Re: Is InfoHandler an outliner (was Re: An Addi....)

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2470

Posted by stephenz
2005-01-07 13:28:37

In my opinion, we’ve been fairly abusive of the term “outliner” in this forum… I don’t mean that as a criticism of our discussions, but just to point out another way of thinking of what an outliner is. When I joined this group, my idea of an outliner was generally the classic one-pane outliner, such as GrandView or NoteMap. I had not considered the hierarchical free-form databases (TreePad, MyBase, etc…) outliners at all. Outlining, to me, is a temporary, fluid process you perform as you try to make sense of existing data, or free-flowing thoughts, such as when you manage a project or write a paper. Managing that data (i.e. capturing, storing, classifying, and retrieving it) is a another function altogether. That some software can do both these tasks is welcome (if they can do them both well), but not necessary.

Is InfoHandler an outliner? I can’t answer that question, since I don’t know the program well enough, but I guess I’d say it really doesn’t matter, since it seems that its primary function isn’t outlining, but is data classification for easy retrieval.

I have become disenchanted with the hierarchical tree-based data managers because they quickly become jungles of topics and sub-topics (categories and subcategories), and they impose too rigid a structure on information… unless, as you point out, Stephen, you can use cloning to apply different topics to the same piece of data. But, even then, the tree-view remains a cluttered mess. Hoisting can help clean things up some. I suspect this is more an indication of how my mind works (or doesn’t work). I can see why Daly would be happy with IH.

I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting anyone should change his or her definition of outliner or outlining. I just want to provide a different context for considering how we use these programs we call outliners. It’s the context I came to this forum with.

Steve Z.

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