Inserting and Importing
The paragraphs of another buffer or file may be inserted into a koutline as a set of cells by using the {C-x i} command. When prompted, you may use a buffer name or filename from which to insert; completion is provided for filenames only.
The elements from the original buffer are converted into kcells and inserted as the successors of the current cell. If {C-u C-x i} is used, they are instead inserted as the initial children of the current cell.
For information on mode and suffix-specific conversions performed on file elements before they are inserted, see the documentation for the variables, kimport:mode-alist and kimport:suffix-alist. This same conversion process applies if you invoke {M-x kotl-mode RET} in a non-koutline buffer or if you perform a generic file import as described later in this section.
Use {M-x kimport:insert-file-contents RET} to insert an entire file into the current cell following point.
The outliner supports conversion of three types of files into koutline files. You can import a file into an existing koutline, following the tree at point, or can create a new koutline from the imported file contents. {C-h h k f f} or {M-x kimport:file RET} selects the importation type based on the buffer or filename suffix of the file to import.
If you want to convert a buffer from some other mode into a koutline and then want to save the converted buffer back to its original file, thereby replacing the original format, use {M-x kotl-mode RET}. Remember that you will lose the old format of the buffer when you do this.
Use one of the following commands when you need explicit control over the type of importation used on some text. With these commands, your original file remains intact.
Use {M-x kimport:text RET} and you will be prompted for a text buffer or file to import and the new koutline buffer or file to create from its text. Each paragraph will be imported as a separate cell, with all imported cells at the same level, since indentation of paragraphs is presently ignored. This same command can be used to import the contents, attributes and level structure of cells from another koutline.
Star outlines are standard emacs outlines where each entry begins with one or more asterisk characters. Use {M-x kimport:star-outline RET} and you will be prompted for the star outline buffer or file to import and the new koutline buffer or file to create.
(Skip this if you are unfamiliar with the Augment/NLS system originally created at SRI.) Files exported from the Augment system as text often have alphanumeric statement identifiers on the right side. You can import such files while maintaining their outline structure. Use {M-x kimport:aug-post-outline RET} and you will be prompted for the Augment buffer or file to import and the koutline to create. See https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/148/ for more information.