I've been an interested reader of this forum for several years and want to first offer my thanks to all of you for both insightful commentary and for great suggestions on outlining software and its uses. I work in the policy and political world and use outlines for putting together legislation, structuring and writing speeches and speech notes for my self and others, and for a variety of other writing and organizing uses. I'm a Windows and Android guy and I go all the way back to PC Outline and Grandview, both of which I love and still have copies of.

For Android users, check out Halna Outliner. It's pretty new and I don't recall anyone mentioning it in this forum before. It's a fairly simple 2-pane outliner but I prefer it to Android Outliner both because I can have both the navigation and content panes on the screen at the same time and because it uses very simple plain text files that I can export to, or import from, any plain text editor. See what you think.

And now, my question:
Most of my outlining work is creating content so I have a strong preference for single-pane outliners, which are pretty scare in Windows world. I have UV Outliner, Noteliner, and TkOutline. I was using UV Outline today and came across what appears to be a structural problem that I've never seen in any other single-pane outliner so I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong:

If I have an outline that looks like this:

-A
-B
-C
-D
-E
-F

C, D, and E are children of B. Now I want to move, say, D to be a child of A rather than B. In every other outliner I've used when I move D to the left it is relocated to look like this:

-A
-B
-C
-E
-D
-F

and I can then move it up under A and then indent it to make it a child of A. No problem. However, in UV Outliner (latest version 2.4.4) what happens is this:

-A
-B
-C
-D
-E
-F

D has been moved to the correct level, but the parent-child relationship of every child of B below D has been changed so that it is now a child of D rather than B. And when D is moved around the outline its new child E follows. I recognize that I could first move D to the bottom of the list of children before moving to the left, but that is awkward and unintuitive, especially if I'm dealing with a complex hierarchy of nodes.

So... has anyone else experienced this? Am I doing something wrong?

Rick

RickFencer wrote:

D has been moved to the correct level, but the parent-child relationship
of every child of B below D has been changed so that it is now a child
of D rather than B. And when D is moved around the outline its new
child E follows. I recognize that I could first move D to the bottom of
the list of children before moving to the left, but that is awkward and
unintuitive, especially if I'm dealing with a complex hierarchy of
nodes.

So... has anyone else experienced this? Am I doing something wrong?

Rick - welcome to the forum. I don't use UV Outliner, so I can't comment on how this feature is implemented there. But I wouldn't say it's conceptually wrong. There are uses where such behaviour can come in handy. E.g. Outline 4D also behaves that way if the given level is not collapsed (if it is collapsed, the item takes its children with it).

I don't know about UV Outliner's rationale, but in O4D the point is to give the writer more flexibility in restructuring the text, and it does provide some interesting and funky tools to build on that feature.

Perhaps another point is that both UV Outliner and O4D allow inline notes, as opposed to let's say Noteliner or Bonsai, which follow the more commonly accepted behaviour that you describe (and are one step removed from the act of writing).

Good point. Probably comes under the heading of "get the right tool for the job".

Many thanks.

Seems like a bug to me. Have you tried dragging D (from B) and dropping D onto A?

Rick, welcome; I must say that your use of outliners makes me feel better about people working on policies (seriously). In the past I've contributed to such work and I was amazed that I saw people drafting policies without some kind of visual overview of what is already there.

On your question; I am currently on my Linux netbook and can't test UV Outliner but I tend to concur with Dr Andus that this behaviour is on purpose. It is rather counter-intuitive for outliner users, but probably more evident for people who are used to plain text editors.

I believe that the logic is the following: in terms of organisation, the sequential order is one thing, the hierarchical order is another. One would start from a list of topics/ideas, then order them in terms of sequence, and then organise them hierarchically. Building on what Dr Andus said, this seems partly reasonable when writing, as one could first think of a 'story' (in fiction) or a 'path' to explaining/proving a concept/hypothesis (in non-fiction); then, one might organise that story or path into 'chapters'.

If I'm right, UV Outliner expects you to first order D after E, and then to change its hierarchical level. I think this is also the behaviour of Maxthink, though it never really 'stuck' with me, so my recollection may be wrong.

To sum up, I don't think that there is one right way of doing things, though my own expectation would be as yours, i.e. that the hierarchy/grouping takes precedence over the sequence.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

If I'm right, UV Outliner expects you to first order D after E, and then
to change its hierarchical level.

That should have been "D after A"

My expectation would be yours, Rick. That is, that the promoted item would NOT become the parent of its former siblings that just happen to be below it. As Dr Andus and Alexander point out, there is an argument to be made that UV Outliner's behavior is intentional and has its uses, but I'm more likely to believe that they just didn't think this through. I'd suggest contacting them to see what they have to say. Perhaps they'll change it or add the ability to optionally change the behavior, either with a preference selection or adding a key stroke.

