My two cents

< Next Message | Back to archived message list | Previous Message >

Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 140

Posted by mlsmith
1999-08-15 18:22:03

Something is really strange about the software market today. At least for those who participate in this discussion, the emergence of outlining programs in the late 80s was a kind of seminal moment in PC evolution. For me, it opened up a whole new stage for thinking and writing. Ten years later, there is no equivalent product available.

On the Windows platform today, we don’t have a program that does outlining efficiently and consistently. Word for Windows does a poor job of it and I don’t know about other word processors. The rest of the market has veered in the direction of PIMs and info databases (even among shareware) or using outlining suborindated to other functions like presentations (PowerPoint, Inspiration). I’ve been looking at other options, but there does not seem to be an outline-based writing tool. (Sorry, Dave, I downloaded Frontier 5 and tried out the outlining features and it did not strike me as what I wanted, at least not with all the overhead.)

I have found myself in the position of having to pull out my GrandView disks and reinstalling the program because there doesn’t seem to be any program that performs its role better. In any case, there is no way of taking advantage of the Windows graphic interface and other features like formatting and fonts. It really makes me envious of the Apple users. Maybe I’ll just have to switch over to an iMac and start using MORE.

Back to archived message list