Notes

A note is anything worth keeping that is not a work: an idea you have not started, a reference, a list of things to check. kilna keeps them as one kind of thing with a kind rather than a separate place for each. The kinds are words of the craft and live in the profile document, so a craft that works differently names its own.

A kind the profile gives sections is a kind of card: the characters, places and lore of the Studio profile are cards of the canon, kept on the Canon screen as facts, with the note as each card’s free text. The Notes screen keeps the rest.

The Notes screen

Notes in the menu (or G N) opens every note of the profile. The list is on the left, the open note on the right.

• The chips along the top narrow the list to one kind, with how many there are of each. Click the chip that is on to turn it off.
• The search box finds notes by any word of the title or the text.
• The tag picker narrows the list to one tag. Clicking a tag on an open note does the same.
• + Note makes a new note in the kind you are looking at and opens it ready to type.

The open note is part of the address, so Alt+← walks back through the notes you opened, and a search hit from Ctrl+K lands on the note itself.

Writing a note

The note opens as it reads — markdown drawn, links resolved. Edit (or a double-click on the text) turns it into its text; Done or Escape turns it back. The text saves itself a moment after you stop typing; nothing asks you to press save.

• The title is optional. A note without one is listed by its first line.
• The kind is picked beside the title.
• Tags sit along the bottom. + tag offers the tags already used on other notes, so the second note about winter is tagged winter rather than Winter; Enter takes whatever you typed as a new one. A note’s tags are its own vocabulary — the tags on works are a separate list.
• Links to a work or a version — [[work:…]], [[version:…]] — open that work when clicked.

Checklists

A line written as - [ ] check the thickness of the layer is drawn as a checkbox. Click it and the line becomes - [x] … — the text is what is kept, and the box only edits it. The list shows how far along each note’s checklist is, 2/5, so a to-do list can be read without opening it.

Checkboxes tick the same way in a work’s Notes tab.

A note and a work

A note can be about a work. The line under the title says which; click it to open the work, or × to let go. Attach to a work picks one from the catalogue — the way an idea written on its own joins the song it turned out to be for. A work’s own Notes tab lists the notes about it, and each has a button that opens it here.

Making an idea a work

Make it a work turns the open note into a new work. You choose the kind and the name — the note’s title, or its first line, is offered — and the note’s text becomes the work’s first version, in the kind’s first role that is the work itself (Lyrics for a song).

The note does not stay. Its words live in the version now, and keeping both would leave the same text in two places, one of them edited and the other not. The note goes to the trash, and Undo (or Ctrl+Z) takes the whole thing back: the work goes, the note returns. Its tags stay with the note; the new work starts with none.

An idea or a phrase is the exception — below.

Ideas and phrases

An idea and a phrase are notes of their own kinds, in every shipped profile. What makes them different is that they are material: works are made from them, and a bank of material is only worth keeping if it knows what has been used.

• Where it stands. An idea or a phrase is fresh, used, parked (set aside for later) or dropped (given up on, and kept so it is not written again). The state is picked beside the title, and the screen opens such a kind on its fresh ones — the state picker above the list moves between states.
• To a work. Where a plain note says Attach to a work, an idea or a phrase says To a work: picking the work ties the note to it and marks it used, in one step, and Undo takes both back. The note shows on the work’s Notes tab. Letting the work go makes it fresh again.
• Make it a work. The text becomes the new work’s first version, as for any note — but the idea stays in the bank, used and tied to the new work, instead of going to the trash. The words in the work will change; the idea is the record of what was taken.

The bank of phrases

A phrase is one line, and a thousand of them are read as lines, not as pages. The Phrase chip opens the bank: a row per phrase — its words, its tags, the work it went into — and All leaves the phrases out, so they never bury the notes.

• Type a new phrase into the box at the top and press Enter.
• The arrow at the end of a row sends it to a work; the menu beside it edits the line (a double-click does too), makes a work of it, sets it aside, drops it, brings it back to fresh, or deletes it.
• The search box, the tag and the state narrow the bank the way they narrow the list.

The bank shows the first two hundred rows; Show more adds the next.