Luhmann rightly didn't want his topic on a list of dedicated outliners (DO) hijacked into another discussion, so I've started it here. If you search the archive, you may find that I've brought this topic up myself in the past (at least I think I have -- it has been a while). Because the range of software we discuss on this forum allows for a very generous definition of what may be an outliner... pretty much anything that provides the ability to hierarchically categorize information. But I understand Luhmann's point about "dedicated outliners." I think those are legitimately a sub-category of the software we discuss. Here is how I would define them:

Single-pane, with nested topics where notes, if they are supported, are inline.

An app like Treepad isn't a dedicated outliner, but a hierarchical note organizer (which in no way means it can't be used to the same affect as a DO). Same with an app like TheBrain, which certainly allows you to hierarchically build a map of your information and even has an "outline" configuration for the plex.

Anyway, this is how I see this broad category of apps. What do you think?

Steve Z.

Someone in another thread suggested the way to know if something was a "dedicated outliner" was to apply the Potter Stewart test: "I know it when I see it".

The problem is, we're dealing with user interfaces and user experience design that is very difficult to objectively define from a software engineering perspective. I suggest it's best not to mix a description of the software interface experience with data structure.

Define how you want to work with data -- how it is chunked, how data elements are typed, what relationships among chunks are valid, how are are they validated.

Step two, survey the market decide what software satisfies that definition.

Step three (optional) would be a decision on how "well" that software does what you want to do with data.

Step three is necessary because attributes like "dedicated" and "outliner" are very flabby from a software engineering perspective -- if you mix design attributes and UX with strict functional description you get lost.

(Is a sedan a "dedicated" passenger vehicle but a pickup is not? Well, the pickup sure is from the viewpoint of the suburbanite who thinks pickups are cool family vehicles. But, they both fulfill the data definitions for a transport container.)

Another example, someone else wrote this in a review

"Most two-pane outliners have nice editing windows for writing your notes, but usually have rudimentary outline functions in the tree-pane. Dedicated outliners have strong outlining capabilities, but crude note-taking features at best. Tinderbox combines a powerful dedicated outliner with a good note-taking editor AND throws in database features. "

If Tinderbox combines a "dedicated" + "outliner" with other features (albeit, features that all have something to do with relationships between and among data chunks) is it no longer an outliner?

I think it is very much an "outliner" -- one of the best because it breaks the bounds of tradition and enables us to explore our data in multiple way.

The point: in this forum I suggest we are talking about working with chunks of data that are bigger than letters and smaller than pages -- words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs.

We are also talking about software that enables us to group, and, at a higher level, define and manipulate relationships between and among these chunks. At an even higher level, software that adds features to specify and manipulate attributes of those chunks.

I purposefully eliminated "hierarchy" from this scope for two reasons. "Hierarchy" is merely a relationship, just as links (visual and hyperlinks), attribute groupings, are all mere relatiionships. Hierarchy might be important for many readers, but it is also very limiting.

Paul Korm wrote:

I purposefully eliminated “hierarchy” from this scope for two reasons. “Hierarchy” is merely a relationship, just as links (visual and hyperlinks), attribute groupings, are all mere relatiionships. Hierarchy might be important for many readers, but it is also very limiting.

Understood. The fact that it is limiting is one of the benefits of the dedicated outliner. It forces a logical, step-by-step relationship, rather than a free form relationship (as TheBrain does, and as the MapView of Tinderbox* does). If you want to outline a paper before writing it, you need to rely eventually on hierarchy.

And without hierarchy we're not talking about outlines at all, in my view. Which is fine. I don't in any way want to imply we shouldn't talk about other types of note organizers either on this forum or even in this thread. Just trying to get my own terminology straight. Why does this matter? Well, it helps you find what you're looking for. Clearly, for example, Luhmann has a specific style of outliner in mind for his list. Having a way to describe what he is looking for is obviously important. I don't want to go shopping for sedans and be shown pickup trucks by the car salesman. So it helps to be able to use the word "sedan" and have others know what I'm talking about.

Perhaps it would be clearer to say I want a GrandView-style outliner (Plato's Theory of Forms applied to this discussion, with GrandView being the ideal version of the single-pane outliner). This is all semantics, but semantics are important for clear communication. And none of what I've written here refutes what you're saying, Paul, about how to go about finding the best application for your needs. But if you already have a clear idea of the type of user interface you're looking for, why not be able to define it with one phrase?

*One of the intriguing attributes of Tinderbox is that it allows free-form mapping only at one level of hierarchy at a time (not entirely true, as you can draw relationships across levels, but I find those of little use). But it gives you deep hierarchical visualization via the outline view.

Steve Z.

