Views
Tree View - The left-hand view shows a tree of node titles. Parent nodes can be opened and closed to display or hide their indented descendant nodes. Clicking on an already selected node allows the title to be edited. Right-click context menus are available for commonly used functions.
Breadcrumb View - The top pane shows the parent and ancestors of the selected node. It is blank if no nodes or multiple nodes are selected. Ancestors with blue text can be clicked to select those nodes.
Right-hand Views - The right pane is tabbed to show one of three different views of the data. The "Data Output" view shows the formatted text, the "Data Edit" view shows text edit boxes, and the "Title List" view shows an editable list of node titles.
When a parent node is selected in the tree, the right view will default to showing information about the selected node in an upper pane and information about the selected node's children in a lower pane. The "View > Show Child Pane" command will toggle the display of the child nodes. If the selected node has no children, the view will show a single pane with information about the selected node only.
When multiple nodes are selected in the tree (by holding down the shift or Ctrl keys while clicking), the right view will not display any child node information. It will instead show information about every selected node.
When no nodes are selected in the tree (by clicking on a blank area or Ctrl clicking to unselect), the right view will show information about the top-level (root) nodes.
Data Output View - The "Data Output" view shows formatted output text. It cannot be edited from this view.
When the "View > Show Output Descendants" command is toggled, the "Data Output" view will show an indented list with information about every descendant of a single selected node.
Data Edit View - The "Data Edit" view shows a text edit box for each data field within a node. It also shows the node types and the node titles. The types of edit boxes vary based on the field type. Some are just text editors, while others (such as choice fields, date fields, links, etc.) have pull-down menus or dialogs.
Title List View - The "Title List" view shows a list of node titles that can be modified using typical text editor methods. If a new line is typed, a new node is created with that title. If a line is deleted, the corresponding node is removed from the tree.
Editing
Node Menu - The commands in the "Node" menu operate on the selected nodes in the left tree view. There are commands to add or insert nodes, rename node titles and delete nodes. There are also commands to rearrange the tree by changing indent levels or moving nodes up or down. For many of the commands, the descendants of the selected nodes are also affected.
Edit Menu - The edit menu includes undo and redo commands that can fix problems. Cut, copy and paste commands can operate either on text in the right-hand view (if selected or active) or to tree nodes.
Format Menu - The format menu has text formatting commands that are active when using edit boxes in the Data Edit view.
Shortcuts - There are several shortcuts for use in tree editing. Drag and drop will move (or copy if the Ctrl button is held) nodes. Clicking on a selected node will rename it. Pressing the delete key will remove the selected nodes. If desired, these shortcuts can be disabled in "Tools > General Options".
Files
Templates - When starting a new file, a dialog box offers a choice of templates. The default has only a single text field for each node that contains the title. The Long Text template adds a second long text field for more output text. Other templates have various fields for contacts, book lists and to-do lists.
Sample Files - Various TreeLine sample files can be opened by using the "File > Open Sample" command. These have more detail and example content than the new file templates.
Data Types
Node Types - Multiple node data types can be defined in a TreeLine file. Each can contain different data fields and have different output formats. See the template and sample files for examples. Nodes can be set to a specific type using the "Data > Set Node Type" command.
Type Config - The "Data > Configure Data Types" command is used to modify node data types, fields and output formatting. Refer to the Detailed Usage section of the full documentation for details.