Hello,

Hi,

I'm the developer of the freeware program Noteliner ( http://web.me.com/hawksworth/Noteliner/Main.html ) and have recently finished polishing up version 2.7. I'm done for a little while but want to start thinking about what version 3 could be. My goal is to keep Noteliner fast and simple but I'm wondering if there are key features that might make it worthy of a 3.0 designation. The ideas that I have or have received are:

- The ability to save off branches of the outline including implementing a "Send To" function so users could send parts of their outline to others or archive them. Probably also good to be able to append Noteliner files.
- Move to multiple document format (it was designed to have a single doc because each branch could be thought of as its own document, so in a sense, if used as I originally anticipated, there need only be one file. However, I've since learned that others don't use it that way.)
- Encryption - this could slow down autosaves a bit, but also make the program less 'immediate' if you have to enter a password.
- HTML export has received a few mentions
- Ability to embed links
- Improved formating, such as setting font sizes for different levels, or allowing automatic insertion of blank lines under certain conditions to improve readability.

Would be interested in any thoughts that could take Noteliner "to the next level" while keeping it simple and not placing additional burden on users.

Thanks!
Sam

Why not multi-parent items ?
To avoid being just another one outliner....

I'm sure you didn't mean it exactly this way, but let me chime in and say that Noteliner is much more than "just another outliner." As I said in an earlier comment, it is more like a hybrid of Brainstorm and TaskPaper (a Mac app). It is a simple, but elegant application. Which is not to say that your suggestion isn't a good one.

Steve

clacha wrote:

Why not multi-parent items ?
To avoid being just another one outliner....

Hi Sam,

like noteliner very much so far and would really appreciate, if it's going to be developed further.
You already mentioned most of the suggestions I would have had - especially hyperlinks and formatting.

There's one left:
view all items of a certain level and the ability to print or save this view.

best regards

Achim

I hadn't updated Noteliner in quite a while and just went over to get 2.7. I'm very happy with the text export option.

Of the ideas you mentioned below, I'd love to see HTML or OPML export and a bullet-level "send to" option that would enable the user to "tear off" a portion of an outline and send it to a text file or to an e-mail.

Less important usability suggestions would be a built-in keyboard shortcut cheat sheet that you can access with a couple of keystrokes, and possibly the ability to change to a terminal-style color scheme (a la Q10; www.baara.com/q10/).

Thank you for building and maintaining this! This is such a great piece of software in a small, portable package --- as fast and as simple to use as writing notes in a text file, but with so much more power.

-Sara

Thanks Steve! I appreciate the kind words. Sara, I've often toyed with the idea of multiple parent items, and frankly it might not be too difficult to implement. Originally my thought was that you want a daily todo list, and then also have the todos in the individual projects, so that could be two parents. I used "todo" lists and a todo view to solve that problem. I felt that, in practice, you would end up with a ball of spaghetti and find it too cumbersome to maintain a multiple-parent outline like that. Noteliner I think is best suited to keeping track of project todos and information, and I'm not sure how multiple parents helps with that. I'd be interested to hear of any scenarios where multiple parents would solve a difficulty.

Sam,

Here are two minor suggestions:

1. Some control on the look of items in various states. For example, I find the gray color for completed items too light. I'd like to be able to adjust that.
2. Some optional controls for text exports. Specifically, I'd like to be able to select a different numbering scheme, and would like to include tab indents, the way a copy and paste works.

Steve

BTW, I don't see any need to add encryption. That seems like a needless feature.

Steve

Hi Sam,

Thanks for a very good program and for the feedback request!

I agree with most of the suggestions already made; some, like encryption, wouldn't be useful to me but as long as it is optional it's fine.

My suggestions:

- Import and Export from/to tab indented text and/or OPML. These seem to be the two most popular formats for transferring data between outliners; tab indented text in particular can be copy/pasted to and from most mind mapping programs maintaining the hierarchy.

- Some keyboard shortcuts for navigation (drilling down and up) and expanding/collapsing would be useful.

Regarding multiple parents, what is often referred to as 'clones', the argument for their use in a to-do list is rather simple: a specific task may belong to more than one projects.

Cheers!
Alexander

Sam Hawksworth wrote:

Would be interested
in any thoughts that could take Noteliner "to the next level" while keeping it simple
and not placing additional burden on users.

Hi Sam,

while testing Noteliner for story-writing, I thought about some additional features, which might add to its usability:

- copy/cut and paste in the context menu

- Export as textfile with tab indent instead of numbering (already mentioned but to push its priority :-))

- Bullett choice menu with icons instead of numbers

- Customizable bullett icons/customizable icons

I agree to the other posters that encryption might be of minor priority, since there are lots of simple and advanced solutions to work with encrypted files.

Finally something that could be considered as a little bug - at least by some european users:

Words can be marked by doubleclicking, perfect - unless they contain umlauts, accents or other special characters. Then the mark ends at the special character.

Thanks again for this nice piece of software. Think it's got a great potential, especially as there are so few alternatives for Windows.

Best regards

Achim