I think I'll stop here, permanently, since it seems I have completely lost the ability to understand what people are posting here, and torquing everyone off as a result.

The thread and introductory topic for this thread was "Just what is an outliner". Once again I learn that the topic is actually "what is a dedicated outliner"

I don't think an "outliner" is a term definable capable of any precision from a software sense. "Dedicated outliner" is an even flabbier term, I believe. If it's all in the eye of the beholder (the Potter Stewart standard) then its meaningless and incommunicable.

Whack! Ouch. I stand corrected again, for the fourth time in as many days. I will be forever gone. Bye.

Paul Korm wrote:

I think I'll stop here, permanently, since it seems I have completely lost the ability to understand what people are posting here, and torquing everyone off as a result. (...) I will be forever gone. Bye.

Sad to see you go Paul. Communities should be inclusive, not divisive...

Wikipedia does provide a definition of an Outliner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner

In my view, an outliner is the ability to show information in an outline, with expand / collapse. Period.
But it needs not be limited to this outline view. The ability to view the information in an outline AND in a flat (or flatter) view is very useful. In a nut shell, sometimes the outline gets in the way, so a flat view is useful.

HTH !

Pierre

Paul, I request that you read my response to you again. I think you'll find I didn't feel "torqued" at all. I was just trying to react to some of the things you wrote, which is the point of a discussion.


Paul Korm wrote:

I think I'll stop here, permanently, since it seems I have completely
lost the ability to understand what people are posting here, and
torquing everyone off as a result.

The thread and introductory topic for this thread was "Just what is an
outliner". Once again I learn that the topic is actually "what is a
dedicated outliner"

I don't think an "outliner" is a term definable capable of any precision
from a software sense. "Dedicated outliner" is an even flabbier term, I
believe. If it's all in the eye of the beholder (the Potter Stewart
standard) then its meaningless and incommunicable.

Whack! Ouch. I stand corrected again, for the fourth time in as many
days. I will be forever gone. Bye.

Pierre,

Thank you for sensibly pointing us to a definition of outliner.

Steve Z.

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

Paul Korm wrote:
I think I'll stop here, permanently, since it seems I have completely
lost the ability to understand what people are posting here, and
torquing everyone off as a result. (...) I will be forever gone. Bye.

Sad to see you go Paul. Communities should be inclusive, not divisive...

Wikipedia does provide a definition of an Outliner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner

In my view, an outliner is the ability to show information in an
outline, with expand / collapse. Period.
But it needs not be limited to this outline view. The ability to view
the information in an outline AND in a flat (or flatter) view is very
useful. In a nut shell, sometimes the outline gets in the way, so a flat
view is useful.

HTH !

Pierre

I have an expansive view of what constitutes an outliner - the ability to manipulate a hierarchy. Even expanding and collapsing might not be included (I feel like BrainStorm on Windows is a type of outliner even though you don't expand or collapse nodes, you simply zoom in and out of them). On the flip side, I think I know what people mean when they are talking about a dedicated outliner - but I could be wrong. The distinctions single-pane, two-pane, etc., seem pretty well understood and useful.

However, even my definition confuses me because I consider a mind mapper something related but not quite equivalent to an outliner, even though it technically fits my definition.

In any case, I do love that there is a place where heated debate can ensue over the definition of an outliner!

I think of an outline as being a list with sequence and hierarchy, where the user controls both. To me a mind map is usually not an outline because sequence doesn't matter. I think of them as a tree. In an outline sub-items have a user-controlled or manually assigned sequence, in a tree they generally don't. Another example of tree is the folder tree in a file manager. Often the sub-items are automatically sorted alphabetically and can't be manually ordered.

Following from that overly-long definition of terms... to me an outliner is an editor for (text) outlines. So, good control over sequence, hierarchy, and, importantly, text. There's got to be more than a dash of text editing, otherwise it just doesn't seem like an outliner to me. More of an organizer of items, as others have mentioned.

Outliners with additional features, views, structures, can still be outliners. wiki-style links between items comes to mind. Columns. Inline images. And so on.

Side note: the dictionaries I looked at don't have "our" definition of outline. They say nothing about hierarchy and few even mention list. They say "plan" and "summary".

Agreed about "this is a fun topic to think about together." I'll take a swing at it, and might learn something.

I think the wikipedia article is pretty right on. It's the "dedicated" part of this thread that I'm struggling with. Here's my premise: at minimum, an outliner displays and manipulates relationships in three ways.

1. It shows the hierarchical relationship: parent, child, sibling.
2. It allows for the selective collapse and reveal of children to reveal structure.
3. It allows for the rapid reordering of the structure - promoting, demoting, moving - such that all the children, for instance, can go along.

