Hello,

Do you guys know an outliner (windows or web) where you can decide beforehand what the formatting will be for a given level, then when you're at that level, it automatically applies the formatting? I only know of 2 pieces of software that do this. They're great in their own ways but suffer from being very old and not maintained. The first one is Outline4D, but it's outdated and expensive.

The second one is Noteliner, which is very nice and has some great features like a navigation bar to parts of the outline, tagging that works as a filter, etc etc. But it's also quite limited due to being outdated. In this software, you can preset the styles you want to be applied to each level, then it automatically does this. There's also color that can be applied which is very useful indeed.

As an extra, one thing that you can do in neither of these that I would also like to be able to is to paste images along with text. But finding both these features in one currently active good outliner is not very realistic I suppose. So if there are any other outliners which ONLY have this feature, that would be nice. Workflowy enables this currently IIRC, and dynalist in the pro version, but neither of these worked out for me because workflowy gets messy, dynalist only allows small amount of text per page, after that the text starts overflowing out of the white page borders into the margins which is very crude and I won't be getting the pro version of this.

Does anyone have any recommendations, comments, or critiques?

InfoQube has this feature

OmniOutliner has per-level styles. They are quirky but once you see how they work they do what they are supposed to.

You can't save OmniOutliner styles, so you can't save a particular setup and then apply it to another outline.

Not an uncommon shortfall. Apple Pages can't save its styles to a style library, for example, and that's a crying shame.

Amontillado wrote:

OmniOutliner has per-level styles. They are quirky but once you see how they work they do what they are supposed to.
You can't save OmniOutliner styles, so you can't save a particular setup and then apply it to another outline.
Not an uncommon shortfall. Apple Pages can't save its styles to a style library, for example, and that's a crying shame.

As Cyganet mentioned, IQ has full support for outline styles. They are easy to setup and are database wide. They can be applied to any outline and changing from one outline style to another is easy, simply select it from a dropdown list.
It is possible to override the style formatting, item per item or ignore it altogether.
Details here: https://infoqubeim.com/drupal5/node/3489

w.r.t. pasting images, it is also supported. There are a few display options, but alas, no image resize in the outline. The associated rich-text document does support resizing images however

Pierre Paul Landry
IQ Designer

Microsoft Word can do this really well, using styles. Works across Normal/Draft/Outline views. Use 'Themes' to switch between 'working' styles and print/output styles as needed. Record macro and put on the menu bar if single click or hotkey switch between styles is desired.

Lucine wrote:

Hello,

Do you guys know an outliner (windows or web) where you can decide
beforehand what the formatting will be for a given level, then when
you're at that level, it automatically applies the formatting? I only
know of 2 pieces of software that do this. They're great in their own
ways but suffer from being very old and not maintained. The first one is
Outline4D, but it's outdated and expensive.

The second one is Noteliner, which is very nice and has some great
features like a navigation bar to parts of the outline, tagging that
works as a filter, etc etc. But it's also quite limited due to being
outdated. In this software, you can preset the styles you want to be
applied to each level, then it automatically does this. There's also
color that can be applied which is very useful indeed.

As an extra, one thing that you can do in neither of these that I would
also like to be able to is to paste images along with text. But finding
both these features in one currently active good outliner is not very
realistic I suppose. So if there are any other outliners which ONLY have
this feature, that would be nice. Workflowy enables this currently IIRC,
and dynalist in the pro version, but neither of these worked out for me
because workflowy gets messy, dynalist only allows small amount of text
per page, after that the text starts overflowing out of the white page
borders into the margins which is very crude and I won't be getting the
pro version of this.

Does anyone have any recommendations, comments, or critiques?

Amontillado wrote:

OmniOutliner has per-level styles. They are quirky but once you see how
they work they do what they are supposed to.
You can't save OmniOutliner styles, so you can't save a particular setup
and then apply it to another outline.

I do this in OmniOutliner by saving an otherwise empty outline I use as a template with new outlines, using Save As.

MyInfo can do this too via Conditional Formatting form.

