Hello, I'm new to this board :) I'd like to start a discussion about what a good Outliner should have. In my opinion:
* It should have 2 panes: Tree View and article content.
* It should be possible to edit the file on different devices, not only on a PC (running Windows 7) , but also on a smartphone running Windows Phone Series 7.
* It should be possible to synchronize the file between the PC and the smartphone.
* It should be possible to export the whole tree, or a branch of this tree, as a HTML web site.

Currently, my outliner of choice is MyBase. It has great features such as 2 panes, tree view, viewing and editing on Windows Mobile 6.X, export branch to HTML. I?ll see what comes in version 6, which will be released sometime in 2010.
But do you know if another Outliner offers these features or will offer them in the future?
Thanks
Gz

What you are describing is a PIM, A true outliner is a single pane application in which one can outline what one intends to write and then (hopefully) add and edit text to create the final document. GrandView was the best PC outliner ever, but was never successfully ported to Windows.. No Windows outliner matches its outlining capabilities. Inspiration (www.inspiration.com) is a reasonably good outliner with good diagramming capabilities. NoteMap appears to be a god outliner, but as we discovered, it has fatal flaws/bugs.

I, too, use MyBase. A new version is under development. Other, similar PIMs that have the ability to save Web pages include Web Research (http://www.macropool.com/en/products/webresearch/index.html and Surfulater. InfoQube and UltraRecall Pro are other possibilities.

If you search the archives of this site, you will find extensive discussions of what constitutes a good PIM.

May I ask you both for your reasons re: choosing myBase? There seem to be many, many options -- MyInfo, MyNoteskeeper, Treepad, KeepNote, WhizFolders, InfoQube, etc. etc.

I am also looking forward to seeing the new version of myBase, but wanted some opinions as to which features currently stand out for you. What competitive advantage does myBase have over these other products?

Glen

A few months ago, a bunch of us OutlinerSoftware had this discussion on Google Wave. Unfortunately, Wave does not have any kind of print/export feature, so here is a copy of the first blip (which served as a summary). Those interested can participate in this wave.

------------------------------

What is an outliner ? (or what are outliners ?)

1-pane, 2-pane, 3-pane, with or without custom fields displayed or not as columns, as pure outliners or as full-featured PIM... a first wave on outliners.


Outliner types are:


Pure 1-pane (with or without rich-text) : Examples: Inspiration outline view, Natara Bonsai, Notemap, StoryView, UV Outliner, Word outline mode

1-pane with custom fields (or attributes) : Examples: B-liner (?), TreeSheets (?)

1-pane with custom fields displayed as columns in the outline : Examples: ADM, EccoPro, Excel outline mode, InfoQube, ListPro

Pure 2-pane (Simple tree-view in 1st pane, 2nd pane for rich text) : Examples: Jot+, MindSystems Amode, MyBase, NoteCase Pro, Surfulater, Treepad, WhizFolders

2-pane with custom fields : Examples: MyInfo, UltraRecall Pro

3-pane : Examples: Evernote, Normfall Manager, Sycon IDEA!, Zoot, most e-mail programs

Hybrid 1-pane / 2-pane (works as both 1-pane and 2-pane) : Examples: InfoQube, MaxThink (?)

Visual Representation : MindMapping: FreeMind, iMindMap, Inspiration, MindManager, MindGenius, MindPad, MindView, VisualMind, Xmind

Dynamic: ConnectedText, MindRaider, PersonalBrain


With PIM features : Examples: do Organizer, EccoPro, InfoQube, InfoSelect, PersonalBrain, UltraRecall Pro

With automation / agents : Examples: EccoPro, InfoQube, Notecase Pro, Zoot

With Cloning (i.e. multiple parents) (same item may appear in several locations) : Examples: ADM, Brainstorm, MyInfo, Notecase Pro, Surfulater, UltraRecall, PersonalBrain, InfoQube

With Tagging (item can be labeled with several keywords) : Examples: Evernote, Surfulater, UltraRecall


Oriented towards:

Text, itself can be sub-divided into specialized types for:

