Views
Tree View - The left-hand view shows a tree of node titles. Parent
nodes can be opened and closed to display or hide their indented descendant
nodes. Clicking on an already selected node allows the title to be edited.
Right-click context menus are available for commonly used functions.
Breadcrumb View - The top pane shows the parent and ancestors of the
selected node. It is blank if no nodes or multiple nodes are selected.
Ancestors with blue text can be clicked to select those nodes.
Right-hand Views - The right pane is tabbed to show one of three
different views of the data. The "Data Output" view shows the formatted text,
the "Data Edit" view shows text edit boxes, and the "Title List" view shows
an editable list of node titles.
When a parent node is selected in the tree, the right view will default to
showing information about the selected node in an upper pane and information
about the selected node's children in a lower pane. The "View > Show Child
Pane" command will toggle the display of the child nodes. If the selected node
has no children, the view will show a single pane with information about the
selected node only.
When multiple nodes are selected in the tree (by holding down the shift or
Ctrl keys while clicking), the right view will not display any child node
information. It will instead show information about every selected node.
When no nodes are selected in the tree (by clicking on a blank area or Ctrl
clicking to unselect), the right view will show information about the
top-level (root) nodes.
Data Output View - The "Data Output" view shows formatted output text.
It cannot be edited from this view.
When the "View > Show Output Descendants" command is toggled, the "Data
Output" view will show an indented list with information about every
descendant of a single selected node.
Data Edit View - The "Data Edit" view shows a text edit box for each
data field within a node. It also shows the node types and the node titles.
The types of edit boxes vary based on the field type. Some are just text
editors, while others (such as choice fields, date fields, links, etc.) have
pull-down menus or dialogs.
Title List View - The "Title List" view shows a list of node titles
that can be modified using typical text editor methods. If a new line is
typed, a new node is created with that title. If a line is deleted, the
corresponding node is removed from the tree.
Editing
Node Menu - The commands in the "Node" menu operate on the selected
nodes in the left tree view. There are commands to add or insert nodes, rename
node titles and delete nodes. There are also commands to rearrange the tree by
changing indent levels or moving nodes up or down. For many of the commands,
the descendants of the selected nodes are also affected.
Edit Menu - The edit menu includes undo and redo commands that can fix
problems. Cut, copy and paste commands can operate either on text in the
right-hand view (if selected or active) or to tree nodes.
Format Menu - The format menu has text formatting commands that are
active when using edit boxes in the Data Edit view.
Shortcuts - There are several shortcuts for use in tree editing. Drag
and drop will move (or copy if the Ctrl button is held) nodes. Clicking on a
selected node will rename it. Pressing the delete key will remove the selected
nodes. If desired, these shortcuts can be disabled in "Tools > General
Options".
Files
Templates - When starting a new file, a dialog box offers a choice of
templates. The default has only a single text field for each node that
contains the title. The Long Text template adds a second long text field for
more output text. Other templates have various fields for contacts, book lists
and to-do lists.
Sample Files - Various TreeLine sample files can be opened by using the
"File > Open Sample" command. These have more detail and example content
than the new file templates.
Data Types
Node Types - Multiple node data types can be defined in a TreeLine
file. Each can contain different data fields and have different output
formats. See the template and sample files for examples. Nodes can be set to a
specific type using the "Data > Set Node Type" command.
Type Config - The "Data > Configure Data Types" command is used to
modify node data types, fields and output formatting. Refer to the Detailed
Usage section of the full documentation for details.