I wish there was a dedicated comparison tool for two-pane outliners/PIMs only, just like there is for wikis, such as the WikiMatrix (http://www.wikimatrix.org/ The more two-pane PIMs I see, the more they merge into an undifferentiated mass in my mind.

The only ones that seem to click with me are the ones that offer some specialist uses, such as Scrivener for outlining and writing or Surfulater for webpage capture.

But seeing the proliferation of two-pane outliners, notes organisers and PIM which on the surface seem barely distinguishable, I feel I must be missing something... I guess I'm after a resource that could categorise the 2-pane PIM out there on the basis of some essential distinguishing features.

This problem doesn't seem to exist for single-pane outliners, as there are so few.

So my question is: what are the main categories (on the basis of core distinguishing features) of two-pane PIMs?

Here are a few features that are crucial to me:

- How much like a real word processor is the editor? Can I write in it the way I could in Word? As I've written before, that involves a certain nimbleness of editing -- extended selection being primary, but also including the ease of adding formatting.

- Is the outline pane the only way to view the organization of your information, or are there other options. For example, can you view your articles in a flat index or sorted by entry date? Can you tag data and filter on tags?

- Can you view the content of more than one article at a time? Can you open separate content windows?

- How quick and powerful is the search? Can you search across databases?

- Does the program facilitate the gathering of text from other sources, such as web capture and e-mail importation.

- Does the program facilitate the exporting of information? Can you export to common file formats? Can you fine tune what gets imported?

- In this day and age, it helps if the information can shared easily with mobile devices.

I'm sure I'm leaving off some features that are also important, but these are the ones that came to mind immediately.

Steve Z.

Thanks for that list, Steve. It made me think that there are at least two ways to approach this classification problem:

1) what the main distinguishing features are (which could be done in a spreadsheet or matrix fairly easily and objectively), and

2) what the software are particularly good for (i.e. possession of certain feature may not guarantee that the software is actually good for carrying out the associated task). I realise this second criterion is less objective and more open to debate. Maybe this could be implemented by user reviews or ranking.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there isn't a single marketplace (website) where all these features and benefits are laid out transparently enough (for two-pane PIMs). Maybe it's unrealistic to expect that someone would construct such a place just for 2-pane PIMS, but maybe it could be a subsection of an existing software marketplace(?)

Interestingly some software such as Scrivener or Outline 4D have made it onto Amazon for instance, however, it's a very niche userbase that seems to be going there to review them (practising or aspiring fiction or script writers).

Dr Andus wrote:

So my question is: what are the main categories (on the basis of core
distinguishing features) of two-pane PIMs?

MDI vs. Pane (example split text vs. static sidebar)

Bookmarks and tagging features

Online sync

Portability

Pane resize feature

Speed

Docks

Plugins

Those are the main features but like most things, they tend to be redundant. Useful only for researchers but outliners are more personal than wikis. It's the "special exemptions" that separates one from the other. Not the robustness or static purpose.

Example in criteria for MDI alone:

The ability for the pane to not just be a tweakable dock like ConnectedText but to be a mindmap/outliner for a mindmap/inbox messaging system is...safe to say, extremely rare but very important. It's the backbone of why David Allen chose MindManager but it's such a highly overlooked feature that many GTDers ignore the specifics of MindManager's pane for your average Mindmap: http://www.gtdtimes.com/2009/10/27/how-david-allen-uses-mindmaps/ at least based on blog articles only. Another underrated feature is Connected Text's outlining capability which allowed it to be the most talked about software recently in this forum if only because certain limitations which forces Dr Andus to opt to use something like VUE for presentation purposes is ignored.

There are other more complicated variations. Goalscape's sidebar for example has attachments which are underrated and understated by many users but obviously allows it to have certain file manager properties that expand the power of two pane capability. There is Scrivener's text being able to be transferred into a sticky notes pane view and an exempted from export view that separates it's outlining capabilities into two views. There is the way Knowsy Notes guarantees that it's pane only shows .txts so even if the pane disappears, the text is truly out in the Operating System. There is how Compendium collects the icons which separates it's pane from other Mindmap panes. There is how Evernote's pane can store downloadable "Trunks".

Basically the core is wild and no one has managed to collect everything into a fundamental set of attributes that properly "fundamentalizes" every unique feature into a core feature. It's a different space from wikis which mostly relies on one major innovation of semantic links. Worse, two pane software is a constant regressive audience. Before Evernote became mainstream, it had to reduce it's features and accept the cloud. Before certain new outlining features had to be introduced, many old advanced outliners had to die away back into it's niche.

Foolness wrote:

Before certain new outlining features had to be introduced, many old advanced outliners had to die away

I don't know whether this was a determinist evolutionary issue ("had to"), but I tend to agree in retrospect. In addition, some features imply contrasting paradigms in organising information. Surfulater provides both clones of items in its folder tree (same item in more than one folders) and a tag tree for items. Either can be used for non-exclusive categorisation. From discussions in the Surfulater blog and forum, my impression is that just about nobody uses both features. Possibly, programs that only use one or the other method may be easier to understand by prospective buyers.