Writing : Examples: MaxThink, PageFour, Scrivener, StoryView, SuperNoteCard
Capturing : Examples: Brainstorm
Organizing : Examples: Brainstorm. MaxThink

Numbers (hierarchy database) : Examples: B-liner, Excel outline mode, MindPad, InfoQube

Dates (Tasks/Projects/Schedules) : Examples: Achieve Planner, ListPro, MyLifeOrganized, InfoQube

Documents, i.e. organising data files that are already there : Examples: InfoRapid Cardfile System, X2net OneStore

Rich Note-taking : Examples: Evernote, OneNote

Web collection : Examples: Evernote, ScrapBook (Firefox add-in), Surfulater, Web Research

Publishing (web or other) : Examples: InfoHesiveEP, WebIdeaTree

Miscellaneous Information snippets, usually captured from the clipboard : Examples: ClipCache, ClipMate


Behaviour

Static: you create an outline, and it will always appear that way : Examples: Brainstorm, Excel outline mode, WikidPad, Word outline mode

Dynamic: display options allows you to arrange parts through:

Filtering : Examples: EccoPro, InfoQube, Opal, Surfulater

Hoisting : Examples: Opal, UltraRecall Pro, InfoQube

Sorting : Examples: EccoPro, InfoQube, Surfulater

--------------------------

HTH

Formatting is difficult here and my previous post is difficult to read. So, I've posted this same summary of "what is an Outliner" here:

http://www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php?q=node/1506

Glen Coulthard wrote:

May I ask you both for your reasons re: choosing myBase? There seem to be many, many options -- MyInfo, MyNoteskeeper, Treepad, KeepNote, WhizFolders, InfoQube, etc., >etc.

Glen

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can't comment on many of the PIMs you mentioned.

First and foremost for me: I have an extreme amount of personal and general information saved in MyBase and another PIM (Jot+) and am loath to start saving info in a third, new PIM and then having to search 3 PIMs for specific information I've saved.

Over the years I've used many PIMs, but finally realized that I was being "CRIMP-foolish."

I don't think TreePad Business saves Web Pages.

As I am now retired, I have little need for a PIM to collect and "massage" notes for a work project.

As for MyBase. I've used it for years and still haven't made use of all of its capabilities. It saves Web pages quickly (although very occasionally there is a page that it cannot save or cannot save properly).

It has indexed searches both of just the tree and of an entire database. However, if you search for, say, "big top," it will find all items containing either "big" or "top." I've asked the developer about this and hope search will be enhanced in the next version.

Data bases (files) are ZLIB compressed.

Printing functions are somewhat limited as are export facilities.

One can add attachments.

Each tree branch has associated with it two tabbed panes: One for saved Web pages; the other for RTF notes and copied graphics, photos, etc.

One can include links to files and folders outside myBase and between items within myBase.

As I said, there are many, other capabilities that I have not made use of. (20+ years ago, I became a virtuoso "playing" GrandView. It was a "single-pane" outliner, but had many other functions that I now really do not need.)

I'm certain that MyInfo, InfoQube, UltraRecall and several (many?) other PIMs have functions that myBase does not, but in testing some of them, myBase saved Web pages more rapidly and pretty much has all the functionality that I need.

Note: To save Web pages in myBase, you also need to own WebCollect.

-c

Hello again

I'm surprised a knowledge base software is called a "PIM". "PIM" stands for *personal* information manager. I already use Outlook for personal things, like appointments, tasks, emails. A knowledge base is different, it is much less personal, as parts of this knowledge base can be shared with others. I don't use Outlook and MyBase for the same purposes. I also imagined the word "outline" was refering to the tree view of all the articles.

Reasons for choosing MyBase: it has most of the features of an "ideal" Outliner / PIM , as suggested in my first post: tree view, 2 panes, viewing the file on a mobile device, quick creation of a web site from a branch of the tree.

