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Mac outliners, one-pane, modeless and general-purpose like text editors?
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Posted by Derek Peschel
Jun 24, 2009 at 03:24 AM
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
Posted by David Dunham
Jun 24, 2009 at 04:31 AM
> ??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.)
Posted by Chris Thompson
Jun 24, 2009 at 06:07 PM
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
Posted by L. S. Russell
Jun 24, 2009 at 08:27 PM
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
Posted by Derek Peschel
Jun 30, 2009 at 07:04 PM
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