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Natara Bonsai - still a top notch outliner
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Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 22, 2012 at 12:32 AM
As Bonsai doesn’t qualify to be included in Steve’s review series (http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4183/0/reviews-of-onenote-vs-other-outliners) (development seems to have ceased a few years ago), I’d like to highlight why I think Bonsai remains a top contender.
1. Its customisability: you can use it as a no-nonsense single-pane outliner without anything else showing or you can enable a whole range of additional features which can turn it into a more complex outliner (or a task or project manager). These additional features include:
a. a selection gutter showing your location in the outline and which allows you to select multiple hierarchy items;
b. a column showing each item number (useful if you have a huge outline and you collapse or hoist a level);
c. a note window (can be displayed on the right or below the outline but unfortunately not inline);
d. several columns you’d expect for task management (start date, end date, tick boxes etc.), incl. a cost column that can add up numbers per hierarchy. There is also a “Created” column which displays the date that each item had been created on.
2. The ability to view and navigate multiple outlines (if options selected). When several outlines are open, they can be selected: a) in an Outline Manager on the right; b) by clicking on their tabs at the bottom. It is also possible to cascade or tile outline windows. Tiling allows you to work on several outlines at the same time. Finally, there is a Print Preview button which shows the entire outline with notes inline and with the items colour-coded (if selected).
3. The ease of creating and navigating an outline. “Enter” creates a new item, “Tab” indents. There are keyboard shortcuts to move things around. However, I have a trackball mouse and with that it’s even faster - a single click - to do all of the following:
a. indent/outdent, move up/down, expand/collapse branch;
b. zoom in or out of a branch (hoist);
c. display any of the top 4 levels of the hierarchy by clicking 1, 2, 3, or 4 (at which point all the hierarchies below are collapsed. E.g. by clicking on 2 you will only see the top two levels of the hierarchy). This is very useful with large outlines. There is also an “All” button which expands everything.
4. Finally, this has been always the killer feature for me: the ability to select custom colours for 16 levels (although it’s also possible to choose the colours for different categories (labels), due dates, or priority). (Completed items can be greyed out.) However, for me the levels are the important option for visual scanning.
There are several features here that I haven’t seen in any other outliner and therefore for me Bonsai continues to be the gold standard in outlining. Even if Bonsai disappears one day, I hope other developers would implement at least some of these features.
P.S. It is certainly possible to use Bonsai for task management, project management, and as the desktop client of the Palm version. However, to me it’s first and foremost a top notch outliner.
I’ve been referring to the Bonsai 5 Desktop Edition:
http://www.natara.com/bonsai/Download.cfm
Posted by CRC
Jul 22, 2012 at 11:52 AM
Dr. Andus:
I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, Natara selected to build the latest mobile version on the windows phone platform. I suspect that if they went Android they would have had a real success on their hands. Too bad ...
Charles
Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 22, 2012 at 12:45 PM
CRC wrote:
>Unfortunately, Natara selected to build the latest
>mobile version on the windows phone platform. I suspect that if they went Android they
>would have had a real success on their hands. Too bad ...
Yes, that was an unfortunate choice… There is some integration with CarbonFin on the iPad/iPhone platform, which is better than nothing, but it still involves a number of export/import steps:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/2543
Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 22, 2012 at 01:02 PM
BTW, this was not a comprehensive review of Natara Bonsai. I’ve only mentioned those features that stood out for me. There are many other features one would expect from a good outliner (e.g. the widest range of import and export formats I have ever seen).
Another feature worth mentioning is that you can link an outline item to another outline, so it’s possible to construct a master outline that links to many other sub-outlines, for instance.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 25, 2012 at 01:16 AM
Let me repost my reply to Steve here as well, as he has kindly agreed to include Bonsai in his review series:
http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/onenote-smack-down-iii-bonsai/
Hi Steve, thank you for including Bonsai in your review series. As a Bonsai fan, I’m obviously going to disagree with your overall verdict (especially the comparison with UV Outliner. If you have Bonsai set up properly and are familiar with its features, it’s far quicker and easier to outline than in UVO in my experience).
However, you’ve confirmed some of my suspicions about why Bonsai is not better known and more widely used as an outliner. The problem seems to be that when it is first installed, all the task management bells and whistles that are turned on distract from its underlying functionality as an outliner. Moreover, the controls to these features are in 3 different places: Global Settings, Preferences, and scattered around the various pull-down menus. It took me a few years of using the software (for a while in conjunction with the Palm app companion) to learn how to turn unneeded features off and turn useful ones on. E.g. I can see you still have Dates, Filters, and Views footers turned on in the screenshot, which end up crowding the interface (but they can be turned off under View > Toolbars).
Not sure what you mean by “level-by-level” text styles (it can’t do different font styles for each level, although it can have different font colour per level), but the overall outline font and the notes font and font style can be changed under Global Settings.
Regarding the export problem into Word, there is a work around. It is possible to export into text, copy and paste into Word, and then turn on the bullets function, which puts the items back into their original hierarchy.
As for visual indication of notes in the outline, there is such a thing. Right-click on the outline header, select “Edit View,” and add “Note” to the displayed columns. This adds a column that displays a little note icon besides each item that has a note.
I agree that Bonsai is unwieldy out of the box. However, I would suggest that spending some time to figure out all the little features rewards the user in the end, as Bonsai is an accomplished outliner for big outlining jobs, once it’s set up for the specific task at hand. However, for quick outlining jobs even I prefer Noteliner these days.