In my opinion, what makes it stand out is the mobile device compatibility. Being able to check my knowledge base on my phone has been many times very useful to me. As far as I know, the only other Outliner that offers this advantage is OneNote, and it also offers synchronisation, which is way cool. But OneNote is a one-pane software , so it does not fit to my needs.
But as for MyBase, so far I have just been reading my knowledge base file on my phone, I have never tried to edit it yet. I don't know how editing behaves on the phone, and how it affects the file when it is copied back to the PC.
I hope Windows Phone 7 will be supported in MyBase v6.

Exporting a branch to create a small web site is also a mandatory feature, in order to "make public" a part of the tree and to share it with co-worker. I.M.O. it's more important than saving a web page into the knowledge base file. I usually select some text in a web page and paste it , unformatted, inside the MyBase article. So I don't use "web collect".

Pierre, very interesting article, I have saved this into... my knowledge base file ;) This article will help me to test other Outliners / PIM's, and it is true that there are many of them.

Gz

I'm with Cassius on the difference between an outliner and a PIM. It's always seemed to me that, strictly speaking, an outliner is mainly used for outlining a structure before writing, and a PIM is mainly used for information storage, although of course there are lots of users who use both terms for both, and lots of applications that bridge the gap. Each to his own. However, on the strict definition, it seems to me that what the OP is talking about is storage not writing and therefore a PIM, or if you prefer, a "a personal database".

Incidentally the interesting taxonomy from Wave could usefully include some more applications for the Macintosh, beyond Opal and Scrivener: (for example) TAO, which is probably one of the most comprehensively featured outliners (by the strict definition) on either platform, Tinderbox, OmniOutliner, and DEVONThink, Eaglefiler and Together, which some people claim to use for outlining, but fall more into the personal database category.

I agree with Cassius and Hugh. There is a substantive distinction between an outliner and a tree-based information manager or what I'll call a personal knowledge system (PKS). The truth, of course, is that all applications fall somewhere along a spectrum. Take a solid tree-based PIM like the old Treepad (which is still a great little application). You can surely use it for outlining, as well as information management.

So why bother with the distinction? I think it helps one choose an application if you can imagine how you want to use it. An outliner, in my view, is primarily a thinking and writing tool. As such, it should facilitate the capture of your own thoughts and ideas, allow you to explore them with quick, easy re-organization tools. It should allow you to change the scope of the view of your information quickly, zooming in on details or zooming out to get the bigger picture.

A PKS, on the other hand, should facilitate the capture and organization of information. It should provide tools for categorizing that information and finding it later. It should help you establish connections between various bits of data. It should make extracting that information easy. It should have powerful search functions. And, in this day and age, should synchronize across multiple computers and PDAs.

I don't believe you will find one application that can perform really well as both an outliner and a PKS. Some come close -- Whizfolders might be an example, or Brainstorm (if you don't need text formatting and image-capture).

Most writers, I think, will want to have two applications. One for outlining and one for managing their research. Scrivener for the Mac is an interesting application to study in this regard. It has a fairly robust tree-based system for organizing writing, but it also includes an outlining function, demonstrating that at least this developer sees a distinction between how you organize your writing and how you think about it. And most Scrivener users also use a separate PKS.

In the end, however, all that matters is finding what works for you. I'm just suggesting that thinking about outlining and knowledge management as separate activities may help you find the right system for you.

Steve Z.

I have been keeping a close eye on an intriguing MS Excel 2007, 2010 add-in called XLNotes (http://www.xlnotes.com/ I use it to add notes and images to Excel spreadsheet cells. It's a vast improvement over Excel's cumbersome cell comment feature. The programmers are currently working on a new version that they said will come out soon. The program has great protential.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

An outliner, in my view, is
primarily a thinking and writing tool. As such, it should facilitate the capture of
your own thoughts and ideas, allow you to explore them with quick, easy
re-organization tools. It should allow you to change the scope of the view of your
information quickly, zooming in on details or zooming out to get the bigger
picture.

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any good contenders for providing this functionality in Windows anymore. Stephen, I forget what you use for Outlining, but I'm thinking maybe you have switched to Mac. I used ADM for a long time, and have found no good replacement.

