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All I Want is a Hybrid Outliner/Text Editor
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Posted by Ben Morris
Feb 17, 2010 at 07:26 AM
I would like something like a one-pane outliner (titles and text) with a second pane for content linked to any node (I would settle for text here, though obv pictures, charts, etc would be nice as well). Then I would like to be able to switch to a “Document View” that mashes everything together with the one-pane information as titles and summary paragraphs and the second-pane content as body text. Then I would like to be able to edit in this view, switch back to outline view and have it all broken down again.
Does anything like this exist? If not, what is closest?
Thank you,
Ben
Posted by Hugh
Feb 17, 2010 at 05:23 PM
PC or Mac?
Posted by Ben Morris
Mar 1, 2010 at 10:18 AM
PC, preferably, but I could make Mac work.
Does this seem unreasonable or something?
Posted by Hugh
Mar 1, 2010 at 02:04 PM
I think Scrivener (Mac) can do what you want (but many other things, which you may not need, as well): http://www.literatureandlatte.com/ Have a look at some of the screenshots in this thread: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7399
If not Mac, couldn’t you make MS Word for Windows fit your requirements, using its outliner and/or its master-document feature? (Though I’m not certain it will give you your required number of panes; it’s a long time I’ve used it for any serious purpose.)
H
Posted by Lucas
Mar 4, 2010 at 06:18 PM
Ben Morris wrote:
>I would like something like a one-pane outliner (titles and text) with a second pane
>for content linked to any node (I would settle for text here, though obv pictures,
>charts, etc would be nice as well). Then I would like to be able to switch to a “Document
>View” that mashes everything together with the one-pane information as titles and
>summary paragraphs and the second-pane content as body text. Then I would like to be
>able to edit in this view, switch back to outline view and have it all broken down
>again.
>
>Does anything like this exist? If not, what is closest?
>
For simplicity, let’s call the content linked to a node a “note” (although it’s sometimes called a “comment”). There are a number of one-pane outliners for the Mac that offer the option to toggle between viewing notes “inline” and viewing them in a separate pane. OmniOutliner, Tao, and Process come to mind. On Windows, the best solution I can think of is Inspiration, although it doesn’t do exactly what you describe. It gives the option to show or hide notes in “Outline View”. When shown, however, the notes are always inline rather than in a separate pane (at least that’s what I remember). Inspiration also offers Diagram and Map views (although you can’t move between all three). In these latters views, notes show up in a pop-up window. It might be worth checking out. There also may well be other Windows solutions I’m not thinking of.
If you can access a Mac, OmniOutliner also offers probably the most robust formatting options, such that you could, for instance, apply first-line indentation (and any font you like) to inline notes, making them look more like “body text”.
Did I interpret what you’re looking for correctly?
Lucas D