Structured Document Editors?

Posted by Lucas
Jul 12, 2010 at 01:19 PM

I recently came across Sense, a “structured text editor” or “advanced document editor” from Silva Elm:

http://www.silvaelm.co.uk/

The software turns out to be a bit buggy, but it has a key feature that so far I have found elsewhere only in Scrivener. It behaves like a two-pane outliner, but it is possible to edit the text in the right-hand pane as a single combined document. For me this is a useful set-up for composing documents. I can work on the structure in the left-hand pane, and I can work on the text in the right-hand pane. When I click on a section in the left-hand pane, the corresponding text is selected in the right-hand pane. (In Sense, it is even possible to show or hide text in the right-hand pane by expanding and collapsing the hierarchy in the left-hand pane.) But in WhizFolders, for instance, while there is a combined view available, it is not possible to edit within the combined view. The same goes for Biblioscape, Ideamason, and others. For me, it’s essential to be able to see what comes before and after a given section as I work on it, so I don’t like working in editors in which only a single section is available in the right-hand pane.

If Silva Elm weren’t so buggy, it would basically fit this particular need. Scrivener is only on Mac, of course, and there are other aspects of it that don’t work for me anyway. Does anyone know of any other software that offers two-pane outlining with an editable combined view in the right-hand pane?

Thanks,
Lucas