Okay, so I've been trying to use Dynalist as my main information manager and while it excels at drilling down and focusing on only the points I want, I've noticed that it struggles with higher level operations like nimbly moving around to different parts of the tree. The lack of navigation tree + the fact that I can't efficiently open another documents in a new tab with a ctrl+click is super annoying and really slows down my workflow when I need to have multiple instances of my outliner open to show various different things at once.

So this leaves me looking to find a robust and stable two pane outliner. Here are the ones I'm considering (if you have any major players I'm forgetting, let me know):

- OneNote
- TreePad
- MyInfo
- Cherrytree
- Notecase Pro

I'm most familiar with OneNote and it would likely work alright but I dislike the limited levels of hierarchy + no hoist option. I know that many of you here are quite familiar with these other options so perhaps you could help save me some time with your insight.

Major things I'm interested in:
- support keyboard driven operation
- active community & development
- can handle multiple instances / tabs for quick access to multiple views
- hoist capability
- some sort of mobile access
- has "quick capture" capability where I can snag quick notes or quickly create a scratch pad

I'm on windows. My main use cases will be to create text notes, outlines, project plans and reference files. Thanks for any help.

Well done. This surfaces my two real critiques of Dynalist. The first is the inability to move around, without using the mouse, by structure (which Treepad, CherryTree and Notecase Pro all do beautifully). It can be done in a single pane outliner. Org-mode has previous or next level, or level up. But any editor, I think, should allow navigation via a header level pane. The only way you can do this (via keyboard) with Dynalist is by trying to SELECT: Shift+Up arrow, then left arrow when you get to the desired level. Counter-intuitive and awkward.

The second one, and thank you for articulating this so clearly, is the inability to launch an outline level in a new window by right click. I often wind up with two or three Dynalist windows as tabs in my browser. That's not bad. But it's a workaround.

I've used Notecase Pro for a long time, and think it's very good. But I remain irritated by one small thing: when I do an outline header, I get a separate window. Treepad's implementation of this is so much simpler and clearer.

But hey, if things worked the way they ought to, we wouldn't need to CRIMP

I poked around CherryTree for a while, but it didn't have word count (and neither does Dynalist). I thought Notecase was better.

Can't speak to MyInfo.

Great post, I've been tinkering with Dynalist/Workflowy but just couldn't get comfortable with them and you've helped me understand why.

OneNote has been my rock of stability and also anchor that keeps me from moving forward since 2008 or so. I am too addicted to that infinite canvas concept to successfully move on to less fluid but far more powerful knowledge managers. On a PC, it's just so comfy to dump stuff into and navigate around. Yet I HATE the lack of true tagging and other methods of embedding metadata that keep it forever just an increasing blob of one-hierchary-only loosely-organized pages. Ironically, after waiting about a decade for MS to start adding features for us nerds instead of making it slicker, dumber, and prettier for the masses, they are forcing my hand to abandon ship. They finally officially announced the almost-awesome desktop version is being put into maintenance mode in order to move completely to the 'universal version'.

I think your list should be expanded a bit to include Rightnote, Infoqube, and Ultra Recall. My personal feature wishlist is:

1. Nested tags (or categories) that enable multiple hierarchies for the same info. I guess this includes transclusion as maybe an even better way to achieve that.

2. BACK LINKS, this is a rare animal and apparently tough to code. Pretty much every platform in existence can do one-way dumb links (that don't update themselves if their target gets moved or renamed). True two-way linking is a completely different animal. I'm so tired of reading about people stating that you can make your own wiki out of OneNote (I'm also looking at you, notion.so!). No you can't, not any more than you can out of a directory of text files. Sure it's a bit easier to do with OneNote but that double brackets auto-creates that page and a link to it is just copying wiki creating, not wiki-being! We need to come up with new terms to differentiate one-way dumb links and two way smart links. The odd thing is there are lightweight platforms that do it (Zim and Tiddlywiki)


I took a look at most of the ones you list and these a few months ago.

