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: 2483

Posted by zeoli
2005-01-08 14:18:21

Just to clarify, I was not contending that there is no place for the outline in information management. I think, as you say, Jack, that it can be extremely useful to have that kind of visual map of your information. The outline or tree can also provide a handy way for manually manipulating that information, moving it to new topics.

My two points (which are not related, except that both occured to me as I was following the discussion between Stephen and Daly) are these:

1. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the outline is a creative tool for helping to bring order to thinking processes such as project planning and writing. Features that would make an outliner excel in this function are not necessarily the same ones that make it excel for information management, and vice versa.

2. As the backbone of an information manager, the outline has some severe limits, because it is difficult to wade through a thousand items that are arranged in a tree, and, as Stephen points out (if I understand him correctly), it forces you to focus on just one method of classifying your data. That isn’t to say that it limits you to one method, but the tree certainly favors that topic/sub-topic approach to classifying.

For this reason, for instance, BrainStorm is an outstanding creative tool that I frequently turn to to think through an upcoming project or get stuck while trying to write an article. I think BrainStorm is less effective as an information manager… although it can certainly be used as such… because it is limited to a hierarchical approach to classifying information. Well, not completely limited, because it does have namesakes (or cloning), but I don’t see this as a strong enough feature to overcome its lack of meta data and other classifying methods. That, of course, is a subjective opinion, but one based open extensive use.

Zoot, on the other hand, allows for extensive classification and cross-classification of my data. It is downright brilliant at this. But I wouldn’t consider trying to use Zoot to help me as I am writing a story (collecting data for the story, absolutely).

Okay, have I beaten this dead horse too much already?

Steve Z.

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