Howto: Reference files in Kinkless
If you’re using Kinkless, there’s an easy way to store reference files with your projects, right inside your Kinkless document. I usually make a mindmap for my bigger projects, using the excellent NovaMind mindmapping app (available for both Mac and Windows).
So here’s a small mindmap on how to rule the world, a project quite a lot of people seem to be having on their list.
Make the mindmap, and save it. When you make a document in OS X, you get a small icon right in front of the name of the document, in the title bar at the top. Before saving it’s greyed out, and everytime you make changes it also greys out.
But hit Apple-S and the icon gets colors. And – you can drag it.
Exposé is an amazing productivity tool
For dragging to be useful, I have set up Exposé like this:
In English: If you drag the cursor to the lower left corner of your screen, Exposé will show all your open windows, in all apps. That’s the one we’re going to use.
Now, in OmniOutliner Pro, make a new project (“Rule the world”) in your Kinkless file, and hit Apple and Esc to make a comment on it. This opens up a field just below the projects name, where you can put notes and stuff that are not sub-tasks. Like this:
In my example I’ve just typed a reference to my mindmap: “My mindmap for ruling the world”. Just leave the cursor where it is after typing that, and switch to OmniOutliner Pro. Click the little icon in the title bar and start dragging. The icon now becomes a little bigger.
Drag the icon down to the lower left corner of your screen, the one we set up in Exposé. Now all your open windows pop up on the screen. Look for the window with your Kinkless projects in OmniOutliner Pro. Move the cursor up again and “park” on top of that window. Wait half a second or so. Finder will now zoom in on that window. Drop the icon right after the text you wrote previously.
Now you have a link to the mindmap directly from your Kinkless projects. Double-click the icon, and NovaMind opens with your mindmap.
Other ways to do this
As always in OS X, there are many ways to do things. You can drag from a window to another, if both are visible. Here I’m dragging a file saved in TextEdit directly into OmniOutliner Pro.
You can also start dragging the icon from the mindmap, use Alt-Tab to switch between apps and then drop the icon.
Forget import or open commands
With this method, you almost never have to import or link to files with a dialog window. You make the document you need, save it to the right place, and drag it into the app you want to use it. I use it for Livetype files in Final Cut Pro, Photoshop files in Final Cut Pro and InDesign, and in general all kinds of graphics, sound, video and text files into apps that use them. No more Apple-I. A huge timesaver. At it looks cool.
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