Best software for emergent order

Posted by Chris Thompson
Oct 6, 2007 at 04:08 PM

Brainstorm counts in my mind as an outliner, though it’s more of a peephole outliner (or a two pane outliner without the second pane and with heavy use of clones).

Stephen, give Tinderbox on the Mac a look. It does what Brainstorm does, and substantially more. It also seems to be more actively developed than Brainstorm.

—Chris

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>This process is nothing other than brainstorming, broadly construed and extended in
>time—the core function of a true outliner. To me, asking for the best program for your
>purpose tantamount to asking for the most powerful outliner.
> >I think it’s
>BrainStorm. (And for those who conclude that the Mac has more advanced outlining than
>Windows, I would challenge someone to supply a Mac outliner more powerful than
>BrainStorm. Off course, we may disagree on identifying the core outliner
>functions.)
> >Randall Shinn wrote:
>>I own Ultra Recall, Zoot, WhizFolders, and
>MyInfo, and I have found them all useful for
>>different kinds of tasks, depending on
>what kind of information structure I need. (I
>>have yet to try OneNote.)
>>
>>Right
>now I am trying to decide which program is most useful
>>for collecting information on
>a kind of random basis (notes, web clippings,
>>thoughts, ideas, etc.) and then
>giving it some kind of order later on as the collection
>>of information grows larger.
>This tends to be information that I might use for
>>creative writing such as materials
>and ideas for projects. (I’m not talking about
>>day-to-day working information or
>record-keeping.)
>>
>>So far I find Zoot the easiest
>>program to throw information
>into without much idea of what I’ll do with it, and then
>>days, weeks, or months later
>do some sorting out. Essentially I’m concerned with
>>developing an emergent
>structure from information from the bottom-up. Trying to
>>create much of a top-down
>structure early in the process would be too restrictive for
>>my purposes.
>>
>>I’m
>curious what program others have found most useful for this sort of
>>task.
> >>
>>Randall Shinn