Just curious, has anyone seen something like a single-pane outliner, where the individual items are each stored in a separate (text) file? Or where an individual item can optionally be stored in a separate text file? In the latter case, most text item would be stored in some sort of database, but another item's text would be drawn in from a text file and displayed indistinguishably like the items that are stored in the database (hope that is comprehensible).

I know of at least one two or three paner that does this - Outwiker. But as with most two or three paners, you can't simply read multiple items in a single stream as you can in single-pane outliner - you would have to constantly be navigating from item to item to see each individual item's contents.

What would be the advantage of such a single-pane outliner? Simply this - you could add or change individual items with an external program, and these changes would be seamlessly changed in the outline. Also, synchronization of the outline could be done with less chance of a "conflicted copy" - one person might change one item/file in the outline, and another person might change another item/file in the outline - and there would be no chance of the producing two incompatible outline files. (comprehensible?)

jim

The 2nd requirement of multiple files being displayed inline (or however you call it) is something I haven't seen.

I have wanted something similar- a simple outliner program that used plain text files as file format. The outliner would have basic outlining functionality (expand and contract, notes, tags, etc.) but by using text files your content would be cross-platform and more versatile.

TaskPaper for Mac was similar, but not quite an outliner either.

This is an application I am missing, too. It's on my list of software I want to write, but I can't promise anything. I'd use it in conjunction with an archive of notes in a single folder from which I can select the pieces which make up the outline. The file name becomes the node title, and the contents are displayed underneath, just like TaskPaper distinguishes items and notes.

Ulysses III (Mac) provides a "continuous display" mode where the contents of multiple files are displayed in a single editing pane. Files can be external (Markdown or text), or internal. For example, if you have a folder hierarchy with numerous text files you can designate the folder as an "external source". The "continuous display" mode can be formed with contiguous or non-contiguous component files. (Ulysses calls them "sheets".) Ulysses provides a wide range of preview and export options -- text (rich and plain), PDF, HTML, ePUB, and more.

From The Soulmen at http://www.ulyssesapp.com

Not sure if this was quite what you were looking for. It's called Planz - http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/planner_index.htm

From their website: Link your thoughts to files, Web pages, and email messages. Organize everything into a single, integrated document that helps you manage all the projects you want to get done. Planz™ is an overlay to your file system so your information stays under your control.

I tried it once before, but it didn't quite work for me - I seem to think that you had a one pane outliner, and the ability to link to underlying files (word processing, email, and more) - but I believe you had to do each link manually. It is open source, though, so free.

Oh, and Planz is Windows based.

jimspoon wrote:

What would be the advantage of such a single-pane outliner? Simply this
- you could add or change individual items with an external program, and
these changes would be seamlessly changed in the outline. Also,
synchronization of the outline could be done with less chance of a
"conflicted copy" - one person might change one item/file in the
outline, and another person might change another item/file in the
outline - and there would be no chance of the producing two incompatible
outline files. (comprehensible?)

The second point you mention above is usually achieved in contemporary collaboration-oriented information management software, such as wikis, via a database (usually MySQL or SQLite) infrastructute; in such cases, each item is a record which can be individually edited by a user (and locked to everyone else while it is being edited) while other users are working on other items/records. When editing finishes, changes are synced to the database and everyone will always see the latest version of each item.

A variation of this is the use of actual plain text files to store each item/record separately. Such is the case of Dokuwiki. Here again however, only the content of one item is visible at the time. But Dokuwiki is very customisable and extendable and it _might_ be possible to view more items by developing a suitable template/plugin. You might want to bring this up at the very active Dokuwiki forum (find it via https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki )