Is there a small footprint dual-pane outliner (preferably free) that can start up quickly or run in the background and has some functions for breaking up (and rearranging) large text quickly?

I'm thinking of an alternative to Scrivener for Window's "Split with selection as title (Ctrl+Shift+K). On my system Scrivener takes rather long to start up, which disrupts my workflow. I'd prefer to use something more nimble for this.

For now I've resorted to WhizFolders, but it's not much lighter/quicker and it doesn't seem to have a "split with title" functionality.

An additional purpose would be for managing and storing fragments of text that get taken out of a draft I'm writing in O4D.

I would use Brainstorm; it's lightweight, very swift and is the best tool I know for rearranging text.

The shortcuts to remember:
- Ctrl-Enter within an entry to split it
- Del at the end of an entry to join it with the next
- Alt-Up/Down arrow to move entries up/down
- Home to make an entry the title to enter subsidiary text
- End
- Ctrl-F4 and Alt-V to split your windows and arrange them vertically.
- Ctrl-M to Mark a point to use as a repository; Ctrl-T to 'throw' any text there (Ctrl-Shit-T to throw copies)
- Ctrl-N to turn off namesaking, so that you can edit an entry while maintaining any copies intact.

That's just about all you need. You can also use numbered 'buckets' in addition to the main Mark if you want.

Downsides (depending on the point of view):
- It's not free
- It is not two-pane, though you can have a window with the non-editable "balloon view" which will update in real time as you make changes to the content
- It makes no distinction between title and detail; they are all just 'entries'
- There's a 65,535 character limitation for entries. Then again, an entry would correspond to a paragraph, so you wouldn't want to have such great paragraphs in the first place.

Ah, and you can turn on Magic Paste to gather stuff from Outline4D without shifting focus.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

I would use Brainstorm; it's lightweight, very swift and is the best
tool I know for rearranging text.

Alexander, thanks for the suggestion, that didn't occur to me. I've been looking for more ways to fit Brainstorm into my suit of tools, so I'll give this a try.

I'm thinking of an alternative to Scrivener for Window's "Split with
selection as title (Ctrl+Shift+K).

So, you highlight some text, and Scrivener splits the text just before the highlight, and assigns the selected text as a title for the text following the split? Just want to make sure I understand.

In answer to your question, you know that I am going to recommend Ecco! haha. It's great for moving text around, and you could export tab delimited text where it needs to go. But it's not dual pane (in the sense of item titles in a tree pane, and item text in another pane).

jimspoon wrote:

I'm thinking of an alternative to Scrivener for Window's "Split with
>selection as title (Ctrl+Shift+K).

So, you highlight some text, and Scrivener splits the text just before
the highlight, and assigns the selected text as a title for the text
following the split? Just want to make sure I understand.

Yes. It's a very handy feature. O4D can also do it but in single pane only, so it's not as good for rearranging bits of text.

Thanks for the Ecco suggestion. Does Ecco have a similar command?

Dr Andus wrote:

jimspoon wrote:

Yes. It's a very handy feature. O4D can also do it but in single pane
only, so it's not as good for rearranging bits of text.

Thanks for the Ecco suggestion. Does Ecco have a similar command?

Sure, everything you need is on the Item menu. But I always use keystroke commands - Ctrl+Shift+S to split, Ctrl+S-J to join, alt-arrow keys to move items. Items don't have titles in Ecco, but of course you could use as an outline item as a title. The reason I recommend Ecco for moving text around is its very quick - I'm sure Brainstorm is too.

When you're read to export back to another program, you can use File / Database / Export / Outline Only (tab indented).

I'm still looking for a lightweight two-pane outliner for storage and quick organisation of textual fragments. The main criteria are that it is easy to add a new item (ideally single keystroke, such as "insert" or one mouse-click), and easy to indent/outdent, move up/down. Rich text formatting not essential. But it would be nice if the pasted text would be rendered in some consistent default font I can set up, so I don't have to change it after each paste.

I've tried BrainStorm and ECCO, and they're both great for what they do, but for my purposes it's necessary to have the two-pane structure, to have a list in one pane (that I can quickly scan visually), and a couple of paragraphs in the right pane.

Being able to split a text into multiple items (such as Scrivener's (Ctrl+Shift+K))would be a bonus, but not essential.

Scrivener for Windows would be perfect if it wasn't such a behemoth. It's just too sluggish for me. So it's a replacement for Scriveners.

So far I tried RightNote and NoteCase Pro. RightNote would be almost right but it frustrates me that it's almost impossible to rename a note item, when that should be the simplest thing in the world. In NoteCase Pro it bugs me that it changes my paste into its own default font, rather than the one I chose.

Any more suggestions?

To put it another way, what's the simplest, lightest, nimblest two-pane outliner/notes organiser out there?

I'm specifically talking about one that has got a tree structure (as opposed to tags only, like CintaNotes). I want to be able to position the notes within the notes hierarchy manually.

An additional feature that would be nice would be the ability to distinguish between notes titles by colour or using icons.

