I looked over the last year of posts here and did not find my question, so I hope someone might have some quick advice:

I am looking for a currently-being-developed two-pane outliner along the lines of Treepad for use in generating a "lesson-plan" series of documents with a tree on the left and a pretty standard word processor like series of documents on the right with graphics, outlines, etc. I want the program to be able to generate nice-looking HTML output that will allow me to place the tree on a website for student reference. (Note that I say, "nicelooking" and would prefer that this aspect of the program look modern and not a decade or more old. :-) )

I realize that this basic feature set describes a myriad of products from Treepad to Cherrytree and *many* others, but I am looking for a mature product with the features of Treepad but more polished and, like I said, currently in development and with an active user base. I would like to see a product that has an active user forum for support as that seems to me to be a good measure that a project is alive and the developer is responsive. Many types of software use this model, and when I don't find it in some of these programs I see that as an indication that they are not up with the times.

I am tempted by Cherrytree, for example, but I am looking for something mature like Treepad, but with a forum and responsive developer, etc. I don't necessarily have to have free, at all - I am willing to pay a reasonable price, but not for a program that has been largely abandoned and is just being milked in its old age. There seem to be lots of older programs hanging around that do not seem to be under active development, and though I don't need nightly releases by any means, a once-a-year or once every two or three year release cycle is something I would prefer to stay away from.

Can anyone tell me who is the current front-runner to be heir to the Treepad-like format with good-looking generation of web pages from the output?

Thanks very much!

Treepad has been around for a long time, and is very solid.

I think there are only two other choices beyond this and Cherry Tree:

- Notecase Pro. http://www.virtual-sky.com/index.php Multi-platform (Linux, Windows, Mac, Android), very stable, active community of users, very steady and responsive development.

- KeepNote. http://keepnote.org/ This one was developed by an educator and mostly for educators. It's very similar to Treepad and Notecase. There doesn't seem to have been much activity since 2012 - but it's solid and stable. I don't use it because it doesn't have word count. Neither does Cherry Tree, for that matter.

Rightnote is another viable choice: www.bauerapps.com/rightnote
There is a free, a Standard and a Pro edition. The Pro edition offers Evernote sync.

The most powerful option for what you're describing is WebIdeaTree, which was written with precisely this requirement in mind.

The non-profit version is very cheap (USD 25), and there's a trial version available, too.

What's more, it appears to be under ongoing development!

http://www.webideatree.com/en/

MyInfo seems like a good fit too. It has quite an adequate web site export in the Pro version and is still maintained: http://blog.milenix.com

jimson wrote:

MyInfo seems like a good fit too. It has quite an adequate web site
export in the Pro version and is still maintained:
http://blog.milenix.com

I also heard good things about MyInfo concerning its web export.

I've never got beyond the experimentation stage with this particular feature, but I can testify that MyInfo creates a website smoothly and efficiently. In fact, it replicates the structure of your notes exactly.

More generally, I would add that MyInfo is a solid two-pane outliner and note-taker under steady (though slow) development. I believe it's been around for more than a decade and is a pleasure to use.

Once again, the depth of this group's expertise demonstrates itself to be far beyond mine! A learning experience.

MAD's mentioning of WIT has brought some new name into the game indeed, thank you!

This being said, from the screenshots, and from browsing their site for a mere 3 minutes, I can only see that it seems to be a mess, cluttered at the very least, and I don't grasp what kind of visually and functionally appealing web sites it would be able to create on its own.

I discussed this "web site building - from outliners" problem here some time ago, and yes, the Dutch TreeWhatever or WhateverTree (I'm unable to remember its name, but it was mentioned above) goes farest into that direction if we let alone for a moment WIT (the respective power of which is unknown to me at this time), BUT even the Dutch outliner, on its own, produces web sites with a flair of 1992, and I'm not entirely sure if you should delete their omnipresent copyright notices, and be an the legally safe side notwithstanding?

Another program mentioned here in this respect is MI: Now, with all due respect, that advice is not to be taken seriously (or then, in a very fresh version there would have been tremendous advancements re that traditionally very poor functionality of that program).

As I said before, you should check for FAULTLESS html export (which many outliners provide; even those which do not necessarily procide faultless rtf export and such), and then, a minimum of scripting would indeed be required, in order to create an appealing web site, both from its visual and from its functional aspect. (Again, perhaps WIT does it all on its own, but I doubt that.) Also, let me repeat that for this script writing, bear in mind (in order to make some sub-tasks much easier) that there may be export functionality "for it all", and also for "tree only" or even for "tree only, together with its current formatting.

Anyway, choosing your outliner from its traditional functionality will greatly enlarge the bunch of sw from which to pick the flower which will please you best in everyday use. (And yes, it's ironic that you come from an outline, then will have a lot of work to do, just to get to another outline structure, instead of being served with an automatism creating the latter structure from the very similar first one, but that would imply something more than just plain html, and as you possibly know (and implied in your post at the very least, and rightly so), most of today's outliner developer don't even do their immediate homework anymore, let create alone elaborate export formats.

But then, why not trial WIT for this "community", and as sort of an "admission task" to it, share your findings in some detail? Don't take me wrong, such a contribution would be very far from being mandatory or something like that, but other newcomers often came with their hands full of delightful new info; well, they didn't pretend they were Cicero in Science, that I have to admit.

You might also check out Page Four:

www.softwareforwriting.com