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Cloud Outliner 2 for OS X
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Posted by Hugh
Jan 21, 2016 at 11:17 AM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
I have OmniOutliner installed on both my MacBooks and on my iPad Air. I
>can’t say that I use it extensively, but I do use it. I haven’t
>experienced any crashes, but my outlines are not big, sprawling things.
>Building a simple outline on the iPad is pretty standard. It’s when you
>want to make use of the columns that it starts to feel a bit clunky,
>though I’m not sure there’s a way around that on a device like the iPad.
>
>To me the main drawback is that they encourage you to use their
>proprietary sync-service, OmniSync. This is free, but it isn’t as simple
>as Dropbox or even iCloud. They say their service is better because the
>others are not set up to handle the package files used by OmniOutliner
>(and their other apps, OmniFocus, etc.).
>
>All in all, I haven’t found it overly inviting to use OO, though I do
>for some specific outlines, where the features of OO are required, and
>it is perfectly functional for those purposes. For example, planning the
>events lined up for the historic site where I volunteer. The columns and
>inline notes are helpful for planning. Then, once the schedule is set, I
>can create a good-looking PDF of the schedule for distribution.
>
>Steve Z.
>
>
My main beef with OO is that it still, on Version 4 now, doesn’t offer “clones”. I seem to remember that you’ve criticised it on these grounds in the past, Steve; there’ve certainly been plenty of posts in the Omni forums calling for this feature. I too find the columns and inline notes helpful, but the absence of clones in my work outlining writing that “tells ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, tells ‘em and then tells ‘em what you’ve told ‘em” (i.e. it requires a degree of repetition) triggers extra work that software surely ought to be able to handle with ease. I seem to remember that a decade or so ago, Brainstorm offered clones!
Posted by shatteredmindofbob
Jan 21, 2016 at 11:58 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
> Thefact that Carbonfin Outliner is still one of the more capable products
>is a bit bloody sad.
I completely forgot I had Carbonfin. After firing it up for the first time in years last night, I realized why. I agree, it is pretty sad. Though, I think part of the problem stems from the lack of a Tab key or arrow keys and all the ways one would normally interact with an outline. For some reason, it doesn’t seem like anyone has bothered to try to translate the UI to a touch interface. Like, swipe right to indent or something. Is there anything that operates like that?
It’s also really cluttered which makes it less useful even for just reading an outline on the go. Carbonfin also suffers from the problem I have with a lot of outliners in that it can’t seem to decide if it’s a task management app or a writing app, which contributes to the clutter.
iThoughts HD, however, is pretty good despite being a mind map and not an outline app. I did successfully make a quick map, export it as OPML and with a brief stop over in Pandoc, had it open on my PC in Org-Mode where I could do some real writing.
I guess none of this helps much if you’re trying to use your iPad as a laptop replacement, but I think this is a decent workflow.
Posted by jaslar
Jan 22, 2016 at 02:41 AM
CarbonFin is still a really good single pane outliner. And it has several ways to move data to other programs.
Likewise, SimpleMind and iThoughts are excellent mindmap programs, which also move data reliably.
As is so often the case, one’s satisfaction with software comes down to what one needs to do with it. My user cases are pretty narrow: I’m giving a talk (mind maps are best) or I’m writing something (I want outlining, collapsing, expanding, moving by section). SimpleMind is a good cross-platform tool, as is Xmind, for talks. For writing, markdown (org-mode or Editorial) does the trick.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jan 22, 2016 at 05:34 PM
Your mentions of mind-mapping apps have reminded me of an app that is iOS/Mac-compatible, and used to be a really good halfway house between mindmapping and outlining: MagicalPad
Alas, in the jump to MacOS, it became a steroid-bloated monster that simply isn’t any fun to use any more, despite a plethora of “cool” features. The early iOS versions used to be very slim, neat and clever.
I’d love to see a slimmed-down version of MagicalPad out in the wild. As it is, I tend to open it, wince sharply, and close it again…
Posted by Luhmann
Jan 23, 2016 at 02:13 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
There’s still a dearth of really good outliners for MacOS and iOS. There
>are excellent outliners for one or the other, but very few for both.
Indeed. I have a thought about why that is.
The key feature of an excellent outliner is the user interaction paradigm. At the very least one needs to be able to quickly indent, outdent, select, and move items around. But there is much more than that as well. An outliner is a text manipulation tool whose functions differ from those of a word processor. The user needs to be able to split paragraphs into separate items, merge multiple paragraphs, move items from one list to another, duplicate lists, etc. A good outliner makes all of these actions so quick and easy that you don’t even have to stop and think about it.
Now, here’s the rub: the ideal user interaction interface for all of these tasks will be very different on a touch screen interface than it is on a keyboard. Some developers, like those behind Workflowy, seem to have really thought about how to work well with a keyboard, but not really put a lot of thought into how to work with a touch screen. I have not seen any outliner that works as well on the iOS interface as Workflowy works on a desktop.
It frustrates me because the app store is full of hundreds of copy-cat task managers, “minimalist” markdown editors, and even mind mappers, but the outlining category is still very weak, especially on the phone. There are lots of great ideas out there, with Cloud Outliner perhaps being the best so far, but none of them are as well executed. (Tree seems like it would be particularly well suited to iOS, but the developer doesn’t seem interested.)
Another problem is sync. Even with iCloud and Dropbox, it seems hard to implement cross platform sync well, and so any developer who wanted a cross-platform solution would also need to become an expert on sync which makes the whole project quite daunting. Still, I’d be willing to pay good money for a top-of-the-line cross platform outliner. Too bad that Omni Outliner doesn’t seem like it’s that solution…
PS: Mind Mapping is IMHO completely useless for dealing with large amounts of text. I have yet to see a Mind Mapper which can handle more than short phrases in a way which makes it easy to see what you are working on.