Inspired by Gingko - which I think is a brilliant start (the nice bunnies have told me that since there's only one actual developer, it may take a while before a mobile app is available) - I've been looking for other horizontal outliners.

The more I think about it, the more sensible this seems as an answer to the issues so well described by Chris - data prioritization and internetworking.

Of course the only really great example of a horizontal/vertical outliner is Tree Outliner (http://www.topoftree.jp/images/0_overview.png alas, only available for Mac. Last discussed in October last year (http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/4351/0/revisiting-the-pros-and-cons-of-horizontal-outliners And there's no sign of anything comparable emerging for Windows (apart from Gingko, of course).

One could argue that mindmapping apps are very similar in concept, but there's something fuzzy and ill-disciplined about them that doesn't appeal much to my (Germanic?) mindset.

Apple Numbers can be used as a kind of horizontal outliner, but it's not really the same.

If anybody can think of something convincingly outliner-y that works vertically AND horizontally, why not step up and tell us about it?

Interesting, but there seems to be a lot of wasted screen real estate... Plus it does not allow for data columns...

What advantages do you see over a traditional outline ?

You're right, looking at it again I can see there are issues in terms of screen real-estate. In this sense, Gingko is actually using an even more exciting model; their columnar system is relatively efficient (not least because the columns scroll independently; that's a big advantage over a standard column-based outliner like OmniOutliner or Ecco Pro). The other exciting feature of Gingko is the ease with which you can drag different items from one column to another, effectively rebuilding your outline on the fly. As Chris said - it's the ability to focus on specific pieces of info and then link them (easily) with others that will make the ultimate outliner - the simple hierarchical tree is no longer enough. The Gingko paradigm seems very promising in this respect - you can view pieces of information at various levels of the tree alongside various other pieces of information that may belong to entirely different elements in the tree. It's not the only way of doing this, of course (MyInfo, Smereka TreeProjects and InfoRecall all support an MDI interface, so you can compare elements side by side); but it's a very elegant way. I suppose what would really do the trick would be a kind of three-dimensional structure that could be smoothly rotated through all three dimensions; for example, Tree Outliner would be even more powerful if you could hoist a horizontal outline and then view it as a vertical outline - and then allow it to lapse back to horizontal again. It would be more powerful still if you could view horizontal/vertical outlines alongside other horizontal/vertical outlines in any configuration - maybe by overlaying some kind of grid structure and dragging the particular tree into a column/row? If you could also scroll along the columns/rows independently, but with an option to create links (possibly defined/governed by formal/mathematical relationships) between separate outline trees, that could turn outlining into a truly dynamic concept - even better than data pivoting.

Just spitballing here, of course... ;-)

A horizontal outline is essentially a tree diagram, I think. At times it is useful to see your information that way. I personally would not find it an advantage to ONLY be able to view my information that way. The nice thing about Tree Outliner is that it allows you to combine vertical and horizontal views in a single window or in multiple windows and tabs.

You may be able to replicate this functionality on a PC to some degree with Inspiration, the outliner/diagrammer software. The outline view shows the typical vertical outline. Switch to diagram with it set as a right flowing tree.

Steve Z.

Mind you, I notice that Tree Outliner can actually swap between a horizontal and a single outline view (http://www.topoftree.jp/images/3_VersionsBrowser.png That's really rather neat.

It's also reminded me that Literature & Latte's 'Scapple' is available for Windows, albeit as a beta only. Okay, okay, so it's a kind of mindmapping tool. But for writers!

And I've just discovered Headspace on iOS - the very epitome of a three-dimensional outliner. Oh lord, I feel a CRIMP coming on!

MadaboutDana wrote:

If anybody can think of something convincingly outliner-y that works
vertically AND horizontally, why not step up and tell us about it?

This topic has also come up here:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/771/20

The suggestions were TreeSheets and B-liner.

There is also Outline 4D, except that they've implemented the horizontal index-card outline the wrong way round, turning it into another vertical one (http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/18059 which just doesn't work too well.

I haven't been able to find an outliner that can do both vertical and horizontal at a switch of the button.

For now I'm most excited about Gingko because it corrects O4D's mistake. However, it' not a fully-fledged horizontal outliner because it only supports 3 levels of hierarchy right now. (But they seem to be planning unlimited levels, which would be just great.)

But 3 levels are still very useful exactly because of its scrolling columns feature, which allows you to keep one hierarchy level fixed, while you can scroll much longer and detailed texts in the other two columns. It's good for the snowballing-type text development described in their video:
http://youtu.be/J4prcx0jZ9M

Another advantage of Gingko is that it uses "cards," so one can write full text, one is not restricted to a "headings-only" outline. Now I just wish that Gingko cards were collapsible, so that one could view them as a real titles-only outline as well.

There's Treesheets on windows.light weight and does the job quite well. You can even pivot the views. Would be great if it exported to markdown though

Tree Outline appears to be defunct, though I still see it on the App Store under my "purchased" apps.

There's also a beta version for Mac that seems decent.