Paper writing/productivity software

[Caffereine]

Hello. I recently just fixed my Powerbook and will now be again using it to write my papers, most of which are research in nature.

My problem is that Microsoft Word doesn't really do what I want it to do, though it's a fine word processor. I need to be able to track chunks of text that will be cited, quoted, or used to provoke my own thoughts, as well as keep track of an outline of what I am doing within the paper. Perhaps this is a bit idealistic, but does anything like that exist? Or are there several programs I might use together?

 

[CorvusCamenarum]

Hello. I recently just fixed my Powerbook and will now be again using it to write my papers, most of which are research in nature.

My problem is that Microsoft Word doesn't really do what I want it to do, though it's a fine word processor. I need to be able to track chunks of text that will be cited, quoted, or used to provoke my own thoughts, as well as keep track of an outline of what I am doing within the paper. Perhaps this is a bit idealistic, but does anything like that exist? Or are there several programs I might use together?

You might like this, it's called Mellel - http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13254 .

 

[Caffereine]

Thank you for the suggestion, I just took a look at the demo but it doesn't seem to quite handle chunks of text all that intuitively.

 

[kiwi-in-uk]

Have you looked at Note Taker or NoteBook?
Or the Scrapbook in Word?

 

[stevietheb]

Our writing processes sound very different—but I use a combination of DevonThink, OmniOutliner, and Mellel for my papers.

DevonThink provides an interesting way to store and search chunks of text.

OmniOutliner is a heavy-duty outliner.

Mellel is a great word processor that is especially geared toward folks who need to work in multiple languages.

 

[calebjohnston]

pen and paper is a great way to keep thoughts permanently written down.

 

[portent]

OmniOutliner is included with recent PowerBook models. It's much more than an outline-generator.

If you really need to hold info for citations, get a copy of EndNote.
http://www.endnote.com/

 

[enckwanzer]

I second the recommendation for Endnote. Not only is it a powerful citation application, but it can now store figures, tables, and notes (e.g., chunks of text) with every citation. Oh ... and it's searchable. As a Ph.D. candidate completing my dissertation, I couldn't work without it.

 

[stevietheb]

For me, Endnote was too buggy and slow. Using Endnote with Word was always creating beachballs on my iBook. I was also a little annoyed when upgrading to MS Office 2004 was going to require me to spend $100 (that's with a student discount) to upgrade Endnote (v. 8 I think).

SO, I now use similar product called Bookends (available from Sonny Software). Bookends is not as full featured as Endnote, but I haven't run across a missing feature that bothers me.

 

[MIDI_EVIL]

pen and paper is a great way to keep thoughts permanently written down.

Is that compatible with OS X 10.3.9 ?








Rich.

 

[wordmunger]

Personally, the best thing for my writing has been blogs. Blogs allow you to place items in categories, to easily search among many different "documents," and to link to online resources. Cognitive Daily started as a research blog, where we could keep track of journal articles we'd read by writing synopses of the articles. The grand plan is to write a book based on all these blog posts (the book is in the proposal phase now). It works quite well -- just search for the posts you want, then copy and paste them into word for final drafting.

And, best of all, Cognitive Daily is itself a money maker!

Greta uses endnote to track the sources, but I just use MS Word to create one big bibliography listing.