"Metaoutlining"
Posted by srdiamond15
on 2/16/2005
srdiamond15
2/16/2005 2:40 am
At least I'm not quite the only person who wants outlining in an outliner's text section. I just learned from Ted Garanson's column that this is called metaoutlining. I always thought a metaoutline was an outline where the topics were whole outlines, and I could never see why this would be very useful.
Ted Says: "Regular readers will know that I like metaoutlining, where notes are ordered in an outline structure and the notes themselves can have some outline structure. Its a Zen thing: atunement with graphical structure of text is as valuable in the small as in the large. Now VoodooPad joins a few others in supporting bulleted lists in notes. Hey, itís a start." (http://www.atpm.com/11.01/atpo.shtml
If metaoutlining is the new bar, eventually separating out the top programs, the closest approximation is Microsoft OneNote. It, however, combines good metaoutlining with weak outlining proper. (Although I now vaguely seem to remember that Hog Bay Notebook may have it on the Mac.)
Stephen R. Diamond
Ted Says: "Regular readers will know that I like metaoutlining, where notes are ordered in an outline structure and the notes themselves can have some outline structure. Its a Zen thing: atunement with graphical structure of text is as valuable in the small as in the large. Now VoodooPad joins a few others in supporting bulleted lists in notes. Hey, itís a start." (http://www.atpm.com/11.01/atpo.shtml
If metaoutlining is the new bar, eventually separating out the top programs, the closest approximation is Microsoft OneNote. It, however, combines good metaoutlining with weak outlining proper. (Although I now vaguely seem to remember that Hog Bay Notebook may have it on the Mac.)
Stephen R. Diamond
sub
2/16/2005 4:14 am
[Stephen: I always thought a metaoutline was an outline where the topics were whole outlines.]
Yes, an outline of outlines; that would be a more proper use of the prefix "meta" anyway!
[Ted Says: "Now VoodooPad joins a few others in supporting bulleted lists in notes. Hey, it's a start."]
Bulleted lists are part of the RTF specification; in fact, I've just created a I-A-1 bulleted list (as requested by Bill Steo) in Word and impeccably imported it in Hyperclip.
So I don't see what's new about what Ted mentions, apart for the fact that the outliners I've tried don't support _creation_ of such hierarchical lists; but then this goes for a lot of other text formatting features as well. It's been mentioned before that, ideally, outliners could be setup to use an external word processor for note editing.
The question is: do hierarchical bulleted lists count as proper outlines? In my opinion they don't, unless the outlining concept is severely crippled.
alx
Yes, an outline of outlines; that would be a more proper use of the prefix "meta" anyway!
[Ted Says: "Now VoodooPad joins a few others in supporting bulleted lists in notes. Hey, it's a start."]
Bulleted lists are part of the RTF specification; in fact, I've just created a I-A-1 bulleted list (as requested by Bill Steo) in Word and impeccably imported it in Hyperclip.
So I don't see what's new about what Ted mentions, apart for the fact that the outliners I've tried don't support _creation_ of such hierarchical lists; but then this goes for a lot of other text formatting features as well. It's been mentioned before that, ideally, outliners could be setup to use an external word processor for note editing.
The question is: do hierarchical bulleted lists count as proper outlines? In my opinion they don't, unless the outlining concept is severely crippled.
alx
stephenz
2/16/2005 8:54 am
Being able to outline within an outline changes the dynamic regarding one-pane and two-pane outliners. It seems to me, that it gives you a one-pane outliner within a two-pane outliner. That would be an awesome combination. That is, if you could embed a NoteMap style outline within an UltraRecall or ADM style outline, you'd have the best of both worlds. I don't see that happening but it is nice to dream.
In the meantime, there are some tiny strides being made. InfoSelect allows you to have a hierarchical outline with various label styles within one of its entries; however, the implementation is very clunky... they don't even provide a tool bar button to enable this feature, or select the styles of bullets. The Journal also offers this type of embedded outlining.
As Stephen points out, OneNote has probably implemented this most effectively...
Steve Z.
In the meantime, there are some tiny strides being made. InfoSelect allows you to have a hierarchical outline with various label styles within one of its entries; however, the implementation is very clunky... they don't even provide a tool bar button to enable this feature, or select the styles of bullets. The Journal also offers this type of embedded outlining.
As Stephen points out, OneNote has probably implemented this most effectively...
Steve Z.