1. Quickstart
This first session will guide you through the essential features of the Networker: how to create and relate topic pages, how to use one name for different topics, how to merge different topic pages, how to manage bookmarks and take notes on each page, how to create a web site, or integrate the data created into an existing information system.
Create a first topic
Create a new topic by clicking in the box +New Topic. Enter Manhattan. Press Enter to validate. A new page with "Manhattan" is displayed.
Create a relation
Create a new relation to express that Manhattan is a borough of New York.
Click on ⇄ Connect to add a relation. Click on "Role". Enter Borough of. Press Tab to go to the next box.
In the box : "Related Topic", enter New York. Click or press the Enter key.
Create a second topic
Click in the box +New Topic. Enter Brooklyn.
Create a relation to express that Brooklyn is a borough of New York:
Click on ⇄Connect, then in Role. Enter or select Borough of.
In Related Topic, select New York.
Click on blue box: Borough of — New York ✔︎
Check the connections
Click on New York. You will see that New York now contains two relations: Brooklyn Borough of — and Manhattan Borough of —. The symbol — indicates the current topic, here New York.
Create a third topic.
In the box +New Topic, Enter Albany. Press Enter.
Create a new relation to express that Albany is the capital of New York. Click on ⇄ Connect. Enter capital of as Role and New York as Related Topic.
Click on New York. It is now connected to Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Albany.
Make information more precise
Although it is undeniable that Albany is the capital of New York, and Manhattan is a borough of New York, this information is not entirely accurate, because we are not referring to the same meaning of New York. Albany is the capital of the state of New York, while Manhattan and Brooklyn are boroughs of the city of New York. Let's edit this information by creating two distinct topics for New York. On the New York page, click the box Names. Let's add a new name, and call it New York again, because that is really its name. A page is displayed, indicating that a similar name has been found. In order to confirm that we want to use the same name again, we will define a scope in which this name is valid. Click in the box Select or Create Scope, and enter State. Press Enter. A new blue box appears, with New York (State). Click on it to confirm.
Now the topic New York has two names: New York and New York (State). Let's assign the information corresponding to each of these names, by separating the topic into two topics. Click on the names and again when a blue background appears. Now the two names New York and New York (State) are present on the top of the page. New York appears bigger, because it is the "preferred" name. Now we are going to divide the page into two pages, assigning information relevant to each of the names. This operation is called detaching. Press the button on the top bar marked "Merge/Detach".
A new page appears that will enable us to reassign information connected with each name. Click on New York (State). The name now appears in big characters in the right column. Click on the line containing "Albany" and move it to the right.
Click on Detach.
The modified New York page now appears with only relations to Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Enter New York in the Search Box. Click on New York "State" . It contains only the relation to "Albany".
Create Bookmarks and Notes
Create a new topic. Call it New York City.
Click on the Web bookmark icon. Enter https://wnyc.org under Url and press Enter or click on Submit. This will link to the wnyc.org web site.
Click on Text with the note icon.
Enter the text: "New York is a big city on the East Coast". You can click on the small arrow on the right side of the box's upper gray bar, and use the B or I buttons to insert bold or Italic, or use the keyboard with Command-B (MacOS) or Ctrl-B (Windows/Linux) for bold and Command-I or Ctrl-I for italic. Press the Save button or move your cursor outside of the editor. The text should be automatically saved.
Merge Topics.
We are now in a situation which is the reverse as the one we saw before. Instead of having information relevant to two topics on one page, we have information relevant to the same topic on two different pages. Let's bring them together on a single page. This operation is called "Merge".
Click on Merge/Detach on the top bar. Select New York (not New York State). Press Submit
Click on Preview MergeNew York with: New York City ✓.
The two topics appear side by side. If we would need to cancel, we could press the Merge/Detach button to cancel the operation. But let's go ahead and click on Process Merge .
The new page contains the properties previously attached to New York and New York City. It contains the links to the boroughs previously with New York, as well as the bookmark and the note previously with New York City.
Export to a web site to HTML, JSON, XML
Click on the In/Out button and Export. Then click on the HTMLWeb Site button (near the end of the option list).
Wait until the spinner stops. Then, click on the link New. You may now be able to browse a web site you have just created containing one page per topic will all links activated as you created them. This web site is, by default, password-protected, to protect your information to be available on a public web site. We will provide you with the appropriate password. You can now share the information that you have created with a restricted group of people, with which you can share the password for accessing this information. If you would like instead to post it to the web, we can either configure your application for it to be immediately available for the world to see, with a URL provided by you or set by us, or we provide you with a link to download a zip file containing the files for a web site so that you can post the information on your own servers. We could also send the information directly to the server that belongs to you, if you provide us with the access codes.
Note. We can design a style that fits your needs, or you can provide us with a stylesheet to apply on your files
Repeat for JSON and XML. When you click New, the results will appear on a different tab on your browser. You can go back and forth from the Networker to the output. The results can be use these exports to feed your own information system. Note that the object names in JSON and the element names in XML can be customized on demand, according to your needs.
Next session: Click on Hands On User Guide and click on 2. Maximize Productivity.