Top 10 features of MORE (for text documents)

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 281

Posted by mfischer
1999-08-28 16:20:41

Message 242 asked for a list of the 10 most important features of MORE, and examples of where they are useful.

The following is my list of the most valuable features of MORE, in approximate order of decreasing importance. This list includes none of the graphics functions because I use MORE as my principal tool for writing and for capturing and organizing ideas for presentation in text form. There are some interesting capabilities for integration of graphics with structured text in MORE 3.1, but they are not why I switched to MORE in 1992, nor why I still use MORE in 1999:

1. The outline is a structured hierarchy (tree), with text attached to
the nodes; not a “flat” text file with outline attributes attached to
paragraphs nor inferred from a style sheet.
—This is vital for consistent and intuitive results when
reorganizing items. Moving an intermediate level headline brings along
all of its sub-levels, which retain identical RELATIVE positioning and
formatting relationship with the moved headline, while being
automatically re-numbered and re-formatted as appropriate for their new
location and position, which may be at a different absolute position
(its level relative to the outline as a whole).
—Several of the most useful functions listed below, including hard boundaries, rule based formatting, Gather, Clone, and Promote/Demote are dependent on the existence of a structural hierarchy. Similar functions are either missing from, or far less useful in, the paragraph based text processors which offer an outline mode.

2. There are “hard” boundaries between outline entries, so that you
cannot backspace (nor forward delete, cut, etc.) across a headline
boundary.
—This keeps you from inadvertently damaging your hierarchy by
deleting a level boundary when attempting to correct a typo or relocate
some text (and which happens far too often in Word and other word
processors that rely on paragraph styles/attributes). My experience, in an unsuccessful quest to find a tolerable replacement for MORE since
1995, is that a program which lacks hard boundaries is, at best, a
pseudo-outliner, and is certain to have other severe functional
shortcomings because of a design philosophy that is fundamentally
different than MORE.

3. The keyboard interface is well suited to “head up” operation such as note taking or capturing real-time results at a meeting WHILE
participating in the discussions. The important feature is the
consistency of editing and reformatting behaviors, combined with a set
of intuitive (or easily learned, I’ve been MORE far too long to remember whether it was always intuitive) command key sequences that allow you to do most of the common, real-time operations without using menus and without moving your fingers far from typing position. What I believe to be the most important, because I find their lack to be the most annoying when I try to use a pseudo-outliner, are:
—Return creates a new headline at the “proper” level: The
current level if at the end of the document or the bottom of a
sub-level; the next lower level if the cursor is on a headline that
already has at least one subhead.
—Return works the same way from ANYWHERE in a headline. There is no need to move the cursor to the end of the headline text to avoid
splitting the entry in two pieces (which is done using Cmd-Return if you want a new entry, or Opt-Return for a forced line break within a
headline). This behavior is, for me, the principal difference that
allows me to take real-time, readable notes in MORE, which is something
I have never been able to do so using Word, PowerPoint, etc.
—The editing commands that are not standardized by the Macintosh
user interface guidelines have mnemonic assignments (cmd-U=up,
cmd-D=down, cmd-M=mark, cmd-G=gather, etc.). This is not unique to
MORE, and some of these key functions go back at least to Emacs in the
early 1970s, but few programs on any platform have a keyboard interface
as clean and predictable as MORE.

4. Rule based formatting, where rules can be attached to any headline
(node in the hierarchy), and operate on that entry and/or on a defined
range of sub-levels RELATIVE to that entry’s current position in the
hierarchy. Rules are also applied top-down, so the applicable rule
above, but physically closest to, a sub-level takes precedence over
alternate rules for the same characteristic that may exist at higher
levels.
—I use this most often to create different labeling of entries to
suit the material: Often within a single document there are places for
legal style multilevel numbering, single level enumeration, bullets (of
varying styles), alphabetic sub-clauses, and even itemized lists with
custom prefixes using dingbats or some other pictographic font. Rules
make doing this both easy and totally predictable. Also, MORE allows a
labeling rule to specify “no labels,” which allows an unlabelled
headline in the middle of a set of sequentially enumerated headlines
without having to skip a number or letter in the sequence. Achieving
this requires extra work, or is not possible, in most other programs.
—Rules attached to a single headline can have overlapping
sub-level ranges, in which case the first such rule encountered in the
list applies (another example of the consistency within MORE). This
allows the physical appearance of a complex document to be refined
incrementally, as the content matures, without having to create a myriad of special case overrides, which then must be kept consistent during further refinement; and without having to worry about the scope of the formatting change, as is a common problem when using global paragraph styles in a style sheet.
—Outline formatting, such as spacing between headlines, is
specified separately from text formatting, such as spacing between lines within a multi-line headlines.
—It is possible to override text formatting rules on a
character-by-character basis when needed.

