I have read quite a few messages whose authors seem to think that outlining would be a great way to display information remotely, as HTML does.

How about if a windows outliner such as PC Outline were to save an outline as an HTML document with Javascript, in order to make it collapsable and therefore dynamic?

Presumably there's a wealth of javascript code out there that could be tweaked to perform this task. This code could be included in a program (such as PC Outline), automating the comparatively difficult task of creating an interactive outline on a web page.

The effect of this would be the *easy* production of hierarchically organised web pages that would be:

viewable with any browser (the default would be expanded), and
totally cross compatible.

Ignore me if this is stupid or if I am missing something- but it seems to be the obvious answer - or at least a good stop gap.



<cite>P. B. Parkinson</cite>

Peter -

HTML (or better yet, XML/XSL) would lend itself nicely to being rendered on a variety of output display devices. In the case of browser displays and perhaps PDAs, Javascript seems a natural to handle the expansion/collapse of outline headings.

Except for the simple case of replacing the outline program and GUI with a browser, it seems that we are looking at a client/server implementation. One or more browsers could simultaneously be updating various parts of an outline. This could be an interesting project.

Personally, I would like to see an outliner that was a natural extension to the XML model - they seem to fit together very well.

..Roger