best outliner you use? (2018)

Posted by Larry Kollar
May 22, 2018 at 02:38 AM

If you’re like me, and want a console-mode outliner but can’t stand Emacs (I’ve given it several tries over the years), there’s always Tines. I’ve not been doing a whole lot with the development lately, but a couple of community members sent patches to add autoconfig and some UI improvements; I plan to roll them up, make OPML the default file format, and release 2.0.

One of Tines’s strengths is its support for “text” mode entries—combined with its Markdown export, you can outline your headings, scenes, and even snippets of dialog and description, then import the OPML into Scrivener and get on with the drafting. I like to think of it as a “writer’s outliner.” I’m thinking about ways to export to DITA (a technical writing XML format), but that will come later.