NoteCasePro: I was fairly excited about that one since it seemed to offer the flexible hierarchies and tagging and showed backlinks. My notes are telling me it just felt a bit awkward to use and that it'd take some scripting and work to make it work the way I wanted. The 'what links to here' function was an add-in that you had to run like a report, as opposed to backlinks just showing automatically. For me, the auto-display of backlinks is the most important reason for backlinks, as a constant reminder of existing structure and prompting the fortuitous re-discovery of connected information that we all seek like Don Quixote in our quest for a true external brain. Also my notes about it remind me it doesn't do tables. OneNote's got me addicted to in-line tables. Deal breaker.

UltraRecall: This one might be my favorite example of very powerful (transclusion!) yet still has that comfortable main two-pane hierarchy that my mind seems attracted to like a fly to a light. This is one that can be a true free-form knowledge base and also a very structured personal document management system. Main thing that concerns me about it is that development has slowed down to a crawl over the past few years to the point where it's on the edge of abandonware cliff along with ConnectedText.

MyInfo: This is the one I have my closest eye one. Not quite as nerdy as UltraRecall but definitely more nerd features than OneNote with ALMOST as slick of an interface. Petko has been teasing V7 for a while now and the forums suggest it's going to check dang near every CRIMP box (cross-platform and back-linking have been explicitly promised). I'm anticipating V7 so much that it's kind of put a halt on my CRIMPING because I really want it to be my lifeboat off OneNote.

Rightnote: This is the one I tell myself I SHOULD like much more than I do. The Evernote sync is a dang clever way to be able to make the simple stuff available everywhere without giving up a really powerful desktop nerdfest. The development rate is amazing and it has a lot of compelling tricks. But I think the tagging and lack of two way linking are keeping me from it. If I'm going to jump to a clunkier-but-more-powerful system, I want that journey to give me my back-links!

ConnectedText: I like this so much that I've taken several runs at it over the past two years but life kept getting in the way of me getting over the training-wheels stage to experience it's awesomeness. I tell myself that the apparent end-of-development situation makes it a practical matter to avoid CT. The truth is that I'm scared that if I truly learn it to it's full capabilities and am STILL wanting for more that it would say way more about my own shortcomings than the software. I haven't ruled out putting it on a thumb drive and giving it one last shot at work and home. And I do own a license, in part as homage to the vision and achievement of the developer.

Infoqube: This one has me very intrigued right now. It's perhaps more powerful than any of these and infinitely configurable, which I normally love. Pierre is an amazing developer. He's my spirit animal if my IQ was 30 points higher, I was much more disciplined, and Canadian. The new mind-mapping trick it does to display connections like CT is huge. I even like that it used to be called SQLnotes and the forums are still based there. Just reminds you that this is the ultimate personal database. It's the optimus prime of all of these. Just do a bunch of tinkering and it'll be CT or UltraRecall or some mutant thing in-between. It's even got GANTT CHARTS. Who doesn't love gantt charts?! Only me then? Right on. I've poked around with it a bit and just can't get past the initial lost stage. That says a lot more about my capabilities than the software though. I'm looking for a personal wiki that has solid database functionality. IQ feels much more like a free-form database that can act like a wiki. Really, there's no difference in function, they are all databases, we are just debating GUI's here. It feels like every time I have the thought "I wish OneNote could do X" it's IQ that's always is ready to step up to the plate. It truly checks every box and I think it can be the ultimate two-page outliner....I just don't quite know how to drive it. Maybe part of the problem is I'm so mesmerized by it's functions that I have trouble just using a subset until I'm ready to make the leap to next-level PKM-ing. OneNote is the only one I can drive without the interface getting in the way. Perhaps my migration needs to be using something else just like I use OneNote and slowly grow from there rather than being overwhelmed by features and paralyzed with indecision.

Does anyone use Zoot anymore?

I'm a heavy user of both MyInfo and OneNote -- as well as some other apps such as Evernote, CintaNotes, and RightNote -- and, I suspect like many other people, am trying to reduce my reliance on OneNote as it slopes toward obsolescence.

