Outlining Everywhere

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

Outliners.com Message ID: 49

Posted by erikneu
1999-08-09 06:05:09

I have no first-hand experience with the various Mac outliners discussed, but I, too, have some passion for outliners. Or, better yet, *outlining*. There are so many applications into which outlining can be integrated (Microsoft stumbled on one of them years ago when they added spreadsheet outlining to Excel).

I use outlining in Word, even though it stinks (still better than nothing). I loved the PIM ECCO, but have since switched to Outlook; by far the feature I miss most is the outlining in ECCO!

What about outlining in code editors? I would love to be able to expand and collapse loops and modules in code! And I often create deep and broad SQL queries (where query C is based on the results set of query B, in turn based on query A; with query C joining query C’ based on query B’, etc.). It is very difficult to maintain one’s mental model of the queries. It would be INCREDIBLY powerful to have an outlining function that could “materialize” these queries, then allow them to be expanded and collapsed.

We are starting to realize the need to be able to perform database-like querying on any kind of data (Outlook the PIM is organized as a database; proposals for querying XML data). Similarly, we need to realize that almost all data has hierarchical aspects to it, and we need a way to view it as such. I think XML may be the bridge here.

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