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Hyperbole User Manual

7.3 Autonumbering

See section 7.5.1 Adding and Killing, which explains how to add new cells to or remove cells from a koutline. As you do this, or as you promote or demote cells within the outline, the labels preceding the contents of each cell automatically update to reflect the new structure. These labels are also known as autonumbers and as relative ids because they change as the structure changes.

The outline structure is shown by these labels and by the indentation of each outline level. Normally, each deeper level is indented another three characters, to reflect the nesting.

The default autonumbers are called alphanumeric labels because they alternate between using numbers and letters to distinguish each successive level. Each alphanumeric label uniquely identifies a cell's position in an outline, so that there is no need to scan back to prior cells to see what the current section number of an outline is. This is similar to a legal numbering scheme but without all the period characters between level numbers. As an example, 1b3 is equivalent to a legal label of 1.2.3. Both refer to the 3rd cell at level 3, below the 2nd child of the first cell at level 1. Said another way, this is the 3rd child of the 1st cell's 2nd child. In other words, it is easier to visualize hierarchies than to talk about them.

Alphanumeric labels are the default because they are shorter and easier to read aloud than equivalent legal ones. They also simplify distinguishing between even and odd level labels because of the alternating character set.

You can change the labeling scheme used in a particular outline with the command {C-c C-l}. A {?} then will show all of your options. Legal labels, partial alpha labels (single level autonumbering where only the last part of the level number is shown, as commonly seen in other outliner products), idstamps (permanent cell ids), and star outline level labels (Emacs asterisk-based outline labeling) are all available. Or you may choose to turn autonumbering off. Cells are still indented to reflect the outline structure whether or not labels are displayed.

A cell label is normally followed by two spaces, called the label separator, prior to the start of the cell contents. You can change the separator with for the current outline with {C-c M-l}. {C-u C-c M-l} will additionally change the default separator value used when new outlines are created (for the current session only). For example, use the value ". " to get a trailing period after each cell label. The separator must be at least two characters long but may be longer.

If you find a separator that you prefer for all outlines, change the separator setting permanently by adding the following line to your Emacs initialization file, `~/.emacs', substituting for `your-separator':

(setq kview:default-label-separator "your-separator")