I wonder if the problem with Windows is similar to a problem I noticed regarding restaurants:
Yesterday my wife and I were talking about the problem that there are no sit-down restaurants open for breakfast in downtown San Francisco before 10 am on weekends. We concluded that maybe Starbucks is driving full-service restaurants out of the area: There is at least 1 Starbucks per block in downtown SF, and Starbucks provides most of what most people want before 10 am (coffee and donuts). Unfortunately, they don't provide what we were looking for (omelettes and sit-down service). And because Starbucks is there, no full-service restaurant can make enough money to stay open before 8 am, because they can't sell anything to the majority of people who just want coffee and donuts.

Perhaps in Windows, MS Word provides outliner functionality that's analogous to Starbucks's breakfast offerings. It's just good enough to satisfy what the vast majority want in an outliner, and thus keeps more full-featured outliner offerings from succeeding in Windows. And as MS Word adds more outliner features, the problem will only get worse. (Just as, when Starbucks started offering oatmeal, the restaurant problem got worse).

I'm sure that business-school folks probably have a name for this phenomenon. Maybe they know the solution, too. It seems to me the only solutions would be increasing the market for full-featured outliners or decreasing the cost of entry. (For instance, in Houston, where it is far cheaper to open a restaurant than in SF, there are tons of Starbucks and also plenty of full-service breakfast restaurants). Maybe Mac has a lower cost of entry for some reason -- or maybe Word has less of a foothold on Macs.

dan7000 wrote:

Unfortunately, there don't
seem to be any good contenders for providing this functionality in Windows anymore.
Stephen, I forget what you use for Outlining, but I'm thinking maybe you have switched
to Mac. I used ADM for a long time, and have found no good replacement.

Indeed. I just recently started using ADM for the first time, and despite certain glaring issues, I'm hooked. I had never tried it before because it seemed so obscure and out of date, and various people on this forum had warned about its myriad problems, not the least of which was a seemingly unbalanced if manicly brilliant developer. But I came across it again through some focused web searches, and after reading more about "Doc View", I decided it might have what I was looking for. Indeed, the combination of a good writing environment with powerful organizational features like hoist, "super-hoist", cloning, and columns makes it unparalleled. At first the absence of an undo functioned seemed like a deal-breaker, but I'm finding I can work with it. Anyway, perhaps this should be a separate thread.

Lucas wrote:

the combination of a good writing environment with
powerful organizational features like hoist, "super-hoist", cloning, and columns
makes it unparalleled.

I should clarify that IQ is probably a close parallel. But the data-centric feel of IQ isn't (yet) quite as inviting for one-pane outlining/writing of prose, although I may not have experimented enough with the formatting and display options.

dan7000 wrote:

Maybe Mac has a lower cost of entry for some
reason -- or maybe Word has less of a foothold on Macs.

I don't have first-hand access to the facts, but my understanding dan is that you are correct on both counts.

Word does have appear to have less of a foothold on Macs, possibly because MS seems to have pushed less investment into recent products for the platform.

And as far as I know Apple's developer tools, whilst not all that Mac developers would wish them to be, are less expensive than the equivalent tools for Windows, possibly in some cases free of charge. This appears to have fertilised the Mac small-developer seedbed disproportionately by comparison with Windows'.

Interesting synchronicity here - I've just spent a half hour or so wistfully looking at ADM, wondering if I should revert to it, wondering if it is risky because I have lost my registration data and not sure how long it'll keep working on this computer, wondering if I should try and get hold of Arne, the former partner of ADM who is reachable in Vancouver (Eric presumably still in China).

ADM, had it continued to develop, would be at the top of the heap today. Many of the features you've mentioned were suggested by users such as Jan, back in the time when Eric was open to hearing what people wanted. Many people spent hours and hours beta testing ADM, sending feedback and, to Eric's credit, he was prompt at incorporating it.

In my own personal hurt over the way Eric responded to Jan, myself, and others, I both took shots at Eric and attempted to get meaningful response from Arne. After a while Arne no longer responded to communication. I suspect he too was left in the lurch by Eric.

In the windows world, with the possible exception of InfoQube, there is no outliner/PIMS/knowledge manager which comes close to what ADM was when Eric disengaged from the world prior to the Beijing Olympics.

