I want to start a thread about how people use outliners. I was first an Acta user than In Control. Both good products but different products. I read how everyone finds MORE indispensable and even evolutionary. So what do you use if for? Be specific, please. I'm always looking to improve productivity and MORE looks like a great tool.

I'm using it on OS 8.6 with no problems.

Also would really like the docs in a more accessible form than PM 3.

Wow! What a question!

Here are some of the ways I've used, and in most cases still use, an outliner:

1. Organizing my life - writing a list of to-do items and then dragging them up and down, prioritizing them, breaking down the tough ones into small items and subordinating them to the main item. I've extended this to lifetime goals, which is an interesting exercise in and of itself.

2. Organizing information I've obtained from various sources. I use Arrange, but you could use More and make a little button with somethink like OneClick or Keyquencer to copy a selection and paste it into a new topic. Once I've finished my research on the web or a CD-ROM, I can go back and structure the information I've collected, edit it, and see if it answers my question or supports my thesis.

3. Maintaining a schedule for a large organization. In many ways it works far better than a calendar - calendars don't lend themselves to reflecting hierarchies, outlines do. Cloning is an essential function in this effort.

4. Managing large projects. See above.

5. Christmas lists.

6. Recording notes at meetings - I use the outline stationary on a Newton MP 130. It's slow, but I've learned to be concise and the OS supports a nifty macro/shorthand feature for commonly used terms and phrases.

7. Running meetings - see the Technography threads and www.technography.com

8. Brainstorming or gathering your thoughts. It's a tool which reduces some of the mental "friction" I get when I'm writing in a more linear fashion (as I am now). In an outliner, I don't really worry too much about whether the particular idea that has arrived in the forefront of my consciousness belongs in the paragraph I'm writing, I just toss it in as another topic and put it where it belongs later. In other words, I can divorce the creative process from the structure process and give more processor time to being creative. Pardon the analogy.

It just a cool tool for organizing information!

Dave Rogers

I've found the cloning function indispensable for outlining screenplay ideas. I might have six threads or throughlines running through a story. These I can mix and match in story-order under one heading, then have several headings following where I can dive down into separate outlines for each story thread. It gets a little more involved than that, but that's the basic idea. It's wonderful to be able to focus on one story thread and make changes, then move back to the main outline and see how my changes affect the whole. It's completely soured me on the idea of using outliners that don't have that capacity. The only other piece of software I've used where I felt I had that kind of control was something called StoryProject. It allows that kind of focus on individual threads, but it's lacking, in my opinion, because, since it's not a true, hierarchical outliner, I can't subsume scenes under sequences and so on.

My experience here has been in Think Tank for DOS. I've only recently purchased a Mac and I'm looking forward to giving MORE a spin. It should do everything I'm hoping (and MORE).

Let's start in the middle. No, a little before that.

FYI (soon to be called "ThinkTank") is about to change my life. I'm designing games, trying to deal with all the interactions and permutations, and I'm doing this all on FYI. So there's Use #1 for me.

Then I start using ThinkTank for everything. I have a single, humongous file, containing phone numbers and addresses, game ideas, article fragments, action items, collected quotes, miscellaneous pith...everything. This is Use #2, what Dave calls the "Status Center" approach.

Now, with suitable cuts and fades to indicate time shifting, I'm using MORE to facilitate meetings. It's my electronic flipchart. We brainstorm, I make lists. We prioritize, I drag. We add comments, I add categories. This is Use #3.

And what's especially important to the growth of technography is that I'm still, personally and professionally, engaged in Uses 1&2. And everything is feeding back into everything else. Every technique I develop to help me with designing games helps me with facilitating groups. Every reorganization of my Status Center helps me come up with new game ideas.

Ten years later, the outliner is still my way of life. I'm using Microsoft Word. And a PC.

I left the beloved Macintosh because I needed a ubiquitous platform, and for some perverted reason, there were way more PCs than Macs. And I left my heartfelt MORE. And now I don't even use Netscape. But the outliner is still my personal killer app.

And so it goes.