Very interesting Web forum! It's nice to know other people are asking these kinds of demanding questions.

I've always loved the idea of outlining software but never found an outliner that fits me. Right now I'm using Mac OS X and a text editor called jstar.

http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/joe-editor/

I have a plain text format for outlines which is so dumb and unspecified that it looks quite versatile on the screen. (But I've never tried to actually parse any of my outlines!) Typing large amounts of text is trivially easy. The normal outliner editing operations, though, are difficult or impossible.

Can anyone suggest a program that knows about outlines but preserves the formless "blank sheet of paper" look of plain text? By that I mean:
? one pane
??multiple windows, tiled or overlapping, so I can work with multiple files or multiple parts of the same file
??word wrap as you type and erase
??for preformatted or wide text, you should be able to turn off word wrap
??outline items should accommodate tabs and returns
??I suppose outline items can be restricted to one or more entire lines of text
??multiple paragraphs in an outline item might be nice
??no "arrange" vs. "edit" modes as many one-pane outliners (like Opal) have
??no "view" vs. "edit" modes as Wikis have
??true tree structured documents; I'm not sure what extra features (columns, links, something beyond trees) I need
??commands like hide/show, gather, sort, etc. that make use of the tree structure

These features would be nice too:
??keyboard-driven so I can enter lots of data and do some editing
??also mouse-driven for more intensive editing
??separate the outline structure from the rendering, so say you can put children to the right of parents instead of below
??allow the user to incrementally extend or change the program where possible, by changing the source code or by writing small extensions
??allow the user to create more outline-editing operations

Open source would be nice but it limits the possibilities. Thanks for your help!

-- Derek

??no ?arrange? vs. ?edit? modes as many one-pane outliners (like Opal) have

I don't understand what you mean by this -- IMO Opal has no modes at all. You are always free to arrange (by dragging or keyboard equivalents for menu commands) or edit. You don't switch modes. Nor is there a special selection mode (e.g. "mark and gather") -- you can just select multiple topics and act on them.

(BTW, I released a new version of Opal yesterday, adding the ability to copy plain text [no formatting] and fixing some bugs.)

It sounds like you're the perfect candidate for "org-mode". It meets most of your requirements, stays plain text, and does quite a bit more:
http://orgmode.org/

The learning curve is moderately high, but there is a good manual. The disadvantage is you have to use Emacs (it's best to use Aquamacs on Macs).

-- Chris

I am new here but I am looking for something similar:
I would only add, "cross platform" to the list because I use both Winders & OSX.

? one pane
??multiple windows, tiled or overlapping, so I can work with multiple files or multiple parts of the same file
??word wrap as you type and erase
??for preformatted or wide text, you should be able to turn off word wrap
??outline items should accommodate tabs and returns
??I suppose outline items can be restricted to one or more entire lines of text
??multiple paragraphs in an outline item might be nice
??no ?arrange? vs. ?edit? modes as many one-pane outliners (like Opal) have
??no ?view? vs. ?edit? modes as Wikis have
??true tree structured documents; I?m not sure what extra features (columns, links, something beyond trees) I need
??commands like hide/show, gather, sort, etc. that make use of the tree structure

These features would be nice too:
??keyboard-driven so I can enter lots of data and do some editing
??also mouse-driven for more intensive editing
??separate the outline structure from the rendering, so say you can put children to the right of parents instead of below
??allow the user to incrementally extend or change the program where possible, by changing the source code or by writing small extensions
??allow the user to create more outline-editing operations

Hi David. Sorry for the delay -- I got the trial version of Opal and looked for my old notes (but I couldn't find any).

I may have been thinking of another program when I mentioned modes, but Opal does make a distinction between selecting an entire topic and selecting the entire contents of a topic. Is it always possible to select anything with the keyboard?

One thing I do know: with the right prefs, you can use return and the indentation keys to add a series of topics and their contents. But delete doesn't backspace across topics (that I've found), so right there Opal doesn't give text-editor-style behavior.

