I've lurked here for a few years. Began with MaxThink then jumped to Ecco. Leo is something worth a look. It's built for programmers but has so many powerful uses for pure knowledge management outlining it's incredible. Take 15 minutes to go thru the tutorials:

http://www.evisa.com/e/sbooks/leo/sbframetoc_ie.htm

The Leo homepage:

http://personalpages.tds.net/~edream/front.html

The first thing that hooked me was clones (similar in effect to topics in multiple notepads in ecco). The nice thing about clones is the creator of Leo didn't screw up by introducing some artifical parent topic mechanism like Folders (a folder is not just a parent topic)... instead all topic types are just topics - fixes a real design flaw in ecco.

But, it's the import/export magic of Leo that will make it so powerful for interacting with others that don't 'get' outlining.

Very interested in other's opinions: dbolene@yahoo.com

david...

"Clone" doesn't seem to be the right way to describe this interesting feature, since that word suggests a copy which has an independent life of its own after it is made.

I think a more apt way to describe this would be to say the node is "linked" when it appears more than once in the outline. That's the word used in Windows to describe copies which reflect subsequent updates to the thing copied.

The interesting thing about this feature is that, unlike a Windows link, destroying the original node does not break the linked nodes.

The original node and the linked nodes are distinguishable only by their position in the outline (they have different parents and/or siblings). Otherwise they behave as if they were a single node which can be edited wherever it appears, and which continues to exist as long as it appears in at least one place.

Very interesting indeed.