Eric had a great vision for how ADM would plug into the information superhighway. While technology may have eclipsed that vision, there's no doubt that as a result of it, he also had a perceptive vision for how ADM could evolve, and what would make it an effective tool.

Eric's view of the world was encompassing. I came across some material on the problem solving methodology known as TRIZ today, quite by chance. My partner's daughter is in engineering, and so I printed it out for her. The only reason I knew about TRIZ was because Eric, in what I recall was ADM 3, included information on TRIZ.

It was because of that I ended up looking at ADM today, before finding your references to it.

At one time, James Fallows, the National Correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, and a great Zoot advocate, had written of the promise of ADM. I believe James may have actually met Eric in China. I don't know if others had told James about ADM, but I had emailed him about the program. The upshot was a phone conversation with him, and the assurance he would download the program. He was true to his word.

If anyone has Arne's address, please forward this note to him. Or to Eric, for that matter, if anyone is in contact with him.

And let them know at least a few people are lamenting still the loss of ADM development because no program has matched it. InfoQube is close, but its instructions (and right now the cost) are beyond me. UltraRecall is good, but its developers have not yet taken seriously the need for simple English, and explaining built-in quirks.

I'd love to know who has rights to the ADM code. Is it possible that arrangements could be made to again develop ADM, perhaps funded by a group of people who might commit to a monthly subscription? As it is now, ADM with some mods to take into account tech changes in the last few years, is market ready.

Daly

Lucas wrote:

dan7000 wrote:
>
>Unfortunately, there don't
>seem to be any good contenders for
providing this functionality in Windows anymore.
>Stephen, I forget what you use
for Outlining, but I'm thinking maybe you have switched
>to Mac. I used ADM for a long
time, and have found no good replacement.
>

Indeed. I just recently started using
ADM for the first time, and despite certain glaring issues, I'm hooked. I had never
tried it before because it seemed so obscure and out of date, and various people on this
forum had warned about its myriad problems, not the least of which was a seemingly
unbalanced if manicly brilliant developer. But I came across it again through some
focused web searches, and after reading more about "Doc View", I decided it might have
what I was looking for. Indeed, the combination of a good writing environment with
powerful organizational features like hoist, "super-hoist", cloning, and columns
makes it unparalleled. At first the absence of an undo functioned seemed like a
deal-breaker, but I'm finding I can work with it. Anyway, perhaps this should be a
separate thread.

Lucas, you say you recently started using ADM?

I'm curious to know how you went or will go about registering it? Is there still a way to do that?

My understanding (see my longer note from earlier today under this topic) is that ADM is no longer developed, and that one can no longer buy and register it.

Thanks.

Daly

dan7000 wrote:

Unfortunately, there don't
seem to be any good contenders for providing this functionality in Windows anymore.
Stephen, I forget what you use for Outlining, but I'm thinking maybe you have switched
to Mac. I used ADM for a long time, and have found no good replacement.

Dan,

I agree that Windows seems a wasteland of good outliners, at least as I've defined "outliner." I live in both the Mac and Windows worlds: Mac for home/personal computing and Windows at work. The truth is, I'm not thrilled with any of the outliners available in either platform, though Mac certainly is a bit more robust with OmniOutliner and Tao, although Tao appears to be a bit of an orphan at this point.

In Windows, I think the best current outliner is Brainstorm, though it does require stretching your concept of what an outliner looks like. MaxThink is the most full-featured outliner, but it is way too quirky for me, I'm afraid. Inspiration is acceptable, and produces the best looking outlines. An overlooked option, I think, is SuperNoteCard from Mindola.

I'm not sure why so few developers want to produce outliners for Windows. Perhaps you are right about Word's impact.

Steve Z.

dan7000 wrote:

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>
>An outliner, in my view, is
>primarily a thinking and
writing tool. As such, it should facilitate the capture of
>your own thoughts and
ideas, allow you to explore them with quick, easy
>re-organization tools. It should
allow you to change the scope of the view of your
>information quickly, zooming in on
details or zooming out to get the bigger
>picture.
>

Unfortunately, there don't
seem to be any good contenders for providing this functionality in Windows anymore.
Stephen, I forget what you use for Outlining, but I'm thinking maybe you have switched
to Mac. I used ADM for a long time, and have found no good replacement.

