Outliner Tool

To aid in the creation and transition from idea, to draft, to outline, to file structure, and back again if needed.

Purpose

Ever make an outline like this?

Section 1
    Chapter 1
        Intro to characters
    Chapter 2
        Starting the journey
    Chapter 3
        On their way
Section 2
    Chapter 4
        Running into trouble
    Chapter 5
        Running into more trouble
    Chapter 6
        Breakdown
Section 3
    Chapter 7
        Meeting friend
    Chapter 8
        Overcoming troubles
    Chapter 9
        Arriving back home

Now you want to move this to individual files like this:

Section 1
    Chapter 1.md
        Intro to characters
    Chapter 2.md
        Starting the journey
    Chapter 3.md
        On their way
Section 2
    Chapter 4.md
        Running into trouble
    Chapter 5.md
        Running into more trouble
    Chapter 6.md
        Breakdown
Section 3
    Chapter 7.md
        Meeting friend
    Chapter 8.md
        Overcoming troubles
    Chapter 9.md
        Arriving back home

Or this:

Section 1
    Chapter 1.md
        Intro to characters
        Bill, Bob
        Jill, Jane
    Chapter 2.md
        Starting the journey
    Chapter 3.md
        On their way

This last example would be one folder called "Chapter 1" containging three markdown files each with some content. The file Chapter 1.md would contain 3 lines of content.

You can create any plain text file type you want:

Project 1
    main.py
        def hello():
            print("hello world")

Will create a folder with a python file with the following content:

def hello():
    print("hello world")

Important Points

1. Any line with a . will be considered a file and not a folder (this does not apply to contents of a file)

2. Beware when calling files or folders the same name, they will be overwritten.

myfolder
    myfile.txt
        mycontents
        morecontents
    myfile.txt
        helloworld

This will end up with:

myfolder
    myfile.txt
        helloworld

3. Bear in mind that file systems implement their own ordering. So if you have a source file like this:

instructions
    first step.md
    second step.md
    third step.md
    fourth step.md

Once they are created, you will probably end up with a folder with the files ordered like this:

instructions
    first step.md
    fourth step.md
    second step.md
    third step.md

For this reason you can use the number argument as True in create_main to automatically number the folders and files so that they keep their order.

001 instructions
    001 first step.md
    002 second step.md
    003 third step.md
    004 fourth step.md

4. This tool does not yet recognize spaces as equivalent to tabs. The input document must use tabs for indentation.

5. If you leave a blank line without any content, be sure that it has the correct tab indentation level. For instance:

folder
    folder
        file.txt
            Title

            Content

If the line between Title and Content has zero tabs, this will cause unexpected results since the parser will take that to mean that its the end of the file, and then you have a new folder that has as a parent file.txt which will probably result in an error.

Usage

1. Clone this repository.
2. Open main.py.
3. Modify the relevant paths and run it.

For example:

from o_creator import create_main

# Insert full Linux (no ~) or Windows path here
source_file = "/home/i/Dropbox/Desktop/outliner_linux_test/outline.txt"
output = "/home/i/Dropbox/Desktop/outliner_linux_test/output"

# the argument number here is used to number the output folders and files
create_main(source_file, output, number = True)

This tool uses pathlib so Windows or Linux paths will work here.