Just a few thoughts about MyInfo: Petko's work on version 7 is coming along slowly but steadily (I'm a beta tester), and when it's completed it will, for me at least, nicely take over most of the tasks of OneNote. As far as I can tell, the only two ON functions I will miss in MyInfo are the ability to install it on my iPhone (Petko says he hopes to make it cross-platform, but I suspect that will take a while to do) and OneNote's OCR of text images. The latter I can accomplish with third-party software, though that's slightly less convenient. Otherwise I would offer the generalization that version 7 of MyInfo will do essentially everything that version 6 already does and will add some new capabilities and refinements. I look forward to using it even more in the future and hope to gradually shift my old material out of OneNote.

Great responses in here, thank you. Yes, I'm hesitant about OneNote's future as well... my hope is that they simply bring the UWP version up to a general feature parity with the desktop version or perhaps even make it stronger... if it had a basic tagging functionality it would be so much better.

I'll have to look into MyInfo more along with maybe Ultra Recall. I'm tempted by Connected Text and Infoqube, but their learning curve has me a bit worried. I invested in learning and customizing Vim and it was a great move. The thing is that Vim is definitely not going to disappear and is fairly ubiquitous... it seems like CT and IQ require a similar investment but make me worry about the long term a bit more.

WSP - what are the notable differences in MyInfo v7?

I gather the rule for beta testers is that you're not supposed to blab about the stuff you're testing, but I can certainly report that everything will happen much faster and more efficiently in the next version of MyInfo, mainly because Petko is switching over to a superior underlying database software. Basically he has brought over nearly all existing features, and the UI will be very similar; but he is also adding some important new capabilities such as creating sections within a notebook.

I think it will be wonderful when it's finished, but if you've had any dealings with Petko in the past, you'll know that he moves very slowly and cautiously. That can lead to some frustration among users of MyInfo, but on the other hand you can be confident he will not introduce any untested or injudicious novelties in his software.

Depends on what you want to do but TreePad is the great-grandaddy of the category and it does everything that I've ever wanted it to do; easily and simply, from organizing notes to word processing.

For a long time now I have been looking for the perfect note taking program, I have been spending lots of money getting licenses for programs which I thought were promising and passing of the results to the readers of my blog in the form of reviews which other people may or may not find informative.

Faced with so many different note taking programs it is easy to feel anxiety caused by the plethora of choices available. I kept asking myself 'Will I make the right choice?', the underlying assumption was that there is an optimum choice which does not involve any compromise if only I could find it.

But I have realised that there are often situations where the optimum choice does not exist and where every choice is a compromise. Such is the nature of CRIMP.

I mainly use MyInfo and ConnectedText. But Petko is hinting that the next version of MyInfo will be 'SaaS' which is 'Software as a Sentence' or rental software. This is unacceptable and if MyInfo 7 is a rental version I will not be upgrading.

Eduardo says that ConnectedText has not been abandoned it is just been put in 'maintenance mode' so he will fix bugs when they arise but version 6 will be the last version. I am not so sure because he has been absent from the CT forum for a long time now. He re-appears briefly and infrequently, his last post was in January 2018.

I have been looking for a suitable replacement for MyInfo and ConnectedText.

InfoQube seems fairly interesting. It is quite difficult and intimidating for a new user but I have found a way to simplify it. The user interface is customisable and so I stripped out everything that wasn't absolutely necessary and I was left with a two pane organiser similar in operation to MyInfo with the meta-data columns in the left hand pane similar to Myinfo but it has the dockable panes which can be detached and placed on the other monitor just like Ultra Recall and it has a form of hierarchical tagging similar to ConnectedText. It has the ability to assign different meta-data to different items like Ultra Recall and the capability to have saved searches like the $ASK command in ConnectedText (except the results appear in a table (grid) not on a page).

It still doesn't have backlinks and it isn't as easy as it should be to set up a link from one page to another but it's a start.