I wonder if the
problem with Windows is similar to a problem I noticed regarding restaurants:

Yesterday my wife and I were talking about the problem that there are no sit-down
restaurants open for breakfast in downtown San Francisco before 10 am on weekends. We
concluded that maybe Starbucks is driving full-service restaurants out of the area:
There is at least 1 Starbucks per block in downtown SF, and Starbucks provides most of
what most people want before 10 am (coffee and donuts). Unfortunately, they don't
provide what we were looking for (omelettes and sit-down service). And because
Starbucks is there, no full-service restaurant can make enough money to stay open
before 8 am, because they can't sell anything to the majority of people who just want
coffee and donuts.

Perhaps in Windows, MS Word provides outliner functionality
that's analogous to Starbucks's breakfast offerings. It's just good enough to
satisfy what the vast majority want in an outliner, and thus keeps more full-featured
outliner offerings from succeeding in Windows. And as MS Word adds more outliner
features, the problem will only get worse. (Just as, when Starbucks started offering
oatmeal, the restaurant problem got worse).

I'm sure that business-school folks
probably have a name for this phenomenon. Maybe they know the solution, too. It seems
to me the only solutions would be increasing the market for full-featured outliners
or decreasing the cost of entry. (For instance, in Houston, where it is far cheaper to
open a restaurant than in SF, there are tons of Starbucks and also plenty of
full-service breakfast restaurants). Maybe Mac has a lower cost of entry for some
reason -- or maybe Word has less of a foothold on Macs.

Dan

Been cudgelling my memory since reading your very nice analogy, and I have a name long buried for at least half the phenomenon you describe: satisficing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing That is what Microsoft is doing with its outliner, and Starbucks with its doughnuts.

H

Even I'm missing ADM. I have a license for version 3; I redownloaded and tried to install, and got a raft of error messages, including the almost forgotten "access violation" that contributed to my previous discouragement:

Failed to set data for "

Access violation at address 0051E104 in module "ADM.exe'.

Exception ERegistryException in module ADM.exe at 00095806. Failed to set data for 'D1'.

Access violation at address 709781F3.

------------------------------

I'm running Windows 7, 64 bit, and I'm guessing ADM isn't compatible with 64-bit architecture. If that's the case ? someone more knowledgeable might confirm from the data above ? then this incompatibility will limit the current version's longevity.

I should add: ADM didn't install at all. The error messages appeared in succession.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Even I'm missing ADM. I have a license for version 3; I redownloaded and tried to
install, and got a raft of error messages, including the almost forgotten "access
violation" that contributed to my previous discouragement:

Failed to set data for
"

Access violation at address 0051E104 in module "ADM.exe'.

Exception
ERegistryException in module ADM.exe at 00095806. Failed to set data for
'D1'.

Access violation at address
709781F3.


I'm running Windows 7, 64 bit, and
I'm guessing ADM isn't compatible with 64-bit architecture. If that's the case ?
someone more knowledgeable might confirm from the data above ? then this
incompatibility will limit the current version's longevity.

Stephen, I can't comment on the possible Windows 7 64-bit issues, since I'm running XP/32. I periodically get something like "List index out of bounds" and some times I have to "OK" the error window a dozen times, but I never have to terminate the program (that happened once at the beginning, but it hasn't yet happened again). I've had one or two other error messages, but I don't think they were of the sort you describe, although I may have had one access violation. The biggest problem I've encountered is that if I do complex two-way cloning, occasionally the content of a node (in all cloned versions) disappears. This only happened a couple times, and fortunately I had been saving lots of backups, so I retrieved the lost data. But I have now adjusted my habits in the direction of less cloning. At this point, despite some annoying quirks, I'm still finding ADM to be may favored environment on Windows.

Anyway, that's a shame the program doesn't run on 7/64. My guess is it will remain a legacy product, accessible to those determined to run it, but dysfunctional on the latest systems.

Lucas