I'm not sure how many "old advanced outliners had to die away," although a few certainly have.

Tags and cloning co-exist in MyInfo and UltraRecall, although the tag tree in Surfulater is unique.

It seems there's a resurgence in new two-pane outliners coming to market, yet I am impressed not by what they have so much as by what they don't have - features which to me seem essential if the developers' intent is to information management.

I am thinking of a hoist capability, cloning, tags, metadata columns.

We've had years of outliners which only have one or two - or none - of those features. I'd have thought anyone coming to market now would see the logic of having all of those features as a minimum.

Given the way information workers/writers do what they do, it amazes me very few developers take seriously the need to have more than one open window - Evernote, WhizFolders, and MyInfo all have this feature, although in the current version of MI the window(s) which are additional to the main open window are not editable; Petko, the developer plans to make all windows editable in the next major version.

The late lamented ADM in retrospect was ahead of its time - it had all of the features. Part of the reason was that the developer had seriouus, day-to-day interaction with users who were clear as to what was needed. Unfortunately, the developer became enamored with the Chinese authoritarian approach to doing things - he lived in China at the time - and began alienating a very loyal crew of beta testers. That was the end for ADM.

Anyhow, I ramble.

Daly

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Foolness wrote:
>Before certain new outlining features had to be introduced, many old
advanced outliners had to die away

I don't know whether this was a determinist evolutionary issue ("had
to"), but I tend to agree in retrospect. In addition, some features
imply contrasting paradigms in organising information. Surfulater
provides both clones of items in its folder tree (same item in more than
one folders) and a tag tree for items. Either can be used for
non-exclusive categorisation. From discussions in the Surfulater blog
and forum, my impression is that just about nobody uses both features.
Possibly, programs that only use one or the other method may be easier
to understand by prospective buyers.

Foolness wrote:

Dr Andus wrote:
So my question is: what are the main categories (on the basis of core
>distinguishing features) of two-pane PIMs?

MDI vs. Pane (example split text vs. static sidebar)

Bookmarks and tagging features

Online sync

Portability

Pane resize feature

Speed

Docks

Plugins

Thanks, good additions to the criteria list.

Those are the main features but like most things, they tend to be
redundant. Useful only for researchers but outliners are more personal
than wikis. It's the "special exemptions" that separates one from the
other. Not the robustness or static purpose.

Good point - but probably these special distinctions are the ones that make a two-pane outliner/PIM particularly suitable for one main purpose. Unfortunately it's really difficult to identify these special distinguishing features, as they are usually buried in a long list of commonly shared features.

I don't have a problem with the examples you picked because those are fairly unique tools. The kind of two-pane outliners/PIM that I had in mind were the likes of AllMyNotes Organizer, Aml Pages, AM-Notebook, AnyNotes etc., etc., where I just can't tell them apart without some substantial evaluation. However, there are too many of these out there, hence my wish for an evaluative matrix for them...

I see that the Donation Coder folks started a thread on trying to make sense of the note-taking software market 6 years ago, and the thread is still going strong... Although my question was less ambitious: I was only wondering about 2-pane outliners/PIM (given that wikis have been sorted and one-pane outliners are few).

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=2362.0

I have both myBase and Surfulater. I prefer myBase. Perhaps it's because I've used my Base for years, but it seems to me to have a friendlier interface for the basic stuff: capturing Web pages and writing rtf. Some of the more advanced features require a bit of learning.

I think the only way to get the "feature comparison" matrix is to do a detailed analysis of each organizer - make a organized list of its features. Then move to the second organizer - compared to the first organizer, you'll find features that are missing, and new features - add those features to the list of features. On to the other organizers - keep adding features to the list, and reorganize the list in a way that makes sense. This could be a good collaborative effort, though people would have very different opinions about the resulting list.

Thinking about this topic, I smiled at the "feature comparison" tables that we see in advertisements, where one vendor compares its product to those of its competitors. Amazingly enough, when you look at the table, the product being advertised always has YES! YES! YES! in its column - it has ALL the features that would ever be desired for that kind of product. The columns for the products of the poor competitors are littered with NO NO NO. The features that the advertised product doesn't have are conveniently excluded from the feature comparison table.

jimspoon wrote:

I think the only way to get the "feature comparison" matrix is to do a
detailed analysis of each organizer - make a organized list of its
features. Then move to the second organizer - compared to the first
organizer, you'll find features that are missing, and new features - add
those features to the list of features. On to the other organizers -
keep adding features to the list, and reorganize the list in a way that
makes sense. This could be a good collaborative effort, though people
would have very different opinions about the resulting list.

Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be in a public spreadsheet like Pierre's:
http://www.editgrid.com/user/pplandry/List_of_Outliners

However, rather than having a column for every feature (which would create too many columns), we could have columns only for a limited number of distinguishing features, i.e. features that no other outliner/PIM has. E.g. "Unique feature 1," "Unique feature 2," etc. Maybe max. 3 to 5 (to keep it manageable)? The final column could be a link to an individual thread on this forum, where the given software has been discussed.