Tables displayed as outlines — outline layouts

[Bruce_F_Donnelly]

I’d like to be able to display a table as an outline. I use Coda to take notes and organize information. There are so many times that one note I take speaks to two or three different issues. Maybe I’m taking notes on community gardens and farmers’ markets. I find that a nonprofit does both community gardens and farmers’ markets. I will want to mention the nonprofit when I’m discussing communiity gardens, and I’ll want to mention it later when I’m discussing farmers’ markets.

Group lets you do something similar, but it is different when it comes to multiple values in a column. Take this table:

Beth is both in my family and my co-worker. Adam is both a friend and in my family.

However, if I were going to write about them, I’d have something like this:

Co-worker

• Beth
• Doris
• Edward

Family

• Adam
• Beth

Friend

• Adam
• Charlie

In this case, Adam and Beth both show up twice. Ideally, I wouldn’t want to call out those repeated rows graphically unless I hovered. The best way to do it might be to show an extra “find” icon alongside the expand icon/button that you can click on to edit a row in a popup. Clicking on that icon would open a filtered view of the table. The filter would be for the row. If I were to click on the “find” icon in front of Adam, I would see this:

Family

• Adam

Friend

• Adam

As an aside, I realize that the column labels wouldn’t show in such a view. That is, the words, “Name” and “Relationship” would not be seen in the outline.

The best part is that this sort of outline could be another bridge between Coda’s text capabilities and its table capabilities.

[Pch]

Hi @Bruce_F_Donnelly and Welcome back to the Community !

@Bruce_F_Donnelly

Group lets you do something similar, but it is different when it comes to multiple values in a column.

To be honest, I think you could easily do something similar using a Lookup (instead of simple select list) and group a Relationship table instead of People and Relationships (see the sample )

As for creating outlines based on the content of tables, it’s possible using canvas formulas
(See below the 2 tables in the sample ).

For example, a canvas formula such as this one …

Relationship.FormulaMap(
  List(
    CurrentValue.Relationship,
    BulletedList(CurrentValue.[People & Relationship].Name)
  ).Join(Character(10))
).BulletedList()

would return …

With Coda New Editor (currently in Beta), announced during the last Block Party …

A formula looking like this …

Relationship.FormulaMap(
  Concatenate(
    CurrentValue.Relationship,
    BulletedList(CurrentValue.[People & Relationship].Name)
  )
).Join(LineBreak())

… would return

Here’s another topic with a somewhat similar demand / possibilities of gathering content from tables

How to generate doc content from table?

Is it possible to generate text from a table? A minimum example would be something like: Table: [image] Text pattern: [Task Owner] in [Tasks] will take care of [Sub-tasks] Desired Output: “John in Task 1 will take care of Sub task 1” “Jeoff in Task 2 will take care of Sub task 2” “Jeoff in Task 2 will take care of Sub task 3” I’m really new to Coda and don’t know it’s the right tool to achieve such functionalities.

(Don’t hesitate if you need explanations … I was just trying to show you some ideas )

[Bruce_F_Donnelly]

Thanks!

I had to set aside time to look at it, so it took a while, but I appreciate it. I get the concept of a few things like FormulaMap in the sense that I can follow it, but I have no intuitive sense of when to use it. That said, the new editor will help a lot, apparently. The second one is much easier to follow – if you don’t mind my saying, the first one seems to go through gymnastics.

[Bruce_F_Donnelly]

After some time working on the project for which I inquired, I have to say that although this kind of solution is serviceable, a way to display an outline would be much, much better. I had to organize by three levels instead of four–and sort them to boot. One additional option could be @-mentions for all but the first or last times a row shows up in the outline.