Actually, the more I think about this, the more I think they've just made a lazy error. In an outliner with more "standard" behavior, you can easily achieve the same outcome that UVO has as its standard simply by demoting the subsequent items before promoting the original item. But the way they've got it set up is much less convenient if your intention is not to have that as the outcome, which is more often going to be the case (at least in my experience).

It's getting these kinds of small details right that really set the quality applications apart from the posers.

Steve Z.

By the way, it's good to hear from another former GrandView user!

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

As Dr Andus and Alexander point out, there is an argument
to be made that UV Outliner's behavior is intentional and has its uses,

I can't comment on UVO, but the main idea in O4D is that this behaviour allows you to assign specific functions to a particular hierarchical level. So if you're a stage or screen writer, Level 1 items are Acts, L2 are Sequences, L3 are Scenes, L4 are Beats etc.

If you have 7 scenes in Act 2, it makes good sense to keep those scenes in place when you decide to demote, promote or move the parent item for whatever reason.

But I agree with Steve that this sort of behaviour should be optional, and it is in O4D: all you need to do is collapse Act 2, and you will be able to move it and all its scenes etc. to a different location.

Dr Andus, I just want to be clear about what I am talking about, because I am not quite sure we're discussing the same behavior. (If we are, I'm sorry for this unnecessary post.)

The question I am concerned with (and how I read the original question from Rick) isn't whether or not child items should stay with a parent when the parent is promoted or demoted -- they should (although there should be some means of dis-lodging them from the parent, although that seems a bit more complicated). The question is whether sibling items should become child items simply because one of the siblings above them has been promoted?

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Dr Andus, I just want to be clear about what I am talking about, because
I am not quite sure we're discussing the same behavior.

Yes, we're talking about the same thing. I was also puzzled when I first encountered it in O4D. See here:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/16279

I came to understand it as a very specific feature for writing texts where certain hierarchical levels of the text have a special place or purpose within the overall structure (e.g. for fiction, screen, stage writers, possibly legal docs where a certain type of clause needs to occur at a particular hierarchical level every time).

Also, this feature could be useful when planning a text from the bottom up. For example, you could start with Level 5 items only, and then gradually add the overarching structure in Levels 4, 3, 2 and 1 (in whatever order you like). I wonder if UVO allows you to do this.

Though I have to say that in my straightforward academic writing I haven't been able to find a use for it (yet).

Just to complete the loop...

Thanks, all, for the thoughtful commentary. I will confess I have a hard time wrapping my head around the kind of situation Dr Andus or Alexander describe where the phenomenon I saw would be useful. It's probably because my primary use of outlines is writing laws (or bills that may become law) and constitutional amendments. In these situations, the structure -- the hierarchy -- gives meaning and context to the content. A definition of, say, a budget shortfall can have one meaning if applied at the level of an entire article of the constitution or a profoundly different meaning if applied to only one subdivision of one section within that article. In my world the law IS, quite literally, an outline. (Though I hasten to add, I'm not a lawyer!)

Rick

RickFencer wrote:

In my world the law IS, quite literally, an outline.

I would assume that there are quite a lot of legislative elements which need to be cross-referenced, so I would expect that some kind of clone / cross-linking / wiki-linking functionality is required. Unless you live in a country where the whole legislative edifice makes hierarchical sense.

I remember that, in the past people, in this forum who worked with the law highlighted MaxThink as a very useful program though, contrary to my above hypothesis, it does not support clones or internal links.

RickFencer wrote:

I will confess I have a
hard time wrapping my head around the kind of situation Dr Andus or
Alexander describe where the phenomenon I saw would be useful.

I think the main benefit of the "freely movable item" (at least in Outline 4D) is that the rest of the structure and content remains intact, for situations where you need to conform to a strict format (1 hour long play, with 3 x 20 min acts, with 4 x 5 min scenes each). Just think of the jumbled-up sequences of Tarantino movies...

This is more easily understandable with Outline 4D's famous/infamous "Timeline View." Here each outline item is an index card, and items at a higher hierarchical levels contain items at the next lower level and so on (like Russian matryoshka dolls). So you can take one layer of the matryoshka doll and put it into/onto another matryoshka doll at any layer/size.

Alternatively, you can start building several matryoshka dolls at the same time at a particular level, and then add the other layers "inside" and "outside" later on (while being able to move any layer between them and keeping the rest of the dolls in place).

I find this functionality in O4D fascinating, but haven't been able to find an actual use for it in my work either.