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Outlines of outlines
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Posted by Cassius
Oct 7, 2006 at 02:14 AM
Another two-pane PIM with outlining in the right pane is Ovation Outliner, at
http://www.thinkertools.com/NewFiles/ovationProductPage.html .
It appears that developmentceased in 2001.
Posted by Cassius
Oct 7, 2006 at 05:25 AM
Another two-pane PIM with outlining in the right pane is TaoNotes at
Compendium TA also seems th have this ability at
http://www.compendiumdev.co.uk/compendium-ta/default.php .
Posted by David Dunham
Oct 7, 2006 at 05:34 PM
Cassius wrote:
>Another two-pane PIM with outlining in the right pane is TaoNotes
Not to be confused with TAO, a complex but single-pane Mac outliner
Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Oct 7, 2006 at 11:22 PM
The leading Windows product that can contain “outlines of outlines” is Microsoft OneNote. The top level outlining controls in OneNote 2007 (beta 2) are modest, but considerably improved over OneNote 2003. It is actually possible in OneNote to create outlines of outlines of outlines: ordinary “one-pane” outlining in a ‘notes container,’ hierarchical organization of those notes containers; and finally the hierarchical organization into subpage, page, section, section group (to any degree), and notebook. The presence of MS OneNote in the market is the avowed reason that at least one developer of a Mac product with outlining of outlining, Circus Ponies NoteBook, admits it will not port to Windows. This at least suggests they don’t have something beyond what’s available on Windows.
At least when adjustments are made for size, outlining has seemed more popular on the Macintosh, as noted in this thread. My theory - just a speculative guess, really - is that outlining’s popularity on the computer depends a lot on the ability to use drag and drop. It took Windows a few iterations to get drag and drop really smooth. And the mouse has traditionally been more important on the Mac; the Apple II, I think, introduced it.
Seeming to refute this theory, however, is another observation - “Mind Mapping” is considerably more developed on Windows than on the Mac. But then, mind maps are very easy drag targets. So the Windows lag in elegant drag and drop editing might have encouraged the development of the mind mapping alternative on Windows.
Posted by David Dunham
Oct 8, 2006 at 04:57 AM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>The presence of MS OneNote in the market is the avowed reason
>that at least one developer of a Mac product with outlining of outlining, Circus
>Ponies NoteBook, admits it will not port to Windows. This at least suggests they don’t
>have something beyond what’s available on Windows.
I’ve never spoken with Circus Ponies, but I’d guess the real reason is they leverage so many Mac-specific technologies that it would be a major rewrite to bring it to Windows. And then to have to compete with Microsoft after all that work? While neglecting their Mac customer base (because it’s a rewrite that would have a different code base)?
I don’t know a really good cross-platform success story in this area. Certainly Dyno Notepad didn’t reach anything near the success of its Mac counterpart.
>My theory - just a speculative guess, really - is that outlining’s popularity
>on the computer depends a lot on the ability to use drag and drop.
You wouldn’t know it based on the requests I got for more keyboard support during the development of Opal…