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two-pane outliner that can show more than one note at a time in the viewer/editor pane?
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Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 11, 2013 at 12:33 PM
Jon Polish wrote:
>you can do this in
>WhizFolders. Select a topic and open it in the Advanced Editor. Select
>another topic and do the same. Initially the topics open as tabbed items
>in the advanced editor window, but these can be rearranged to suit your
>needs.
Indeed. That does seem to give Whizfolders an edge over Scrivener in this regard. I just wish there was a distraction-free writing mode for each and every Whizfolders pane. Even when I remove all the toolbars from all the windows there is still too much distracting “chrome” for my liking (but that might be just personal preference).
Posted by 22111
Oct 11, 2013 at 12:40 PM
As has been mentioned at several occasions here, Citavi has one gathering function, too, as now has CT, but you describe in fact one of the biggest problems with traditional outliners, no editing except by switching forward, back…
But bear in mind that if there are some dozens of people here, some thousands world-wide who use outliners for their work, what do all the other people do? Right, they use Word and some other text processors, which means they use the file system, and on a big screen and with a little macro, they can have open 5 such different text files at the same time, and switch to number 2, to number 4, to number 1… with 1 key, and edit wherever it pleases them.
Which means this minority using outliners is really handicapped by the relative unwillingness of today’s outliner developers to create such multi-content view (let alone an editable one), when most people out there are able to create such a thing for themselves, if necessary by opening 5 instances of the same program.
So what in our outliner world should function in a much better way than for “just text processor people”, in fact does function rather badly here.
I lately had my stuff in my outliner, left screen, then assembled the bits in MS Works, right screen, did not pay attention to manually saving my work, and after some hours lost 10 pages of highly important and urgent work.
But of course that’s always an alternative: Have two screens, or one large one, and then switch between your outliner (material) and your writing program (in Word there should be a “save automatically all other 5 minutes” function), perhaps F10 = your outliner and F11 your text processor. (And this is just for “multiple sources and one target”, but perhaps on the target side, you could use MS Word’s outlining function, for quicker navigation there.)
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 11, 2013 at 12:50 PM
jimspoon wrote:
>It seems that
>the gulf between single and dual pane outliners can be bridged fairly
>easily, so that the resulting program would have the advantages of both
>types of outliners.
I agree. In my opinion SENSE provides just this bridge. The right pane is a fully functional one-pane outliner; one can even switch off the left—navigation—pane and work just with the right one. The left pane is a fully detailed map of the document, down to paragraph level, providing excellent overview. You can expand/collapse inline text at will through either pane.
In addition, the ViewPoints feature completely liberates one from the order inherent in the document, as it allows one to collect discontinuous parts of the the document (even from non-open documents) and view/edit them together. Note: I have myself not tested this feature extensively yet, but it might be what you want.
More at http://silvaelm.co.uk/products-sense-professional-edition.shtml
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Oct 11, 2013 at 02:06 PM
Multiple open windows is indeed a beneficial feature for researchers and writers.
EN has this feature, as does:
* WhizFolders
* MyBase
* MyInfo (tho you can only write in the window open in the edit pane - to change in the next version)
Combined with its other writer friendly features, my pick is WizFolders.
Daly
jimspoon wrote:
We all know the standard format of most two-pane outliners - you have a
>tree pane that contains names (titles, subjects, etc) of items, arranged
>in the usual indented hierarchy. You also have an viewer/editor pane
>which almost always displays the content of one and only one item - the
>single item that is highlighted in the tree pane.
>
>My question is - do you know of a two-pane outliner that will show the
>content of more than one item in the editor pane at the same time? For
>example, the editor pane could show the content of as many items as will
>fit in the editor pane; or perhaps it could show the content of multiple
>items if multiple items are highlighted in the tree pane at the same
>time.
>
>This is part of what I dislike so much about the usual two-pane
>outliners. I like to divide up my items into small blocks of text - a
>paragraph, a sentence, a phrase, or even a single word. But in the
>usual two-paner, I can only see one such small block of text, and I have
>to move the highlight in the tree constantly to read through my items.
>All the extra space in the editor pane is wasted.
>
>One program that comes to mind is Noteliner with its navigation pane.
>The single-pane outliner came first and the navigation pane was added
>later.
>
>I think that there are many two (and three) pane outliners that could be
>so much better if they would incorporate this feature. It seems that
>the gulf between single and dual pane outliners can be bridged fairly
>easily, so that the resulting program would have the advantages of both
>types of outliners.
>
>jim
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 12, 2013 at 06:11 AM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>There was an two-pane outliner many years
>ago that could do this. The name escapes me and it is long dead,
>unfortunately.
You refer to Acute Notes http://www.outlinersoftware.com/archives/viewt/2365
The program has not been developed since 2002 and the website is gone, though you can still be download the file from the like of http://download.cnet.com/AcuteNotes/3000-2074_4-10129515.html
Jim, see my post above for a contemporary solution to this as provided by SENSE, though I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.