Outliner shootout at the Userland Corral

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 1766

Posted by srdiamond15
2003-12-28 21:02:19

I’ve tried hard to like NoteMap. Because of its roots in a specific profession, its development may continue, and I’m tired of all of my outliners dying, from More to Fair Witness/InfoDepot. Yet, I it’s hard to get excited about a program that, despite its polished competence, breaks no new ground. It isn’t even clear to me that I prefer it to the outliner in MS Word 2003, which has become a nice writing environment with its reading view and its integration with Windows XP and MS Office. Unlike Word, NoteMap can’t add blocks of text as body text; can’t hide formatting of notes; and can’t open two windows on a single document (something an elegant program called Brainstorm can do for only $60). Today’s processing power ought to buy more than reinventing features available in 1986.

I haven’t excluded NoteMap, as it has strengths: it is intuitive enough that I never get confused; it nicely implements multiple hoisting; and it allows full use of the screen. But its competitors offer some things that are a little more exciting. ADM 2.0 provides six different outline views, of which at least four are actually useful, particularly as they allow double hoisting. It seems without question the most powerful of the Windows outliners—I reserve judgment on MaxThink, because, without documentation, I don’t understand some of its features. ADM’s integrated browser and automatic registration of documents can be most efficient. Its main drawback, the potential for confusion navigating its modal structure, probably becomes less a problem with use. I can’t completely ignore, however, its aesthetic effects. I think it is has one of the uglier interfaces today.

Stephen Diamond

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