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Single-pane outliners
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Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 17, 2011 at 03:49 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>I’ve
>been using Natara Bonsai (desktop version) for over 6 years and I’ve been extremely
>satisfied. It can be used as a single-pane outliner, but additional panes can be
>switched on or off (e.g. for file directory and notes). I always wondered why I haven’t
>heard more people raving about it. It might be because Natara have been marketing it as
>an accessory to the Palm app, which I think is a major marketing blunder, as the desktop
>version (Bonsai 5 Desktop Edition) is the star product in my
>view:
>http://www.natara.com/bonsai/Download.cfm
P.S. Another thing that probably puts people off are the screenshots on the Natara website, which all focus on the bells and whistles of the software (such as various GTD features), when in fact the outliner is the core product.
It’s got a highly customisable interface. I turn everything off (such as the other panes, columns, check boxes, status bars etc.) and use it as a pure outliner only. Key strengths are the ease of entering data, promoting, demoting and rearranging items and entire branches, collapsing and zooming in and out of branches (hoisting), filtering out levels of the hierarchy (e.g. looking at top 1, 2, 3, 4 levels only), and my most favourite feature, colour-coding items on the basis of the level in the hierarchy (which really helps with navigating massive outlines).
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 17, 2011 at 04:23 PM
Dr. Andus,
I’ve always found Natara Bonsai to feel more like a task manager than an outliner, but I can see that it could function fine as an outliner as you describe it. Bonsai reminds me of another list-manager-type, single-pane outliner call ListPro from Ilium:
http://www.iliumsoft.com/site/lp/listpro.php
I know ListPro has been recommended by others here. I used to use it extensively many years ago, when I used a PocketPC. What I liked about ListPro was that you could completely customize the columns for the data you needed to collect. Don’t know where it is at today in terms of development.
Steve
Posted by Jon Polish
Mar 17, 2011 at 04:33 PM
Mention should be made of InfoQube. My reservation is that it is still in development, rough and inconsistent in some areas, can be quirky, and ungainly (filters and other features requiring knowledge of syntax).
Now this is going to sound a little crazy, but you can use Ultra Recall as a single pane outliner. Using Data Explorer only, and turn on word wrap. Hoisting, linking, cloning,etc. It’s all there with the added benefit of item attributes which you can think of being akin to Ecco’s columns.
Ecco is still my favorite though.
Jon
Posted by Pierre Paul Landry
Mar 17, 2011 at 06:07 PM
Jon Polish wrote:
>Mention should be made of InfoQube. My reservation is that it is still in development,
>rough and inconsistent in some areas, can be quirky, and ungainly (filters and other
>features requiring knowledge of syntax).
Thanks for mentioning InfoQube Jon. The current version (v0.9.25L) no longer requires using SQL syntax for filtering / sorting. Most common functions can be done through the grid UI (Filtering, Sorting, Grouping, Hoisting)
HTH
Pierre, IQ Designer
Posted by Ken
Mar 17, 2011 at 06:36 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>Dr. Andus,
>
>I’ve always found Natara Bonsai to feel more like a task manager than an
>outliner, but I can see that it could function fine as an outliner as you describe it.
>Bonsai reminds me of another list-manager-type, single-pane outliner call ListPro
>from Ilium:
>
>http://www.iliumsoft.com/site/lp/listpro.php
>
>I know ListPro
>has been recommended by others here. I used to use it extensively many years ago, when I
>used a PocketPC. What I liked about ListPro was that you could completely customize
>the columns for the data you needed to collect. Don’t know where it is at today in terms
>of development.
>
>Steve
I used Bonsai on my old Sony Clie and on the desktop of my old PC. It was a reasonably well designed program, especially its Palm client. But, it seems like Natara and IlliumSoft had a tough time keeping their products up to date with respect to smartphones and web-based applications. They are, however, still part of the standards when I judge new Android and web-based applications, just like Ecco is still one of my standards for PIM programs. And while I have found some reasonably simple task management programs that I like, I have yet to find an outliner that has an Android client and is web-based that works as well as Ecco.
—Ken