5. Expand/Compress, which shows or hides the subheads of the selected
headline. This is a “fundamental” characteristic, present in all
outliners and nearly all pseudo-outliners.
—Expand/Compress provides simple control over the level of detail
presented. For document creation it allows details to be captured when
needed, without filling the screen and obscuring the more general
concepts or overall structure. For note taking this facilitates
capturing information in the appropriate (or current, although
inappropriate) places without requiring all of the material to be read,
or visually skipped over, when attempting to use or share those notes.
—Searching, printing, and exporting can use just the
non-compressed portion of the outline.

6. Fold/Unfold, which hides or shows the second and subsequent lines of multi-line headlines. Fold/Unfold provides the same function within
headlines that Expand/Compress provides for the headline hierarchy.
Many pseudo-outliners lack this capability; and either restrict entries
to single lines, or allow arbitrary length headlines that must be
displayed in their entirety (and often lack insertable line breaks so
these headlines are auto-wrapped using the program’s idea of page
width).
—An outliner without folding is useful for organizing information, but not for writing, where some levels of the outline need to be paragraphs (or larger chunks of text), while the structure of the
document is represented in short (typically single line) headings.

7. Search, Mark, and Gather: Search allows locating specific
headlines, either by exact match, constrained match (whole word, exact
case, etc.), or pattern match (wildcards, etc.). Search provides the
“find/find next” and “replace/replace all” functions that are common in
text editors and word processors. Search can also mark all matching
headlines, for subsequent use by Gather. Headlines can also be manually marked and unmarked. Gather moves, copies, or clones (see #8) the marked headlines to appear below the headline selected when Gather is executed.
—In addition to the conventional search and replace functions,
Search and Gather allow a MORE outline to be used as a sort of free-form information repository (I’m carefully avoiding calling this a
“database”), where entries matching arbitrary criteria can be located,
viewed, extracted, or reorganized to appear in new groupings.
—Marks persist until cleared, deleted, or gathered. This allows
items to be marked for later retrieval or consideration, while text
entry or editing continues. This is particularly handy in meetings,
where Mark can be used on notes about open issues that need to be
remembered, and reconsidered, prior to the end of the meeting.
—Some other programs discussed here, especially InControl, and to
a lesser extent Arrange and InfoDepot, had more powerful searching,
selection, and reorganization capabilities (but no Cloning) and
understood typed fields, but these capabilities came at the expense of
the functions needed for productive generation and display of human
readable prose. At least for my purposes, MORE is closer to the ideal
mix of text processing capabilities with criteria based retrieval
capabilities than any other program I have used on any platform.

8. Clone, which makes a dynamic copy of a headline at one or more other places in the document. Any instance of a cloned headline can be
edited, and the changes are immediately reflected in all other
instances. Clones can be moved arbitrarily, and can have independent
sub-levels inserted below each of their instances.
—Clones are useful when a group of items, such as the headings of
categories for recording data, reporting status, or classifying results
need to be IDENTICAL in a plurality of locations. Clones are
indispensable when the set of identical headings needs to be modified
during the process of said recording, reporting, or classifying.
—Message #225 (http://discuss.outliners.com/msgReader$225)
explains another use of clones.

9. Hoist/Dehoist which can (reversibly) take a selected headline out of its outline context and display that headline, along with its direct
sub-levels, at the top of the screen.
—Hoisting is a mechanism to control the amount of displayed detail in a manner essentially orthogonal to Expand/Compress. Whereas
Expand/Compress presents headlines in their hierarchical context, with
control over the subset of the hierarchy which gets displayed;
Hoist/Dehoist extracts a single entry or branch of the hierarchy from
its context and displays it in isolation. This is especially useful
when attempting to concentrate on the details of particular elements,
after having captured the general set of items or range of possibilities in an earlier stage of outlining.
—Hoisting is not indispensable, since the equivalent rendition is
achievable using other commands. However, Hoist is a very desirable
shortcut for a common, useful operation. In my experience, the
existence of the Hoist command makes it far more likely that, during
meetings, the details of individual topics WILL be examined in isolation in addition to the general topics being considered in context.

10. Promote/Demote: Promote moves subheads of the selected headline to the same level as the selected headline. Demote moves all headlines at the same level as, and physically below, the selected headline to become subheads of the selected headline.
—This is one of the most common transformations that needs to be
performed on an outline, especially when organizing a set of concepts
for logical presentation to a particular audience.
—As with Hoist/Dehoist, Promote/Demote is a shortcut for a useful
function that can be performed using (a sequence of) other commands.

(BTW: I organized my ideas of the top 10 features and generated this list with MORE 3.1; then pasted the text into the new message window.)

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