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Rant: tried them all...
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Posted by ChristianRR
Dec 13, 2012 at 12:46 PM
...well, almost! and I didn’t find what I’m looking for.
Newbie in this forum, I’m an old hand at outliners: I bought More the month it came out (1984? V1.0?), then graduated to Think Tank, Think Tank 512 (best outliner ever), then had to switch to Windows and used Agenda for a while (out of this world), then Word (:, then NoteMap 2…
I’ve been looking for… NoteMap 3! I mean, a single-pane lean, mean outliner, with
- Clones
- Mark and Gather
- Hoist
- URL links
- Minimal + and - headline “bullets” (+ = something below, - = nothing below… Why oh why isn’t this used everywhere?)
- Click the + for collapse/expand
- Drag’n'drop the headline by drag’n’ dropping the + (includes children) or the -
- Sensible multi-headline and text selection (dragging outside text = select headlines, dragging inside text = select text. Again, why o why…)
- Undo, multiple undos for any action (can you believe the number of rather decent programs discussed here that have NO UNDO?)
and…
PICTURES. .png, .jpg. Just one headline = one picture taken from disk and displayed right there in the outline. No need for a database, image editing, or kitchen sink neural networks. Collapse/expand/select/cut/copy/paste/drag/drop just like text. No need for text and picture in the same headline.
This would allow me to use the program as always, to develop texts from brainstorming to final version (formatting can be done somewhere else, just give me csv/tab delimited export), PLUS storyboard frames, thumbnails, reference pictures, doodles, etc.
Thanks to the great people on this website (and other sources), I must have tested about 20 different programs in the last few days. Over the years, I kept track of developments and tested anything that came along. I’m working now with OneNote 2010, but I hate so many things about its UI (I never could swallow the ribbon) and the lack of minimal +/- signs, visible at all times, in front of headlines, the containers, “click-anywhere-and-just-start-there”... This is DECADENT. I want old school. On top of that, I should abandon XP in order to be able to even test OneNote 2013? (Two censored words here to Microsoft).
Inspiration 9 is almost there, but the rendering engine or whatever is from the Middle Ages and text looks incredibly ugly; it also sure feels more like Expiration as far as the future is concerned.
Thanks again for all the links in previous posts, but… suggestions welcome!
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 13, 2012 at 04:34 PM
This sounds like the police composite sketch of a criminal who probably does not exist :) I can’t think of a single single-pane outliner that can do all this.
Single-pane outliners seem to focus more on writing and to-do management than on the note-taking and organising that you seem to be after. So there is a gap in the market.
What I consider the better single-pane outliners (Bonsai, Outline 4D, NoteMap) are all aging now, so your desired image support and advanced features such as cloning and URL support are just not going to be there.
One possibility might be using the edit window of ConnectedText with “folding” turned on, as a single-pane outliner. Then images can be dragged and dropped in. The “Table of Contents” pane could serve as an optional second pane, and in the forthcoming v. 6 hopefully items could be moved around easily via the TOC. But there is the markup (and learning curve) to deal with and the editor pane is not that easy to manipulate as a dedicated outliner such as Bonsai. Although CT has its own separate single-pane outliner (http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/outlining-in-connectedtext/) but it can’t do cloning and images either, as far as I know.
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 13, 2012 at 05:00 PM
P.S. Another solution might be to go for a two-pane outliner (Scrivener, Whizfolders etc.?) that can do most of those things and then use a one-pane outliner alongside if and when needed.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Dec 13, 2012 at 05:05 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>Although CT has its own separate single-pane outliner
>(http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/outlining-in-connectedtext/)
>but it can’t do cloning and images either, as far as I know.
The “no cloning” bit seems rather strange to me. In ConnectedText you are able to link anything to anything. If a topic is linked to from two other topics as ‘parents’ will it not appear in two separate positions in the outline? Or are we talking about the outlines _within_ a topic/page? Sorry, I always get confused with this.
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 13, 2012 at 05:34 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>The “no cloning” bit seems rather strange to me. In ConnectedText you
>are able to link anything to anything. If a topic is linked to from two
>other topics as ‘parents’ will it not appear in two separate positions
>in the outline? Or are we talking about the outlines _within_ a
>topic/page? Sorry, I always get confused with this.
Yes, sorry, you’re right, I was muddling it up a bit too. Maybe I’m not entirely understanding what people generally mean by a “clone,” especially in a single-pane outliner context. But yes, you can have two separate items in CT’s dedicated single-pane Outliner linked to the same topic. However, this will turn it into a two-pane outliner.