Re: "Metaoutlining"

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 2780

Posted by ckester
2005-02-18 19:34:34

> MyBase in particular can save practically any kind of file as an attachment; then, when double-clicking on it, it will be opened by the associated application.

Saving files as objects within the notes pane, i.e. displaying an icon such as “Microsoft Excel Document” is also supported.

—-

Including files as attachments or packages is one thing. Including them as embedded objects is another.

An embedded object can be edited within the container app. There’s no need to launch the associated application in another window. For example, when you drop an Excel file on Internet Explorer’s title bar, the spreadsheet opens, and at first glance it looks like you’re in Excel. There are Excel commands on the menubar, and the function bar is also there. You can enter or edit the data or formulas in any of the cells. But look again, you’re actually still in IE. The toolbar is still IE’s—- but you can use the View/Toolbars command to add the Excel toolbars.

The reason this works is because IE is a fully-functional OLE/COM container. Excel is actually doing all the work, but within the host application’s window.

Is this something that would be desirable in a multi-pane outliner?

Going one step further, would it be worthwhile to implement a single-pane outliner as an OLE/COM server so that its outlines could be embedded in the same way as an Excel spreadsheet? If the data pane of a multipane outliner contained such an embedded outline, wouldn’t that give you the meta-outline functionality you’re looking for?

—Charlie

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