Advice needed: Custom hierarchy/markup outliner

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Posted by andante
Dec 6, 2015 at 12:56 PM

Hello,

I’ve been reading this forum for quite some time and I’m finally posting my first topic.

I’ve been looking for an outliner capable of:
1. Using custom hierarchy/markup, i.e. being able to set the default markup for Level 1 items to “·”, Level 2 to “—” etc.
2. Possibly, and this is more interesting, easily switching markup for certain items, for instance if a level 3 item is the consequence/ takeaway from Level 2, I would like to be able to set the markup to an arrow. Conversely, if the Level 3 item is simply an explanation, perhaps a square could work.

However, so far I’ve only found unstructured solutions, e.g. word processors to set up custom hierarchies, or Outlinely paired with Mac OS X text substitution to insert specific characters.

Is there to your knowledge any outliner that can satisfy the two aforementioned criteria?
Thank you in advance for any advice.

Andrea

Posted by Paul Korm
Dec 6, 2015 at 10:27 PM

That’s an interesting approach. I have no outliners to suggest—although various Sublime text outlining plugins might offer possibilities.

Have you considered using various color highlightings as indicators, rather than custom bullets/markup?

Posted by Marbux
Dec 6, 2015 at 11:17 PM

andante wrote:

>I’ve been looking for an outliner capable of:
>1. Using custom hierarchy/markup, i.e. being able to set the default
>markup for Level 1 items to “·”, Level 2 to “—” etc.
>2. Possibly, and this is more interesting, easily switching markup for
>certain items, for instance if a level 3 item is the consequence/
>takeaway from Level 2, I would like to be able to set the markup to an
>arrow. Conversely, if the Level 3 item is simply an explanation, perhaps
>a square could work.

This can all be done using NoteCase Pro and its scripting capability, albeit it would be more simple to implement with icons as opposed to markup. http://notecasepro.com/

Best regards,

Paul

Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 6, 2015 at 11:46 PM

andante wrote:
>I’ve been looking for an outliner capable of:
>1. Using custom hierarchy/markup, i.e. being able to set the default
>markup for Level 1 items to “·”, Level 2 to “—” etc.
>2. Possibly, and this is more interesting, easily switching markup for
>certain items, for instance if a level 3 item is the consequence/
>takeaway from Level 2, I would like to be able to set the markup to an
>arrow. Conversely, if the Level 3 item is simply an explanation, perhaps
>a square could work.

A low-tech manual solution might be to use a Notepad replacement that has code-folding (like Notepad2-mod: http://xhmikosr.github.io/notepad2-mod/), so when you hit tab, you’re starting a single-pane outline, and then just use Autohotkey or a text expander shortcut to insert your desired symbol manually, to start each entry.

While it’s not customisable, Noteliner (http://www.noteliner.org/i/Main.html) has a few differently formatted bullets (and lines) that can be alternated by clicking on them, but that wouldn’t give you the freedom you’re after.

Finally, if you know how to write your own CSS, it might be possible to create your own bullets for WorkFlowy using Stylish (https://userstyles.org/styles/browse/workflowy).

Posted by andante
Dec 8, 2015 at 06:13 PM

Thank you all for your responses!

I should have specified that I’m using a Mac.

- The idea of using colour-coding seems interesting, and it could be used in, say, OutlineEdit.
- Noteliner seems a great application, however I won’t be able to use it. Perhaps the closest alternative on a Mac is OmniOutliner, which I find too expensive and too complicated (or rather not flexible enough to not show the things I don’t need when I don’t need them)

I will have a look at Notecase pro, otherwise I’ll just try and refine the text-substitution thing.

In case anyone has a similar issue, I also think that Fargo somehow enables this by letting you choose the bullet on a per-bullet basis; however I’m not so fond of web-apps.

Again thank you
Best,

Andrea

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