I would like to find an outline program that allows me to associate text with different layers. Then if I want to format a particular layer of text with a certain attribute (say a color, size, or even delete it) then I can simply modify the entire layer all at once, while leaving the other layers as they are. Does anybody know of a good software to do this? I’ve tried outlining in Microsoft word, and have tagged text with “styles”, which seems to work ok. But, I’m wondering if there is a program specifically built with a layering function that is similar to engineering drafting programs like AutoCad. Thanks.

Hi.

If you're talking about stylesheets that allow quick reformatting of headings, etc., then Word, LibreOffice/OpenOffice Writer, Scrivener, Papyrus, Latex (and all the editors based on TEX) come to mind.
I am, however, not aware of any outliner supporting stylesheets (stylesheets are not really necessary - an outliner is a thinking and organizing tool not a formatting tool).

If you're talking about the ability to add certain portions of your text to the final document, Scrivener's Compile (for export or printing) feature might be what you're looking for. I am not sure but I think other "writers' wordprocessors" such as Whizfolders, Storybook or IdeaMason should have comparable features.

Franz

Unless I am misunderstanding you, Ecco Pro allows you to create styles for different levels. I think NoteMap does too.

Jon

Notemap is dangerous. *I once recommended it...until it permanently lost several paragraphs of text I had just written. Also, it is no longer being developed and the developer failed to make a very simple fix when it introduced version 2.

Jon Polish wrote:

Unless I am misunderstanding you, Ecco Pro allows you to create styles for different
levels. I think NoteMap does too.

Jon

Tall Guy, if I understand well your post, you are indeed talking of overlapping 'layers' on a plane and not of hierarchical 'levels' in an outline. If this is a case, I can't think of any such software of the kind discussed here, though it is a common feature in design programs as you mentioned, but also GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

I expect you can achieve indeed the desired effect with such specialist software, but I imagine that you are probably looking for something more handy than a 'sledgehammer'.

An alternative are presentation applications like PowerPoint; you can have multiple text boxes one on top of the other, and re-arrange them and enable/disable them at will (by making their text opaque or transparent respectively). As long as you keep the text boxes without a background colour, they will happily overlap. Not the most convenient thing to do, but it works.

May I ask what kind of application you have in mind? It does sound like quite an original idea in the world of personal information management.

Thanks for your help. This is intended to help create an outline for law school classes. I need to organize class notes, case briefs, notes from the text book, etc. However, at the end of the semester this ends up to be about a 200 page outline to study with. The exams are open notes, however a 200 page outline won't help. So it would be nice to tag the important stuff throughout the semester, so that with a few mouse clicks I can shrink the outline down to a 30-40 page outline while keeping the same structure and headings of the 200 page outline.

By the way, is an "outliner" software the same as software that makes outlines?

thanks.

Tall Guy wrote:

This is intended to help create an outline for
law school classes. I need to organize class notes, case briefs, notes
from the text book, etc. However, at the end of the semester this ends
up to be about a 200 page outline to study with. The exams are open
notes, however a 200 page outline won't help. So it would be nice to
tag the important stuff throughout the semester, so that with a few
mouse clicks I can shrink the outline down to a 30-40 page outline while
keeping the same structure and headings of the 200 page outline.

There seem to be a number of separate requirements tied up here, with the 3rd one being crucial:
1) organise a large number of notes;
2) have a hierarchical structure;
3) ability to abstract by way of extraction.

Probably a number of different tools can do this, where its possible to extract annotations.

I would use ConnectedText for this. 1) it can handle large number of notes. 2) You can create a hierarchical structure by organising your links in a hierarchy in the home page or in its Outliner tool. 3) You can abstract by way of extraction in a number of ways:

a) by extracting a conclusion section from each note and "including" them in a summary page (using CT's special "include" markup), as explained here:
http://drandus.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/caqdas-model-for-connectedtext/

b) by using the "properties" command, which allows you to mark up a max. 256 characters with spaces into a summary, which then can then be gathered together in multiple ways (e.g. simply by clicking on one of the links thus created).

I could also imagine a single-pane outliner with inline notes used for it, where the inline notes would contain the content, while the description of the outline items would contain the summary. Outline 4D for example would allow you to toggle these (only show the summaries, i.e. extracted abstracts) and even export the abstracts only, abstracts+notes or notes only.

