Hello, I stumbled upon this forum as I was looking for a solution to my outlining woes. All last semester in law school I outlined my courses with Word For Windows XP version and it drove me nuts. I'm on a mission to look for a new program to outline with next semester. I read some good reviews on NoteMap on this board and am currently test driving it. I like it. I was just wondering if anyone has additional suggestions for someone like me, as I need a low fuss program that has as many editing features as Word offers but one with which I can intuitively and painlessly outline. I have noticed some editing features missing from NoteMap that Word has, such as the paintbrush editing or the autocorrect macros you can add. I also add tables and use linedraw to make small diagrams in my outlines. I know I can import NoteMap docs into Word to add such things into the document but it didn't seem like it was possible to then import the doc back into NoteMap from Word. Any thoughts? Thanks-
Regards,
Elizabeth

Elizabeth,

I believe that NoteMap is the best choice for outlining. As you've pointed out, it doesn't do it all by any stretch of the imagination, but as far as I can tell, there isn't an outliner available today that comes close to matching it. Greg, who works for CaseSoft, the people who make NoteMap, has posted to this group from time to time and has said that they hope to have version 2 out sometime this spring, I think. Maybe you can make some suggestions to them and get a bit more of the functionality you are looking for.

Steve Z.
Burlington, Vermont

Among the traditional outliners, besides Notemap the only other one I am aware of (that doesn't have problems) is Inspiration ver 6 (ver 5 has bugs). You cannot add graphics to an Inspiration outline, but it can automatically convert an outline into a diagram. You can also create diagrams directly. Inspiration allows you to have nested files, so I think it is possible to create an outline and within the outline "link" to a diagram you have created. Inspiration can also convert rtf and txt files into Inspiration files.

Anyway, you can try it at www.inspiration.com .

If you are interested in a a tree-style "outliner," try these:

Jot+ at www.kingstairs.com
Treepad+ at www.treepad.com/treepadplus
Maple at www.crystaloffice.com
GoldenNotes or GoldenSection at www.tgslabs.com

There are probably scores or hundreds of tree-style "outliners."
Two others of possible interest are InfoSelect which can be used to include many files in one BIG tree, but is limited in its editing capabilities. InfoRecall has many features, but the version I tried a few years ago was rather buggy. Also, it is keyed to your computers, so if you want to move it to another computer, you'd better hope the company is still in business so it can give you a registration nmber for the new computer.

Be forewarned that there are good odds that development of any outliner may cease without warning. That happened to TreePad a couple of years ago, but it is now in rapid development.

Finally, I have found some problems with converting NotePad files into Word files. Try converting into rtf files. rtf works better for me.