Incidentally, the help says to use System Preferences to set the keyboard shortcuts. Opal isn't on the list, however. Is that because I am running the trial version from downloaded files, rather than as an installed package?

-- Derek

Derek Peschel wrote:

I may have been thinking of another program when I
mentioned modes, but Opal does make a distinction between selecting an entire topic
and selecting the entire contents of a topic. Is it always possible to select anything
with the keyboard?

Right, but that's not a mode. It's a selection, like selecting an icon in Finder, or the icon's label. You can select text or topics. (Opal supports multiple topic selection.) It should always be possible to select with the keyboard.

One thing I do know: with the right prefs, you can use return and
the indentation keys to add a series of topics and their contents. But delete doesn't
backspace across topics (that I've found), so right there Opal doesn't give
text-editor-style behavior.

Well, no. It's an outliner. You can hold down backspace to get a fresh start on the topic. And you wouldn't want to delete the line ending that a text editor would use, lots of the time you wouldn't end up with a valid outline.

Incidentally, the help says to use System
Preferences to set the keyboard shortcuts. Opal isn't on the list, however. Is that
because I am running the trial version from downloaded files, rather than as an
installed package?

That shouldn't make a difference. As it happens, a recent review went into some detail on this so I'll just point to it: http://themacosxguru.blogspot.com/2009/06/opal-old-school-in-nicest-possible-way.html

A quoted reply hasn't been working for me (page doesn't finish loading or is blank).

David, you're right about deletion. What does it mean for the backward or forward delete key to join topics? In general that would cause a topic to move into another topic's place, and you would have to define what that operation does to the whole outline and when it should be possible. But consider a specific situation. I've just typed some indentation commands to create a new topic at the bottom of the document, and I've typed some text. I can backspace over the text. It would be nice to have one more backspace get rid of the new topic and put the insertion point at the end of the topic that's now at the bottom of the document. I can't see how that specific operation can ever be unsafe. Forward delete at the beginning of the document is generally unsafe, though.

The review's description of keyboard shortcuts helped. I thought that Opal could add its entire set of menu commands to the list of keyboard shortcuts, in the same way the OS commands are always listed.

Derek Peschel wrote:

But consider a specific situation. ... I can't see how that specific
operation can ever be unsafe. Forward delete at the beginning of the document is
generally unsafe, though.

I'm sure there are situations where it'd be useful. But I tend to design with an eye to the general. There are more situations where it couldn't work, and that give you unpredictable behavior. You can always delete the current topic by tab backspace.

FWIW, if Opal had Join, it wouldn't use backspace as a keyboard equivalent. You'd need to be able to select multiple topics to join and then join them.

The review's description of keyboard shortcuts
helped. I thought that Opal could add its entire set of menu commands to the list of
keyboard shortcuts, in the same way the OS commands are always listed.

But if Word did that, you'd be scrolling forever and never be able to find anything ...

The OS commands are listed because there's no place else to find them. Opal's (or Word's) menus are available from Opal (or Word). And some of them are context sensitive, or don't appear until you hold Option (e.g. Split Daughter).

2 cents: My son has just written a 300(?) page nonfiction book to be published in September and the publisher has already asked him to write one or two more. He tells me for fiction or nonfiction he only uses MS Word on a Mac. He feels that using additional software for initial or intermediate steps just adds unnecessary complications and wastes time. (For video game scripts he used something else.)

Does the outliner in the Mac version of MS Word have any significant capabilities that the Windows version lacks?

In some ways, Word's outliner is more powerful than any dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn't try writing a book on Word start to finish because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability. (I'd guess the answer is 'no.')

Cassius wrote:

2 cents: My son has just written a 300(?) page nonfiction book to be published in
September and the publisher has already asked him to write one or two more. He tells me
for fiction or nonfiction he only uses MS Word on a Mac. He feels that using additional
software for initial or intermediate steps just adds unnecessary complications and
wastes time. (For video game scripts he used something else.)

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

In some ways, Word's outliner is more powerful than any
dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn't try writing a book on Word start to finish
because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings
in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability. (I'd guess the answer
is 'no.')