I've seen some pretty barebones outliners that do just that - no hoisting, no cloning, no additional text columns, etc. But if it has those three things, or can give me a view like that, TO ME, it's an outliner. So I find, Stephen, that I have no trouble calling Editorial (markup headers that can be folded, and draggable blocks that let me reorder the structural relationships) is an outliner. Freeplane has an outline mode or view: good enough for me. Compared to Dynalist, the commands for folding markdown might be clunkier, but that's interface, not function. Likewise, I think of something like Inspiration. It was one of the first, one pane outliners with the core feature set. But now, it's also a concept mapper, a graphical outliner. But it seems wrong to say it's no longer a "dedicated" outliner. It is if you use those features.

For many years, I used Notecase almost exclusively. Again, in my view it's absolutely an outliner. It just also allows me to add longer text notes. But the value of it is that I can glance at the left column to see the relationships and shuffle things around.

One, two, and three pane outliners remains a useful distinction to me. I can also see the value of tracking software that does this under one software package on both Mac and iOS platforms.

But I guess I would respectfully disagree both with the notion of "dedicated" and outliners that don't show hierarchy.

I do see a difference between outliners in which every paragraph is a "header" and ones in which some text blocks are not hierarchical (embedded notes that operate more like regular word processing. But - and I do realize this gets tricky - I don't think that's a core feature. It's just an APPROACH to outlining. KAMAS had an 88 character limit on a header; attached text could be paragraphs long, but your couldn't use outliner function on those, just the headers. MORE treated any paragraph as manipulable. Both both were outliners.

OK, y'all, take me to school! (And Paul, I don't think anybody was miffed. Come on back and stumble around with the rest of us.)

jaslar wrote:

I do see a difference between outliners in which every paragraph is a
"header" and ones in which some text blocks are not hierarchical
(embedded notes that operate more like regular word processing. But -
and I do realize this gets tricky - I don't think that's a core feature.
It's just an APPROACH to outlining. KAMAS had an 88 character limit on a
header; attached text could be paragraphs long, but your couldn't use
outliner function on those, just the headers. MORE treated any paragraph
as manipulable. Both both were outliners.

An approach — exactly! Another example, I would argue that a mind mapper is another approach to outlining — one where hierarchy is important, but not sequence. Some mind map tools can import an OPML outline without losing anything but a firm visualization of that sequence, after all. Both have their advantages — I've found that a mind mapper is excellent for world-building, while an outliner is better for roughing out a story into chapters and scenes. For one use, sequence just gets in the way; another use requires it.

In a more specific implementation of jaslar's point, Tines has a mechanism to mark a node as "text." Functionally, it makes no difference to the outline itself — a text node can have children and siblings as well as parents. When you go to export the outline, though, you can use that information to turn text nodes into paragraphs (text under text might become bulleted lists, or not). Or if you don't want that, you can ignore the text attribute, and handle all nodes the same way. It's just a marker.

Chris Murtland wrote:

In any case, I do love that there is a place where heated debate can
ensue over the definition of an outliner!

This is exactly what I was thinking! The very fact that there are people that can get passionate about discussing the definitions of outlines and outliners is worth celebrating.

@Paul Korm

Your contributions are much appreciated here, so I hope you won't leave. If you re-read the comments, you will see that this is just a debate about ideas, nothing personal. Disagreements are part of the social process of working out meanings.

For what it's worth, my own (completely un-academic) definition of an outliner involves purpose: it is a device designed to produce an outline. And what is an outline? It seems to me that an outline is a skeleton of a longer form of expression, the outline produced for reasons of time-saving (almost always), communication (frequently) and experiment (quite often). Insofar as the outline is produced for reasons of time-saving, its articulation will need to be abbreviated, and, possibly, graphical. Insofar as the longer form of expression is likely, at least in part, to depend upon logic, then the outline is likely to require hierarchy. Insofar as the outline itself is likely to be, at least to some extent, experimental, it will require malleability and ease of manipulation.

(Incidentally, I exclude from my definition, at least in my mind and perhaps controversially, so-called "outliners" which are more in the nature of "hierarchical containers" - although I'm very ready to concede that the two categories frequently blur into each other. If I were to allow such devices into the category I define for myself, then the macOS Finder is an outliner, and so is the British Library. Of course, they could all be used for outlining - after a fashion - but that is obviously far from the principal purpose of each. But I do enjoy and learn from the discussions of such hierarchical containers - in the digital world - on this forum!)

@Paul Korm. I'd like to echo those who have both praised Paul and requested that he reconsider his decision to withdraw from this forum. I'm one of the - I'm certain - many who have learnt from him. And after all's said and done, isn't learning a major reason for reading what's written here?