It seems to me that the program most similar to MyInfo is RightNote, though its tagging system is not as good and it doesn't provide columns of attributes. On the other hand, RightNote is very speedy, can cope with extremely large files, and is clever at handling editable attachments. And I assume that to some users the ability to share files with Evernote is helpful.

I really like Infoqube, but my job uses a lot of formulations in spreadsheet format and html tables don't always play nicely with Excel. Rightnote has a spreadsheet format for nodes (notes) that does the trick perfectly, so it is my default outliner.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Does anyone use Zoot anymore?

I've taken a look at it recently but am having trouble finding my notes on it at the moment. My impression was that I liked the capabilities but it looks to have an uncertain development future. It's strength is to be used as an aggregator of email, rss feeds, and web bookmarks. For that use case, it may be unmatched.

I've long given up on the concept of a 3rd party email importer. I agree with the concept, as we get a ton of reference and task info through email. But email has been so bogged down with noise from advertisers and other abusers that the thought of importing something that is 5% signal and 95% noise into a note/task system would just be a big bag of hurt.

As for the RSS reader and bookmark organizer...I would be curious to know what some others here do with those. I use Feedly for RSS and bookmarks are generally just embedded in notes or in Lastpass for anything that needs login info. I've long struggled to differentiate other's info vs mine within my notes and have tried harder to separate those worlds for search purposes. For example, if I'm researching a topic, that's going to involve a bunch of loose thoughts, outlines, and references that I create but it also might involve several articles, book quotes, research papers etc. The data ratio is generally 5% MY content vs 95% OTHERS' content that I'm trying to cobble together to make sense of. Sometimes it makes sense for a search to dig into both, but that can really muddy things up. So I'm trying to be better at keeping my own content separate from reference content. I think Zoot is better for those who don't mind the idea of merging all the sources into a single stream.

I'm truly envious of those who can do that. I can't even keep my own content coherent. So compartmentalizing is a survival strategy.

nathanb wrote:

As for the RSS reader and bookmark organizer...I would be curious to
know what some others here do with those. I use Feedly for RSS and
bookmarks are generally just embedded in notes or in Lastpass for
anything that needs login info.

I use Newsblur for RSS, and I either use the web interface or ReadKit (which doubles as a client for Pocket, which I jumped to years ago from Instapaper). I'd use ReadKit (or possibly Reeder) more on my Mac, but the web interface (and Newsblur's own iOS app) give access to its proprietary smart folders showing popular saved stories, top stories publicly shared from users, and my favorite feature: "Infrequent Site Stories", which bubbles up posts from low-volume sites I subscribe to. (I subscribe to 1319 sites as of today.)

NewsBlur also easily lets me save stories to a SAVED STORIES section broken down by whatever folder the sites had originally been put in. I currently have 78 saved stories, but I tend not to use it much now because the paid verison of Pocket ($45/yr, but I'm grandfathered in at $25/yr) will save the text of stories (which Instapaper won't) thus saving articles from bit-rot.

If I'm at work or on the go and want to visit a site later I usually just Share->email it to myself and check it out later.

saving articles from bit-rot.

I meant to write 'link-rot'.

nathanb wrote re Zoot:

it looks to have an uncertain development future.

Zoot's developer, Tom Davis, has been working on it continuously for more than two decades, so it's unfair to say it has an "uncertain development future." Very little of the software discussed here has that long of a history of dedication. He's continually tweaking the app and the most recent update was May 15, 2018.

It’s strength is to be used as an aggregator of email, rss feeds, and web bookmarks. For that use case, it may be unmatched.

It does do those things but personally I think it's strength is being able to quickly vacuum up large quantities of information, then sift, sort, tag, and categorize it later in myriad ways. I don't use it routinely for a variety of reasons, but I do occasionally and it deserves much more love on this forum than it's gotten in recent years.

Mark wrote:

nathanb wrote re Zoot:

> it looks to have an uncertain development future.

Zoot's developer, Tom Davis, has been working on it continuously for
more than two decades, so it's unfair to say it has an "uncertain
development future." Very little of the software discussed here has that
long of a history of dedication. He's continually tweaking the app and
the most recent update was May 15, 2018.