I'd be also curious to know whether there are two-pane outliners that can do this (extraction of outline headings that can be long enough to constitute summaries).

By the way, is an "outliner" software the same as software that makes
outlines?

I think there is a lack of terminological unity. There is a huge variety of outliners out there for many different stages of the outlining and writing process. See e.g. Pierre's list:
http://www.editgrid.com/user/pplandry/List_of_Outliners

Dr Andus wrote:

b) by using the "properties" command, which allows you to mark up a max.
256 characters with spaces into a summary, which then can then be
gathered together in multiple ways (e.g. simply by clicking on one of
the links thus created).

Actually I meant the "attributes" function in CT, which might be slightly better in this case than the "properties" function (though the two are very similar), as it makes the marked up text visible in the given document in view mode.

Tall Guy wrote:

So it would be nice to
tag the important stuff throughout the semester, so that with a few
mouse clicks I can shrink the outline down to a 30-40 page outline while
keeping the same structure and headings of the 200 page outline.

Now that I know what you're trying to do, I believe that the solution might be similar to some of those suggested here: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/2666/
(I understand the problem is not the same, but the solution might.)

In particular, I would look to Noteliner, where you can have outlines in pages, plus the handy navigation pane for overview. I.e. you can have an outline of outlines, which gives you a quick way to view your 200-page outline from a 10,000 ft perspective. In addition, you can use tags to quickly jump to the important points.

For outline shrinking, there's Treesheets: http://treesheets.com/

For format specific lay-outs, the pro version of Jarte has something they call personalities: http://www.jarte.com/jarte_plus.html

For something advanced, this is marketed as a code editor but I assume you can do some powerful tricks for your task with Sublime Text: http://www.sublimetext.com/

For something less advanced but just as powerful, there's Scrivener.

For something like Scrivener but free, there's Writemonkey's reference text: http://writemonkey.com/

They are not the ideal software but they are focused enough for the task I would assume. The toughest task is differentiating between "layers" that can work like Liquid Story Binder and annotations that could be better off being done in a specific annotation software. None of which I'm familiar with. The other tough task is what the final output is intended to be and how the search of the tags will be done.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Tall Guy, if I understand well your post, you are indeed talking of
overlapping 'layers' on a plane and not of hierarchical 'levels' in an
outline. If this is a case, I can't think of any such software of the
kind discussed here, though it is a common feature in design programs as
you mentioned, but also GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

I'm coming back to this topic because I just found how to do the above (while realising that this was not what Tall Guy wanted to do). VUE can organise its objects in separate layers, more or less like Photoshop, and you can then 'hide unselected layers' from the layer control box. It seems extremely handy for building complex diagrams and then showing them section by section; a sort of 2-D 'hoist'.

Tall Guy wrote:

Thanks for your help. This is intended to help create an outline for
law school classes. I need to organize class notes, case briefs, notes
from the text book, etc. However, at the end of the semester this ends
up to be about a 200 page outline to study with. The exams are open
notes, however a 200 page outline won't help. So it would be nice to
tag the important stuff throughout the semester, so that with a few
mouse clicks I can shrink the outline down to a 30-40 page outline while
keeping the same structure and headings of the 200 page outline.

Having looked at this again (and having been obsessed with Outline 4D recently), I believe that this can be achieved in O4D in multiple ways and very easily. You can reduce a 200-p. outline to a 30-p. outline with a single click) by 1) constructing a custom view and turning it on or off with the "Custom visibility (Ctrl+Shift+7)" button, or 2) using the "Level Selector" and only viewing the levels you want to see. Both versions can be printed or exported as RTF.

Tall Guy wrote:

I would like to find an outline program that allows me to associate text
with different layers. Then if I want to format a particular layer of
text with a certain attribute (say a color, size, or even delete it)
then I can simply modify the entire layer all at once, while leaving the
other layers as they are.

Again, this is exactly what Outline 4D excels at. You can format each hierarchical level (which is meant by "layer" here) as required, all at once. You can also remove entire levels by unselecting them in the Level Selector, and they will no longer appear in the outline.

Dr Andus wrote:

Tall Guy wrote:
or even delete it

And while I'm at it, yes, in O4D you can even delete selected levels of a hierarchy with their content, all in one go.

Go to Tools > Document Settings > Event Hierarchies, select level to be deleted, and hit Delete.