Re: Best PC Outline Software for Middle School

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 1591

Posted by ureadit
2003-03-24 19:23:15

John,

For pure writing, the classic outliner is best. I would guess that that is what More is like. I used GrandView.

Before I discuss specific outliners/PIMS, some generalities:

I have come to the realization that these really are two different kinds of animals.

The traditional outliners, More, GrandView, etc., allow you to organize your thoughts, put text to them, and then view the results so you can revise, move text, etc. You can see more than one heading and the text that accompanies it at the same time. (At least I can in GrandView & Inspiration.)

Tree outliners are more like a book with a table of contents. The table of contents, that is the tree, gives you immediate access to the “chapter” or “subchapter” corresponding to the chapter or subchapter title you highlight in the tree. But you only can see the contents of one chapter at a time.

Thus, it appears that traditional outliners are best for writing and tree outliners are best for information storage…for creating electronic personal reference “books.”

........

The two classic outliners that I know of are NoteMap and Inspiration 7 (http://www.inspiration.com). Notemap may be slightly easier to use, but it currently appears that http://www.casesoft.com may not produce new versions, despite earlier promises. Inspiration ver 6 was clunky to use. Version 7 is somewhat better, but has large file sizes. On the other hand it also provides diagramming and can accept graphics. NoteMap cannot accept graphics.

Tree-based “outliners” come in many varieties. TreePad (http://www.treepad.com) has several versions, incl one free one. Most versions probably have more features than your son will want to deal with.

Jot Plus ver 2.55 is very easy to use, but has no graphics. However a new version with graphic capabilities should be available within 2 months. It just entered beta testing. (http://www.kingstairs.com)

Maple (http://www.crystaloffice) does well in both text and graphics.

http://www.tgslabs.com has two versions. They also do well in both text and graphics, although I think Maple may be have a bit more capability. But the tgs ones have a prettier interface.

For Web page saves MyBase (with WebCollect) excels (http://www.wjjsoft.com). It also does well with both text and graphics, perhaps better with graphics than any of the others as it has a special “attachments” feature. It also has some special features that might not interest your son, and presently lacks a few things that are rather standard on the others I’ve mentioned.

Keynote (http://www.tranglos.com/free/index.html) is text-based and is free, so it’s worth looking at.

Since printing is important to your son, it is imperative that you test printing on all of the candidates you’ve selected. I have not tried printing on some of these even though I use them. Also, the tree-based ones may use different printing formats to combine tree nodes with the corresponding text.

The trees can be thought of as tables of contents that can move the topics around.

If I were to recommend something to a student who wanted/needed to use the software for writing papers for school, I think I’d suggest Inspiration. If you’re willing to go to DOS, there are free versions of PC Outline on the net. It was/is a great outliner, but is not WYSIWYG.

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