In addition to the options mentioned above (I use InfoQube) and other options for Mac (e.g., Tinderbox), if you're looking for Windows and web options, my memory is that Obsidian is relatively hackable in this regard. At want point I set up my own CSS rules that rendered different markdown bullet/sub-bullet levels in different colors. But this required some deep digging into CSS. Inspiration probably also has basic styling features, but I don't have it installed.

(By the way, does anyone remember how there used to be a somewhat unusual outliner where on the website it showed everything in outline form but styled sort of like colored boxes of text within other-colored boxes of text? I think it began with a 'B', but I can't find it...)

Some Obsidian themes (like Aura and AnuPpuccin) have different colour settings for different heading levels, so you don't have to start from scratch with CSS.

Oh, good tip. Definitely a good solution.

What I like, though, is for a document to be independent of any particular style choices of the moment.

Probably more than is needed in an outlining tool, I admit, but an absolute requirement for my happiness in a word processor.

Scrivener has massive flexibility in its compile feature. I get pretty much the same functionality, covering the bases I need, by flipping to different style libraries in my word processor as needs arise.

I have fond memories of OmniOutliner. Great product. One of the reasons I started using other outliners was Omni doesn't seem to care about OmniOutliner as much as I do. A shame.

And personal weakness. I stopped using OmniOutliner because there was something shiny on the other side of the fence. I admit it.

satis wrote:

I do this in OmniOutliner by saving an otherwise empty outline I use as
a template with new outlines, using Save As.

Lucas wrote:

By the way, does anyone remember how there used to be a somewhat unusual outliner where on the website it showed everything in outline form but styled sort of like colored boxes of text within other-colored boxes of text? I think it began with a 'B', but I can't find it...

Could it be TreeSheets?
https://strlen.com/treesheets/

Friendly reminder to all Apple fanboys.. Original post specified Windows or web ;-)

Amontillado wrote:

Oh, good tip. Definitely a good solution.

What I like, though, is for a document to be independent of any
particular style choices of the moment.

Probably more than is needed in an outlining tool, I admit, but an
absolute requirement for my happiness in a word processor.

Scrivener has massive flexibility in its compile feature. I get pretty
much the same functionality, covering the bases I need, by flipping to
different style libraries in my word processor as needs arise.

I have fond memories of OmniOutliner. Great product. One of the reasons
I started using other outliners was Omni doesn't seem to care about
OmniOutliner as much as I do. A shame.

And personal weakness. I stopped using OmniOutliner because there was
something shiny on the other side of the fence. I admit it.

satis wrote:

>

>I do this in OmniOutliner by saving an otherwise empty outline I use as
>a template with new outlines, using Save As.

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

Could it be TreeSheets?
https://strlen.com/treesheets/

You're right that TreeSheets is somewhat similar to what I described, but it's not the one I'm trying to think of. The one I remember had a very yellow-themed homepage. I was thinking maybe the name involved the word "bee", but I can't find it. But I don't mean to veer away from the original question. I was just thinking of this other outliner as an example of the use of different colors for different outline levels.

Ah, I found it, thanks to Pierre's old list of outliners. The one I was thinking of is Buzz:

https://buzz.sourceforge.net/

Pierre's list is still available here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130518075950/http://www.editgrid.com/user/pplandry/List_of_Outliners

Buzz's visual approach to conveying an outline is very interesting, but I never actually used it...

Cyganet wrote:

Some Obsidian themes (like Aura and AnuPpuccin) have different colour
settings for different heading levels, so you don't have to start from
scratch with CSS.

Turns out this is also possible in LogSeq:

https://discuss.logseq.com/t/css-mod-colorful-indentation-lines/229/6

Not sure if it's possible in RemNote or Roam.

(One of the cool features with InfoQube is that you can combine multiple approaches, such as outline styles and conditional formatting.)

The output look very similar to the html export in NoteCase Pro.

Jon

Lucas wrote:

Ah, I found it, thanks to Pierre's old list of outliners. The one I was
thinking of is Buzz:

https://buzz.sourceforge.net/

Pierre's list is still available here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130518075950/http://www.editgrid.com/user/pplandry/List_of_Outliners

Buzz's visual approach to conveying an outline is very interesting, but
I never actually used it...

Thank you so much for the recommendation guys! InfoQube seems extremely powerful, thank you Pierre for creating it. I will be using that one.