most facile outliner

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 15, 2012 at 06:54 AM

Actually, I believe that Brainstorm is still mentioned in this forum fairly regularly, considering that its development has been frozen in time (by the way, it changed ownership some years ago, which explains why David Tebbutt does not pop in the forum himself).

For me it remains an indispensable tool for all the reasons you mentioned, even though I am not an academic. See also this reference from yesterday to a disturbance-free writing environment http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3931/0/markdown-everywhere I still use Brainstorm with DOS-like yellow text on very dark blue background, similar to what WriteMonkey and other minimalised word processors provide.

That said, I can think of three reasons that Brainstorm is not discussed here as often as it deserves:

- The first, mentioned already: no development under the new ownership, whereas the personal information management world is swarming with innovative tools. Let us not forget that competition is no longer just among Windows tools; much can be done via webware nowadays.

- Second, as information snippets for most of us become “richer”, including formatting, images, tables, as supported by a majority of tools these days, Brainstorm becomes less useful.

- Most importantly, even in the “good old days” many people did not “get” Brainstorm. A search of the forum for namesakes will find mostly posts by my good self. I have always found them indispensable for organising information—but I have found that most people can’t find a use for them in their workflow. Brainstorm itself with its ‘permanent hoist view’ is not always easy to grasp: see my reference here regarding an academic application and Dr Andus’ response further down http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3906/

Indeed, I hope that your post will re-spark deeper interest in the programme (also on the part of its current owner), because it remains quite unique.