I agree that the relational database that UR does so well becomes necessary at a certain point.

I used to use UR to try to do too much, for purposes where it wasn't necessary or was ill-suited, which meant suffering unnecessary costs.

Eventually I realized that longform text is the ultimate relational database, containing complex nuance and interconnected thoughts that could never be represented in any kind of webbed mapping PIM. The question becomes, do you want to pursue that objective ad infinitum, or do you focus on managing your longform text instead, and turn to web mappers only when appropriate. In UR's case, when you need a mixed assortment of files, nodes, contact info etc interlinked and searchable via metadata.

Then the costs become negligible because the longform text handles the bulk of the interlinking load, leaving UR to do what it shines at. In other words, one avoids affordance overload.

dan7000 wrote:

I really like the Word 2010 outliner. In the left pane is an
outline of items - no in-line text. In the right pane is your document where you can
view, edit, or collapse items, sub-items, all in-line. In either pane you can drag
items to other locations in the outline -- and sub-items and text move with the parent
item, as expected. That's about it for the functionality, though: no hoisting or
other advanced outlining features. Of course, the best part is the support for rich
text formatting, hyperlinks, and embedded objects -- in item titles as well as the
body text -- this is something almost every other outliner struggles with.

dan7000, what do you mean by '"left pane" and "right pane" in Word 2010 outliner? Mine only works as a single pane outliner, so I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

But otherwise I'm also warming up to Word 2010 outliner. The main benefit for me is that I can keep my EndNote code in the text, which otherwise would be lost if I move a Word or RTF file in and out of other outliners.

>dan7000, what do you mean by ??left pane? and ?right pane? in Word 2010 outliner? Mine only works as a single pane outliner, so I?m wondering if I?m missing something.

In the Ribbon menu, under "View," there should be a section called "Show" with a checkbox for "Navigation Pane."

The Navigation pane (what I called the "left pane") has 3 tabs. The first one shows all headings in your document in an outline-style view. You can click them to go to an item, collapse or show branches of the tree, and even drag items from one place to another all within this pane.

dan7000 wrote:

The Navigation pane (what I called
the "left pane") has 3 tabs. The first one shows all headings in your document in an
outline-style view. You can click them to go to an item, collapse or show branches of
the tree, and even drag items from one place to another all within this pane.

Thanks dan7000, I don't know how I could miss that... While we're on this topic, have you or anyone else ever used the "masterdocument" feature in Word 2010 outline mode (by creating or adding subdocuments to the outline)? I suppose that's the feature that Scrivener and Writing Outliner offer as their main selling point?

Hi.

I stopped using the master document feature in Word 2003. It was simply too cumbersome: Pagination sometimes worked, sometimes didn't (numbering doc1 from - say - page 1 to 25 and continuing doc2 with page 26). Table of contents also didn't work reliably.

Cannot say whether that's still true for Word 2007 or 2010.

Moreover: No comparison to Scrivener's ease of use when switching from one "document" to another and when compiling chapters.

Franz

I stopped using the Master Document feature around the time of Word 2003 also. In my case I abandoned it because it seemed to be the cause of frequent crashes, corrupted files and lost work. This wasn't just my experience; there used to be -- I don't know whether there still is -- a good website detailing recommended ways of using Word for writers of longform documents. It strongly advised against using the Document Map/ Master Document functionality.

That's not to say that this functionality is still a risk factor -- I'd be surprised if Microsoft hadn't put the problems right.

For me at least, an important advantage of Scrivener is that it incorporates Master Document features with fewer of the dangers of that earlier generation of Word. Scrivener only brings a small proportion of one's work into RAM at any one time; the rest remains relatively safe on the hard disk.