I also just joined the forum, to post additional information re OS X Notes. The recent introduction reminded me that I should post an introduction for myself as well. I'm another outliner/note organizer obsessive. Here is a list of programs (the ones I remember) that I have actually used, not just tried:

DOS

PC Outline
Grandview
Lotus Agenda
Sidekick
Tornado Notes
InfoSelect

Windows

Bonsai
Brainstorm
Cardfile
CardKick
InfoSelect
ListPro
SplashNotes
TreePad
Tree View
OneNote

Mac OS X

OmniOutliner
Circus Ponies Notebook
EverNote
OneNote
Notes

I currently am a Mac OS X (and iOs) user. The programs I am now using are OmniOutliner and the OS X Notes program. I recently switched back to the latter from OneNote with the upgrades to OS X El Capitan and iOS 9. The addition of a true hierarchy of folders appearing on all devices was critical for me, as I have a large number of notes which I want to keep well-organized.

I draw a (fuzzy) distinction between using this type of software for organizing notes and for "true" outlining. In note organization, only the entries (often longer) at the bottom level have actual content, while the higher levels are just categories for organizing the content. In outlining, the content is in all levels of the hierarchy. I'm a (retired) academic. My research projects often begin as random ideas entered as notes. As a project evolves, these ideas are moved into one or more outlines with increasingly greater structure.

John Ottensmann

John,

Welcome to this forum. I think you'll find this is one of the best groups of people on the internet. Knowledgeable and glad to share experiences and advice.

Your journey through the notes/info management universe is pretty darn close to my own. I started in DOS and fell for GrandView, which remains my all-time favorite application. Sidekick was cool, because it was the first application that I was aware of that allowed you to cut text from one application and paste it into another... that was almost literally a revolution in itself.

Anyway, glad to have you aboard.

Steve Z.

I'm so glad that I can related with everyone's journey here.

Looking forward to contributing.

Same journey for me. It all started with theTSRs Tornado and Sidekick. Then various shareware apps like PC Outline, AskSam, Wampum and a number of other dbase clones. Lotus Organiser was next and I used this faithfully for years.

Then came Lotus Agenda. Looking back, I don't think I truly appreciated at the time just how ground breaking that application was. It was years ahead of it's time. Then came my Palm device and ListPro.

Now I struggle to choose between the Google, Apple and MS ecosystems for calendars and office apps. The only constant, right now, seems to be WorkFlowy.

It's been a frustrating journey at times, but it's also been great fun and I'm glad to have found a group that can share the pain!

Cheers - Simon.

Yes, welcome. Another fan of Sidekick and Lotus Agenda here. At the time Lotus Agenda seemed unique, flawless and revolutionary, and I often wish that something like it existed today (though I have reasons for believing that for many users it was an application chasing a purpose, in reality it could be somewhat slow by today's standards - at least on my machines - and some modern applications contain some of its functionality - ghosts in the machine?).

And Lotus Organizer. I had a version before Lotus bought it, when it was produced as a sort of cottage industry by a British company called Threadz, and I have a memory that I once telephoned the developers at home with a query. I still remember the anchor icon that enabled you to link an appointment with a contact - was it ahead of its time in that respect? And, mimicking a Filofax, was it skeuomorphic before anyone had started to use the word?

Sidekick 1.0 for DOS loaded from a 5 1/4" floppy disk, running on the same machine as VisiCalc and WordStar. I think I got more work done on that IBM machine with the green on black monitor than just about anything since. I wonder what Millenials will be nostalgic for in 2045. Snow?

John Ottensmann wrote:

Here is a list of programs (the ones I remember) that I have
actually used, not just tried:
Bonsai
SplashNotes

Hey, good to see another (former) Bonsai user out there! My history with digital outliners (as before those I used pen and paper) goes back to the decision to choose Natara Bonsai over SplashNotes, when I finally got fed up with using MS Word's outliner feature and thought to myself, 'someone must have invented a specialist outliner software by now'... (I was oblivious of the classics). This coincided with a new need to have to write longer papers with more complex arguments.

Aesthetically I preferred SplashNotes, but Bonsai seemed more sophisticated, so went with the latter and didn't regret it. But I have to admit that I don't use it regularly these days, as it's hard to resist the cross-platform availability of WorkFlowy. And when I'm not it a browser, then I'd have ConnectedText open, which also has its own integrated outliner.

One benefit of having acquired a collection of outliner software though is that one can always choose the right tool for the right tasks, and once in a while a task comes along, for which Bonsai is still far superior than my other tools, such as sorting out and organising massive lists or huge outlines.