MindOutliner - successor to WritingOutliner for Word

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Posted by jimspoon
Nov 2, 2014 at 05:34 AM

http://innovationgear.com/mindoutliner/the-mindoutliner-plan-explained-to-writingoutliner-users

“I was planning to replace the old WritingOutliner with the new WordOutliner, and as you can see, a lot of work has been put into WordOutliner.

But here comes the new plan – We are merging these the two software products:

MindVisualizer (a mind mapping software which some of you WO users also use), and
WritingOutliner (an add-in software that turns MS Word into an outliner software for all kinds of writers),
into a single software that’ll be called MindOutliner which runs without MS Word. ”

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 2, 2014 at 07:09 PM

I haven’t actually used these products though I have followed this developer’s work over the years. The development path he’s described - and which still seems to be evolving - appears interesting, and I’ll probably try out the resulting software.

Daly

jimspoon wrote:
http://innovationgear.com/mindoutliner/the-mindoutliner-plan-explained-to-writingoutliner-users
> >“I was planning to replace the old WritingOutliner with the new
>WordOutliner, and as you can see, a lot of work has been put into
>WordOutliner.
> >But here comes the new plan – We are merging these the two
>software products:
> >MindVisualizer (a mind mapping software which some of you WO users also
>use), and
>WritingOutliner (an add-in software that turns MS Word into an outliner
>software for all kinds of writers),
>into a single software that’ll be called MindOutliner which runs
>without MS Word. ”

Posted by 22111
Nov 3, 2014 at 11:07 AM

The above seemed devoid of sense to me (cf. the commercially smart move of SmartEdit to position SE as a Word add-in), so I looked into the link, and indeed, there’s an update to the above info already, too many Word users complained about the intended move away from Word… well, not being a regular Word user myself, I could have told them before all the less. So all’s well that ends well, nay? Btw, I asked for full (= two-way) outlining-mind mapping integration years ago, but it would certainly be quite ironic if the only solution to such a workflow depended on Word, instead of integrating some more robust IMS. Btw, it’ll be of interest to see how it will assure two-way integration, i.e. back from mind map to Word outline and to Word text body, or put in other words, you see now from where the developer’s intermediate idea to go away from Word presumably arose. Conclusion: Don’t expect too much, function-wise, that’s the prospective price for clinging to Word, which on its turn is the smart decision to be made revenues-wise. It’s clear as day, here again, that the overwhelming market power of MS hinders development; no blame intended in the direction of regular Word users who cement this situation though, and our recent discussion re a not-so-good-as-hoped-for spreadsheet shows this same phenomenon, Excel being that overwhelming that not enough market is left for serious, expensive development of viable alternatives (cf. numerous Excel add-ins instead). Btw, speaking of alternatives e.g. for Word, Atlantis has got its own quite functional outlining functionality, but you will have to dig deep, for hours, into “styles”, in order to make it work, i.e. the interface for getting to it (as well as the relevant help file section) is a mess, so that’s another “argument” for not switching away from Word here again, if you need text processing together with some outlining. It’s the old, old problem, coders doing software design, cf. hyperplan.com which could become something very useful, but only with lots of design work in-between (and no, software design is not so much about looks).

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