My top fave for precisely the kind of use you're talking about is The Guide (freebie, now on SourceForge at theguide.sourceforge.net). Although I'm not entirely sure it defaults to a standard font, it does support 'Paste as Text' and has a comprehensive selection of keyboard shortcuts to make note management (and hierarchical rearrangement) really easy (Paste as Text is Ctrl+Shift+V, for example).

Output is limited (it only exports to RTF), but it's one of my favourite super-lightweight apps, even though it's no longer being developed. I've used it to put together all sorts of things, from simple note-taking through to draft presentations. Its elegant minimalism really appeals to me!

Good search function, too ;-)

Slightly more complex choices include NoteLiner and Smereka TreeProjects (the latter can 'force' a default font, I believe).

Thanks Bill, The Guide looks pretty good. Though it seems to miss shortcuts for indent/outdent?

Thanks for the TreeProjects suggestion, I should try it again.

As for RightNote, I've just realised I missed the trick of just hitting space to rename the note. But I'm a mouse guy and so initially I've been clicking and right-clicking like crazy, to no avail... Also, RightNote gave me an access violation right at the beginning, as I was trying to save my first file, so I'm a bit worried about its stability.

Dr Andus wrote:

Thanks Bill, The Guide looks pretty good. Though it seems to miss
shortcuts for indent/outdent?

But mouse drag-and-drop can do it, so I can live with that. Thanks again!

Yes, you're right, I hadn't noticed that - but as you say, you can mouse it. And you can play with the icons, too, which means you can create some really charming sets of notes in an app that doesn't take up many system resources at all.

It's a real shame it's not under ongoing development - although there's nothing stopping any one of us from getting involved in the SourceForge project, I suppose!

Cheers,
Bill

Doc,

Have you tried Treepad Lite? It's one of the grand-daddy two-pane apps and is pretty nimble:

http://www.treepad.com/treepadfreeware/

I wouldn't try the paid versions, as they add fluff that it doesn't sound like you want. With Treepad Lite you can indent and outdent using the SHIFT-arrow combinations. It's just plain text, but you can change the font used in the editor and the tree.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Have you tried Treepad Lite? It's one of the grand-daddy two-pane apps
and is pretty nimble:
http://www.treepad.com/treepadfreeware/

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it some 6-7 yrs ago and somehow I never warmed to it. I downloaded it again and compared it to The Guide, and somehow The Guide comes across as "friendlier." Can't really explain it...

These days, I use Mempad to cover requirements similar to yours. Very light, two-pane, user-changeable global shortcut to launch/minimise. Ctrl+Tab to alternate focus from tree to editor, Alt+Ins to create new page/node. Quick, easy, mature and reliable. Good help file, wide range of keyboard shortcuts.

http://www.horstmuc.de/wmem.htm

JohnK wrote:

These days, I use Mempad to cover requirements similar to yours. Very
light, two-pane, user-changeable global shortcut to launch/minimise.
Ctrl+Tab to alternate focus from tree to editor, Alt+Ins to create new
page/node. Quick, easy, mature and reliable. Good help file, wide range
of keyboard shortcuts.

http://www.horstmuc.de/wmem.htm

Very nice, thanks for that! Definitely a keeper. Takes the biscuit so far as the lightest and simplest.

For my current task though I'll stick with The Guide, as it has the added benefit of rich text formatting (nice to be able to add bold and colour highlights), and it also has the icons for nodes and checkboxes, which come in handy when dealing with text fragments that need to be revisited.

P.S. I wonder if it would be possible to use an AutoHotkey script to implement Scrivener for Window’s “Split with selection as title (Ctrl+Shift+K) feature in MemPad or The Guide... That would pretty much cover the whole process.

i was just wondering, the Guide couldn't be much good for splitting up the text ... if you do find a double-paner that has split/join functions, let us know!

would it be possible to use another tool for splitting, export to tab indented, and then import that into a double-paner?

jimspoon wrote:

i was just wondering, the Guide couldn't be much good for splitting up
the text ... if you do find a double-paner that has split/join
functions, let us know!

No, you're right, I haven't solved that particular problem yet. Although Scrivener 1.5.3.0 suddenly got a lot quicker, so it might work out in the end. As if the Scrivener people have been reading this thread... :)

would it be possible to use another tool for splitting, export to tab
indented, and then import that into a double-paner?

I think an AutoHotkey script (or some other macro) would be more convenient. In the end all the script would need to do is 1) cut selected text and everything below it, 2) create new note, 3) paste text, using selection as title. AHK is on my list of things to learn...

[scampering of tiny CRIMPing feet to check out MemPad - weeeeeee!]

There is something immensely friendly about The Guide. The only thing I really miss is a word count facility - Germanists should note that it does count characters, which is already useful. It's one of the most honed two-pane outliners out there.

The elegant universal Search function (Ctrl+Shift+F) is just the icing on the cake (it's separate from the Find function, which works within notes).

I've settled on the Guide as my light-weight dual-pane outliner of choice, but I've just come across Flashnote, which also seems to fit into this category:
http://softvoile.com/flashnote/