I wouldn't try writing a book in Word because when I last tried editing a large document in Word, the program kept choking.

The document was in excess of 100,000 words, so it was novel length. And, unlike a novel, it had a lot of formatting. What was interesting was that I rescued the situation by transferring the document from Windows Word (which was struggling) to the Mac version of Word, which saved the day.

That was four or five years ago. I'm sure Word has improved. But if I were to write a novel tomorrow (and that's unlikely), I would use Word (for Windows) only in conjunction with the excellent Chapter by Chapter (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.berthet/cbc/index.html which eases organisation.

There are many other options, of course.

Oh I do wish we could edit posts on this forum. The post above should read as follows (apologies for the confusion):

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

In some ways, Word?s outliner is more powerful than any
dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn?t try writing a book on Word start to finish
because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings
in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability. (I?d guess the answer
is ?no.?)

I wouldn?t try writing a book in Word because when I last tried editing a large document in Word, the program kept choking.

The document was in excess of 100,000 words, so it was novel length. And, unlike a novel, it had a lot of formatting. What was interesting was that I rescued the situation by transferring the document from Windows Word (which was struggling) to the Mac version of Word, which saved the day.

That was four or five years ago. I?m sure Word has improved. But if I were to write a novel tomorrow (and that?s unlikely), I would use Word (for Windows) only in conjunction with the excellent Chapter by Chapter (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.berthet/cbc/index.html which eases organisation.

There are many other options, of course.

JohnK wrote:

I wouldn't try writing a book in Word because when I
last tried editing a large document in Word, the program kept choking.

The document
was in excess of 100,000 words, so it was novel length. And, unlike a novel, it had a lot
of formatting. What was interesting was that I rescued the situation by transferring
the document from Windows Word (which was struggling) to the Mac version of Word,
which saved the day.

---
My experience with Word for Windows 2000 has`also been less than perfect. I often was the lead editor on technical documents with several authors. I learned to always produce the document in several parts. There are good reasons for this:

1. If different authors use different formatting, combining these authors' contributions into one document without first standardizing the formatting of each contribution USING A SINGLE PC TO DO IT will result in a mess.

2. If one contribution has a "bug" in it, combining this contribution with the others into a single, "final" document can result in the the entire document being affected. ALWAYS save the individual parts so you can track down the "guilty part.y"

Another problem that I have proven occurs with WinWord documents (and may also occur with Excel documents) concerns emailing them. Some, perhaps all, email programs can and do change formatting in Word documents. Worse, these changes seem almost random: One has to proofread the entire document to find the changes. As a result, I now only email Word documents as zipped files. It seems to help.

-c

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Does the outliner in the Mac version of MS Word have any significant capabilities that
the Windows version lacks?

In some ways, Word's outliner is more powerful than any
dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn't try writing a book on Word start to finish
because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings
in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability. (I'd guess the answer
is 'no.')

This can be done with the Word 2008 on the Mac. I can type in three headings with text underneath, collapse them, select the first two and drag them and it moves everything.

Tom S.

Stephen

In some ways, Word's outliner is more powerful than any
dedicated Windows outliner. I wouldn't try writing a book on Word start to finish
because of only a single deficit: the inability to select and drag multiple headings
in outline view. I wonder if the Mac version has this capability.

I am not sure I understand what you mean.

Word 2003 and 2007 for Windows have that capability:
You can highlight 2 and more headings (if they are not contiguous you have to hold down CTRL while selecting them) and move them to a new place in the outline.

However, that only works as long as the headings are at the same hierarchy level. You cannot move around HEADING1 and HEADING2 at the same time.

Franz

Sorry, I only have time for a quick follow-up. A friend recommended TaskPaper and I'm now using it for my to-do lists (_Getting Things Done_ style next actions). TaskPaper has some of the one-pane outliner mentality I was looking for, and the to-do features are unobtrusive and carefully designed.

I'm still looking for a general-purpose outliner for other purposes, as well as keeping my eye on other genres of software like notetaking software, personal Wikis, etc.