Hello, all. I've been reading through some of the material on here over the past few months, and have found it very useful. I thank those of you who are the prime contributors to many discussions.

I have a question, and i apologize if it's been dealt with before, but i haven't been able to piece together an answer from the different posts that i've been able to read.

I am looking for a note taking and outlining program that would be used to help me store notes i take for my academic work (in history). i do NOT need a full PIM, as i use Outlook on my tablet pc and pda for personal info.

All I want it to do (but do well) is allow good note taking, and good outline, together. However, crucial is: true utfp-8 support (many of my notes will be in non-Latin languages), linking between notes, files, and other documents outside of the program, and good search abilities.

I am playing with WhizFolders, but it seems that the outlining is not as robust as i'd like it to be.

Please keep in mind that my input will largely be textual; while i'd like it to do well with pictures, etc., this is not at the top of my priority list.

Since the notes will then be used in my thesis in the future, as well as other publications, the ability to export them without any problem is crucial; how this is done is not particularly worrying to me, as long as it doesn't distort the input.

If price was no factor, what would you recommend? And if price *was* a factor, what would you recommend?

Thank you in advance.

A quick response to your question about an outliner/note-taker.

Unfortunately, at least in my view, most of the so-called outliners we talk about here are hierarchical, free-form databases. That is, they are good at the note-taking aspect, bad at the outlining. The few good outliners probably won't serve your note-taking needs, though I could be wrong about that.

The two programs I would suggest you investigate are

1. ndxCards (www.ndxcards.com). I don't have a lot of experience with this program, though others who contribute here do. But from what I know about it, it has a significant outlining function and is an excellent note-taking system. I don't know about its unicode ability. The academic version is $50 U.S.

2. OneNote from Microsoft. This program has a pretty good outlining function, and is a decent note-taking environment. I use it all the time. It costs $100 U.S., but I've seen it for $90.

If price were no object, you might be better off using a dual-program system. I'd look at Zoot (www.zootsoftware.com) ($100), and NoteMap (www.casesoft.com) (was $100, might have gone up some. I'm not sure if NoteMap supports unicode.

Steve Z.

All I want it to do (but do well) is allow good note taking, and good outline, together. However, crucial is: true utfp-8 support (many of my notes will be in non-Latin languages), linking between notes, files, and other documents outside of the program, and good search abilities.- Talazem

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ndxCards at present lacks true searching abilities. OneNote, as you know, doesn't allow you to construct a true outline with each note a topic; I take it that is what you want.

It sounds like you want a program similar to WhizFolders, but with more adequate outlining. Perhaps you are looking for the top of the line of the two-pane so-called outliner family. If that's right, I'd say go with UltraRecall (http://www.ultrarecall.com

You say that WhizFolders isn't as strong an outliner as you would like. Of the two-pane 'outliners,' it has one of the stronger tree-building feature sets, but as Steve Zeoli points out, that isn't saying too much. The most important feature its tree lacks imo is cloning, the ability to create multiple representations of the same note in various locations, yoked to one another in content. If you are using the program to organize material for papers, the same note might be relevant in different sub-trees, so this feature is useful. The top of the line now goes for $100. I wouldn't pinch pennies on something so important.

Stephen R. Diamond

I wonder whether Notabene would be the answer -- it is pricey and has a steep learning curve, but many academics swear by it. NB combines word processing, bibliographic data base, high power search features, and outlining.

Other possibilities are ADM3 and UltraRecall.

All these programs offer a free trial period.

Daly

Also there is a program that has been mentioned before: TakeNote! It is available for both the Mac and IBM platforms.

More information can be found at:
http://store.yahoo.net/takenote/index.html