Hello everyone,

I'm new to outliners, but I have tons of data to outline and I want to make sure the software I pick will be durable and flexible enough to handle whatever I can throw at it. My greatest fear is the software publisher going belly up and leaving me high and dry with my life entered into a defunct program.

Reading over the comments here, it seems like some people have plenty of time to experiment with the various outliners. I plan on really, really putting my outliner through its paces (I'm a professional researcher), and I'd like to know what the consensus is on the most robust package.

From my searching so far, TreePad looks like the best all-around outliner. Anyone have experience with it? I'm impressed with the volume of information on their website. The latest versions can export to a variety of file formats, which should calm my fears about the company going out of business (??). My thinking is, if it can export to OPML, I can always upgrade to the next best thing without having to retype everything in.

Secondly (bear with me!), the setup of ShadowPlan seems like the perfect design. With the filter concept, you are not restricted to any one single tree hierarchy, and you can switch between views. The problem with TreePad and the other outliners I've looked at is every note can fit in one category and one category only. Am I the only one bothered by this? Is there an outliner that allows for multiple arrangements of the same elements that can be toggled back and forth?

Finally, has anyone looked at Microsoft's OneNote? Though generally I am not very enthusiastic about Microsoft products, they have the resources to research and implement elaborate bells and whistles. Looking at the OneNote website, it looks a bit chaotic. But then again I don't expect Microsoft to close shop anytime soon.

I'll look forward to any comments. RPKellig{at symbole}yahoo.com

Have you looked at TakeNote! from Academix Software? It seems to be made for research notes, and does create a useful outline from random notecards.

Sorry to toss another application in the mix.

The problem with TreePad and the other outliners I've looked at is every note can fit in one category and one category only. Am I the only one bothered by this? Is there an outliner that allows for multiple arrangements of the same elements that can be toggled back and forth?

MORE allows you to do this in a different, but perhaps ultimately more powerful, way through its Clone feature ñ which allows any individual headline to have any number of dynamic copies anywhere else in the tree structure, so long as the hierarchy isn't violated. Instead of toggling between different arrangements, you use the Mark, Gather, and Clone commands to create alternative arrangements of existing elements as substructures within the tree itself, which you can view on their own using the Hoist command. (I have no idea whether this makes any sense at all in abstract description, but it's an absolute die-without feature!)

Nick.

I'll add my two cents to this topic, though I'll probably not enlighten you any. I don't know anything about ShadowPlan, although I always thought it was a Palm handheld outliner with a desktop appliance. Treepad is okay, but not spectacular, in my opinion.

If you don't need text formatting, you should check out Zoot (www.zootsoftware.com), as it allows you to assign an item to any number of categories. Zoot also provides a myriad number of other ways to organize and find your information on the fly. It is almost impossibly flexible. Unfortunately, it only deals with plain text, though it provides linking capabilities to original documents.

Steve Cohen (one of our regular voices on outliners.com) recommends Jot+ (www.kingstairs.com), and having looked at it a few times, I'd agree that it is a nice outliner with lots of features -- a better choice, I think, than Treepad.

The sorry fact is that each choice has its weaknesses. Someday, someone will create the perfect outlining tool. I'm not holding my breath.

Steve Z.

Hubbardton, Vermont

I would recommend you our software MyInfo (http://www.milenix.com

In general it is the same type outliner as TreePad/Jot+. However it has some features, which will benefit you as you want to use as researching tool:

* Multi-column tree - you can create you own tree columns (text, number, date/time, list...).

* Item cloning - you can have the same note in different parts of the tree

* OLE object support - you can insert tables, Word documents and any other OLE object

* It exports to TreePad, so you can be sure that your information will not be locked with our software (the next version MyInfo 3 will import/export OPML too)

In addition it is easy-to-use and has all features, which you can in most of the other outliners too (rich text formatting, password protection, boolean queries and so on).

Petko Kafedjiski
Milenix Software Ltd.
http://www.milenix.com

Durability? Most, probably all of the current PIMS have been developed by small shops or single individuals. The longest running PIM of which I am aware is InfoSelect. Regrettably it still does not support full RTF (despite many requests) and many think it is overpriced.

Steve Z noted that I've mentioned Jot+. It is what I use most because it is full RTF, is easy/intuitive to learn, and I had already dumped a lot of stuff into it before some of the newer PIMs came on the scene. Also, at present I have no need for multiple views. It is, however, the product of a single person.

KeyNote may be the best of the free PIMs, but again it is the product of a single person.

Zoot can slice and dice information, but I believe that it is still plain text ( www.zootsoftware.com ). The author is still calling the current Version a beta, although he released it YEARS ago. He's still working on the Help File.

Now, if you want MULTIPLE views and are willing to pay a big price, with no guarantee of longevity, look at Multicentric,

http://www.multicentric.com/wapi/mctxwapi.dll/getObject?mid=MCT&ObjID=1

I've never used it, but it looks interesting.

-steve c

Hello again everyone:

Thanks for the comments. I've been reading up on your suggestions.

First, Steve: what is the importance to you of RTF? For me, exporting capabilities are important insofar as I can generate a backup file that preserves the collapsible nature of the outline, and preferably one that can be imported into other outliners should the first one go belly up. When I save Jot or TreePad outlines in RTF, they don't open as Word documents in outline form. I've tried to export Jot files in XML, but they don't seem to save right; there seems to be a lot of junk code floating around on the page. (Anybody understand OPML/XML? is there something I'm missing here? Shouldn't exporting to XML creating a page with a clickable outline matching the one in the outliner?)

I've heard good things about Zoot, but it's only available for Windows 2000 and ME, and I'm running 98.

As a non-techie, it would seem to me that allowing for multiple views or multiple parents for a child doesn't seem overly complex. I looked at the multi-centric website, and the programmer seems to have grasped the principle that creative, "lateral" thinking involves regrouping and reclassifying on the fly. Yet for the prices he's asking, I could hire a personal secretary.

Clearly, if MORE and Multi-Centric and ShadowPlan were able to create open-ended organizational structures, then the technology is within reach. If you're an outliner programmer, please listen: The ideal outliner I envision would revolve around basic elements - notes. Each element would have a "tag file" of unlimited size. The first tag would indicate its position within a traditional tree. The second might be a time stamp. The third might classify it as a task, contact, indicate its position within a secondary tree structure, etc. A simple filter would sort the elements according to any user-defined order - tree, alphabetical, etc. And, oh yeah, it should have a Palm version that can sync with the PC version :)

I'm not a programmer, so maybe I'm glossing over various technical obstacles. It seems like programmers of all types of software are intent on customizing programs where they should be leaving decisions up to the users. Arnold, I looked at TakeNote from Academix, which looks like a fine piece of software if all I want to do is take research paper notes in the way they expect me to. I'd rather find something more open-ended that I can customize myself.

There seem to be a million basic outliner programs on the market that are basically equivalent to each other. Somebody! separate yourself from the pack. Excuse my diatribe, but its frustrating to see things evolved 9/10ths of the way.

Finally, everyone seems to prefer Jot to TreePad, for reasons that aren't clear to me. I've tested versions of both, and them seem largely equivalent. There seems to be a bit more activity at the TreePad site however. The only advantage I see to Jot is the XML exportability. But given the problems I described above, is this really a benefit? Does XML export mean that the outline is in OPML format?

I've been looking at Natara Bonsai outliner for Palm (www.natara.com), and it's manual claims its desktop version can export as XML. Hopefully this will allow me to swap between my Palm and whatever outliner I settle on. Anyone have experience with this type of thing?

Again, thanks for all your advice, and for bearing with this long post.