Hi folks,

I have been learning a lot of things about how you folks using outliner software in this forum, thank you!

I'm developing Writing Outliner Word addin, the initial idea was to turn Word into a all-in-one software, but I soon realized it can also turn Word into a powerful outliner software. Why?

1. Each node of the left outline pane is linked to a single Word document, you select a node and the linked word document is loaded and ready for editing.
2. For each outline node you can further add notes, tags and icons.
3. It supports advanced full text search (much like Google ;) into all documents in the project.
4. Tabbed-editing word documents, that means editing multiple documents at the same time.

I have just blogged about it, a lot of new Screenshots, and you might be interested in viewing these new Screenshots and hopefully you can give me some advises from an outliner software's perspective!

http://writingoutliner.com/writing-software/blog/turning-word-into-an-outliner-software-more-new-screenshots/

Thank you!

Edwin Yip
http://WritingOutliner.com

That looks very good Edwin!
Keep on with the good work...
S?bastien

Edwin

You are implementing I idea I had several years ago. But because I can't program I thought to wait until a developer has the same idea. Then late in 2009 I came across your web page and I thought "yes, he did it!". You are on the right track and I keep fingers crossed your all your efforts.

Dominik

Thank you Sbastien :)

Sebastien Berthet wrote:

That looks very good Edwin!
Keep on with the good work...
S?bastien

Hi Dominik,

I wish I have known you several years ago ;)

Dominik Holenstein wrote:

Edwin

You are implementing I idea I had several years ago. But because I can't
program I thought to wait until a developer has the same idea. Then late in 2009 I came
across your web page and I thought "yes, he did it!". You are on the right track and I keep
fingers crossed your all your efforts.

Dominik

Edwin when's beta going to start? I've been monitoring Writing Outliner homepage for last 2 hours.

Thanks, Shazad

Hi Shazad,

Thank you for asking, as you might have know, its started already :)

---
Edwin Yip
Turn MS Word into a full-featured outliner software
http://WritingOutliner.com

shazad wrote:

Edwin when's beta going to start? I've been monitoring Writing Outliner homepage for
last 2 hours.

Thanks, Shazad

My initial impression was quite favourable, in spite of some minor difficulties with installation on a standard user account (Vista).

However, your description states that;
?1. Each node of the left outline pane is linked to a single Word document, you select a node and the linked word document is loaded and ready for editing.?

This suggested to me that Writing Outliner Word addin would operate in a similar fashion to 'Chapter by Chapter', or the MSWord Master Document feature, in which each sub-document is linked to a separate MSWord document file somewhere on the hard disc.

But as far as I can tell, the ?linked Word documents? only exists inside the WOPRJ project file and can only be accessed by opening the appropriate project file.

Is this correct? If so, have you any plans to change this arrangement going forward?

Hi Taxi,

In my original post, by "linking" I mean the linkage between the outline and the corresponding Word document that's stored in a WOPRJ project file, sorry for the confusion.

Regarding the file format, I'll be adding a backup and versioning feature that will also store the documents it their original format (.doc, etc) into a zip file aside from the WOPROJ project file, upon closing a modified project. This way, your will always have copy of your Writing Outliner project in a none-proprietary format. Hope this helps.

You can check the discussion about this backup and versioning feature here:
http://writingoutliner.com/forum/topic/what-kind-of-data-backup-feature-do-you-want

BTW, a Writing Outliner Word Add-in project file itself is a SQLITE database which is a commonly used data format and can be opened by a wide variety of other software tools including many open source ones, because SQLITE database is the world's number one open source desktop database system!

Hi Edwin and all,

I have been following the development of Writing Outliner Word addin for some time now, and playing with the first betas with great satisfaction. I see huge potential of this project, which is constantly moving in the direction of comprehensive information manager, especially useful for academic writing.

Thank you, Edwin, for your work and take care!

Wojciech

?Anti-disclaimer?: I must admit that I am a big fan of the idea from the beginning and wish Edwin a great success :)

Hi Wojciech,

Thank you for your kind words and your feedback for the beta version in the Writing Outliner beta test forum :)