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Posted by Gorski
Dec 20, 2006 at 05:12 PM
Since this is an outliner site I’m obligated to mention Vim, http://www.vim.org/, in this thread.
I’ve been using UltraEdit for years but recently began learning Vim. I need to do more and more on Linux these days and feel helpless without a good text editor there. Vim, which is free, runs on Windows and Linux, and I’ve begun using it instead of UltraEdit.
Vim is extremely powerful but difficult to learn. If you want to live in a text-only world, however, it’d be a worthwhile tool to master because there are many handy features - from split screens/tabs to plug ins that will launch links (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=293) to support for plain-text formats like Markdown (http://plasticboy.com/markdown-vim-mode/).
And it has an outliner: the Vim Outliner, http://www.vimoutliner.org/, which supports folding, hoisting and other standard outlining features. It says at http://freshmeat.net/projects/vimoutliner/ that its features are comparable to “MaxThink, Grandview, ThinkTank, and more” but I haven’t used those so can’t say myself.
Posted by Derek Cornish
Dec 20, 2006 at 07:25 PM
Daly -
This CRIMP thing must be going around Kansas, too…
> One must for me is being able to have multiple windows of the same or different docs open at the same time for moving stuff back and forth, and I know that EditPad does that, as well as offering tabs, which is also something I want.
AFAIK, they all do multiple windows and tabs. For me the most interesting looks like EmEditor Pro 6, because of its outlining plugin, and its use of plugins in general. Mark’s recommendation of Vim and Vim Outliner is interesting, especially as Vim is often used with LaTeX, but I’ve always been rather put off by stories of its difficulty.
As these editors are mostly used for programing, I’ve found few discussions about their use for general-purpose plain-text editing and manipulating, which was why Chriss’s comments were so helpful. All of the ones mentioned are similarly highly specified though.
None of these editors, as far as I can see, combines plain-text editing with the two-pane topic+note structure the way that NoteTab and the rather expensive DataOmega InSight do. Although this structure only allows a crude form of text manipulation and is not to be confused with that provided by single-pane outliners, it can be very useful for the later stages of writing - e.g., moving drafted chunks of text around easily within an overall organization such as a book or article.
Derek
Derek
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 20, 2006 at 08:41 PM
Derek,
If you’re looking for a plain text editor with a hierarchical tree structure, take a look at Treepad Lite, which is free: http://www.treepad.com
It doesn’t have a lot of editing bells and whistles, but it does the basics quite nicely.
Steve Z.
Derek Cornish wrote:
>None of
>these editors, as far as I can see, combines plain-text editing with the two-pane
>topic+note structure the way that NoteTab and the rather expensive DataOmega
>InSight do. Although this structure only allows a crude form of text manipulation and
>is not to be confused with that provided by single-pane outliners, it can be very
>useful for the later stages of writing - e.g., moving drafted chunks of text around
>easily within an overall organization such as a book or article.
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Dec 20, 2006 at 09:52 PM
Steve, so does Treepad Lite actually save in plain text or is it a special Treepad file?
Daly
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Derek,
>
>If you’re looking for a plain text editor with a hierarchical tree
>structure, take a look at Treepad Lite, which is free: http://www.treepad.com
>
>It doesn’t
>have a lot of editing bells and whistles, but it does the basics quite nicely.
>
>Steve
>Z.
>
>Derek Cornish wrote:
>>None of
>>these editors, as far as I can see, combines
>plain-text editing with the two-pane
>>topic+note structure the way that NoteTab
>and the rather expensive DataOmega
>>InSight do. Although this structure only
>allows a crude form of text manipulation and
>>is not to be confused with that provided
>by single-pane outliners, it can be very
>>useful for the later stages of writing -
>e.g., moving drafted chunks of text around
>>easily within an overall organization
>such as a book or article.
Posted by Jack Crawford
Dec 21, 2006 at 12:39 AM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Steve, so does Treepad Lite actually save in plain text or is it a special Treepad
>file?
AFAIK you can save (export) nodes either as text, Treepad or HTML files.
Jack