea spaces based on templates can also have figures and text added to them.
In addition to idea space templates, it is possible to make figures into templates and reuse them elsewhere in the document.
A feature I really like in Curio is if I embed another document, then I edit that document, it gets updated in Curio. Very nice indeed!
I don’t know if this works for all documents. My test was to drag an iThoughts document into Curio, double click on the document … it opened iThoughts, I made some changes, saved and the document in Curio was also updated. Could be a very valuable feature for me.
I don’t know if Curio does this with all document types, but it’s very encouraging.
A style is the look of an idea space, or a figure on an idea space, in terms of fonts, colors, borders, etc.
A stencil can include one or more figures – or an entire idea space. The stencil includes the figure and/or idea space styles as well as any content (text, images, etc.). A stencil is a copy of the original figure or idea space.
A template is a stencil applied to a figure, or an idea space stencil used to create a new idea space.
(This seems like a distinction without a difference.)
In the Pro version of Curio you can have master styles and master stencils – meaning if you change the “master” then anything inheriting the features of the master get changed too.
I use a lot of aliases (links) to images strewn around my drives in my Idea Spaces.
When I run the code that recreates the image, I switch over to Curio and the image is refreshed.
Super cool. I can then double-click on the image to open it in Preview, or right-click and open it in Acorn.
This thread has been excellent and revealing. I have had a hard time categorizing Curio and where I should be using it. In the past I have used it as a glorified note taking app with graphics. There is nothing wrong with this as this thread has proven.
What I did not realize was how detailed a concept map/idea graph could be until I saw @anon41602260 example. Having a list track activity was eye opening as well.Harvey ball, that is the second time I have run into that term - both from @anon41602260. But, it finally made sense. I could use Curio like a bullet journal or Notion…as a dashboard to track projects, reading etc…, without cluttering Things.
YMMV, but my brain dislike thinking of books as “Projects” in the GTD sense. I do not want to clutter my task manager with stuff like “Finish Chapter 1 of book…” and “Finish Week 1 of course…” because they are not well-defined enough to be a GTD task for me.
Even having a discussion about sticking points was revealing. Where the heck did that Add button come from, I am sure it was not there before I read this thread.
Thanks for all the interesting ideas and more nuanced explanations. For some reason this thread has created more traction in my brain.I really need to read the documentation again, but, now I want to.
For those who have also used Tinderbox: how do the two apps compare? Is there a significant amount of overlap, or would you consider them different kinds of beasts?
There is some superficial overlap with respect to some basic mapping functions. Tinderbox is an entirely different beast - if you want to slice and dice data with automation, it is powerful.
I’ve used them both for a few years now. They have some things in common, but they’re very different to use.
Tinderbox excels at notes - taking them, analysing them, managing their interrelationships. It has extremely powerful tools for analysis and presentation of the data, but using them means you have to spend time understanding how to do some basic scripting/programming. It’s not hard, but it does need time. Although TB is often characterised as having a long learning curve, you can get a lot from it very quickly.
Curio excels at organisation - notes, media, links, whatever - and presenting the organisation graphically. It’s like a giant whiteboard. It’s great for organising projects (what I used it for before the pandemic killed my projects ) .
Curio is very graphic - you make things happen by moving them around and drawing stuff. Tinderbox is very programmable - you make things happen by writing little code snippets and running them in various ways, manual or automatic.
For me, they serve different purposes, and I used them together for some time when I was running major projects.
You can take notes in pretty much anything. Where Curio excels (IMO) is in it’s ability to place your notes with all their associations in a very visible graphic frame. The note acts as a kind of window into the content.
TB excels in its ability to help you discover structure and connections between the text in notes.
Other note taking apps have their strengths - Roam/Obsidian/Logseq and similar shine where linking/backlinking are what works for you. Craft provides an very attractive and easy-to-understand UX and some very good organising features.
But I would contend that Curio is unique in the free-form way it supports laying out your thoughts and data and allows you to see the relationships clearly. And I’d also argue that TB is unique in the tools it provides to analyse and discover structure.
No responded needed–I don’t want to sidetrack this thread but I’d add something that I believe is often overlooked when discussing Craft. Craft also has robust linking capabilities similar to other apps like Obsidian, Roam, Notion et al.
A question for anyone out there more familiar with Curio. Another possible “friction”. I have created several idea spaces that all have a 16:9 ratio in terms of sizing. But if I want to export as a PDF, Curio converts to a 4:3 ratio. Anyway around this?
Exporting to PDF from Keynote (e.g.) is super easy to get 16:9 pages in a PDF.
In addition Curio seems to export all the pages in the wrong orientation (portrait orientation instead of landscape orientation). Easy to change after export but seems silly to go through this extra step.
… but main thing is there must be a way to export as 16:9 landscaped pages. Or am I wrong?
I can export as an image, then choose image format as PDF, and that exports just fine. But if I’m trying to export several pages/spaces then each one is exported as a single PDF. This is to be expected. Granted I can use another application to then combine these single PDFs into one package. But surely things should be simpler than this.
based on my very limited experience with Curio (less than 2 weeks), I see that the strong point (at least a main one) is on organising, packaging and presenting complex information in a presentable manner for easy communication. On the other hand, the short coming is the lack of automation, but this is not what this application meant for. This view may be a bit shallow but this is how I shall be using Curio until I know a lot more to get to the advance stage
What I would do (and just tried) is go to File | Page Setup | Paper Size | Manage Custom Sizes… and define a paper size of 16 x 9 inches (or eq. cm). After saving, you’ll want to set Orientation in the Page Setup dialog to Portrait (i.e. you don’t want it rotated to Landscape). New Idea Spaces will be created with this wide orientation.
If you want to change an existing Idea Space, select it, then set the Orientation to Landscape in the Idea Space inspector. Then click Resize to Contents for Width and Height.
Something that might be helpful is to turn on View | Show Page Breaks.
If you want to export multiple Idea Spaces to one PDF, just select them all in the Organizer, then Export to PDF.
the documentation.
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