Thank you for clearing this up, sorry for posting false info. Just looked up some of it's features again. The integrated connections it offers is pretty great. Makes me think of random stuff I have in Evernote, Pocket, etc on their own islands. It looks to offer a unique way to aggregate a bunch of 'cloud' flows without itself being cloud-based. Though to be honest, it doesn't help to make itself appear 'in development' when one of the screenshots on it's website is showing 'read-it-later' and 'google reader' integrations. Gone 4 and 5 years now. Another way he's making it 'seem' outdated to casual CRIMPers like me is the "what's new" page is listing a bunch of features that it's had for years with no dates on what the 'most recent' change was. Though it does have a pretty active discussion board on google groups, however one user appears to be a big driver of that. Either way, you are right, it is a bit more 'active' than I was assuming.


My impression was that ZootXT is one of several really unique offerings for which major development peaked several years ago. UltraRecall and ConnectedText are in the same boat. A small developer creates this magnificent thing in their spare time and keeps building upon their vision until it's so complex that 're-imagining' much of it is too daunting a task for something that's not bringing in much money. Yet it IS still great, even without a significant evolution of function, and it has a loyal and enthusiastic fan base. So it makes sense to work on maintenance releases. Active development certainly isn't the whole story and I'm willing to pay for the veterans of this category as a nod to their singular achievement with no pretense or expectations of a string of function updates.....but it's a risk to trust in a platform whose best years are behind, not ahead. If they show signs of still wrestling the beast (Petko, Pierre) instead of just keeping it alive when their attention is clearly elsewhere (Ultra, CT) it means a lot. Maybe I'm wrong about which category Zoot belongs to.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Does anyone use Zoot anymore?

I used it for many years, but drifted away from it a few years ago. Despite Tom's dedication and responsiveness, I felt it's age was starting to show. The lack of a manual was also not helpful. I migrated to ConnectedText (and a few other apps for maintaining my To do list/Scheduling, etc)

I used to be a devout Zooter, but when Zoot XT came out I have to admit I became flummoxed too often by it. I think Tom tried to shoehorn too much functionality into Zoot. I agree that a manual or a set of video tutorials would help.

I still open Zoot up from time to time to see if I can rekindle the magic, but it isn't there I'm afraid...

Steve Z.

I feel the same. I really loved Zoot 5, even with its limitations. It seemed to have an almost spooky power. It was sort of like a mystery cult, I was an initiate, and I have since been kicked out because I couldn't keep up with the esoteric rituals when it expanded beyond plain text. However, a black fog just enveloped me and I saw a large Z in the sky, and I feel oddly possessed by the spirit of CRIMP, so maybe I'll give it another go...


Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I used to be a devout Zooter, but when Zoot XT came out I have to admit
I became flummoxed too often by it. I think Tom tried to shoehorn too
much functionality into Zoot. I agree that a manual or a set of video
tutorials would help.

I still open Zoot up from time to time to see if I can rekindle the
magic, but it isn't there I'm afraid...

Steve Z.

What about Evernote? You can use nested tags as nodes in an outline. There is also a free service called Filterize that will automatically let all children tags inherit parent tags. As far as hoisting goes, you can use internal links to notes/TOCs to create more granular outlines.

Paul J. Miller wrote:
For a long time now I have been looking for the perfect note taking
program, I have been spending lots of money getting licenses for
programs which I thought were promising and passing of the results to
the readers of my blog in the form of reviews which other people may or
may not find informative.

Mr Miller, your blog posts of software reviews have been my most favorite CRIMP resource. I have read most of your reviews more than once as I wrestle with the same questions. The time you've taken to do those in-depth reviews and explain your findings is very much appreciated. I was going to add that I always found it amusing that the one review I disagreed with was about OneNote. You weren't a fan of the 'infinite canvas' concept and described it..."

it is a sort of hybrid between a word processor and a desktop publishing program. It ends up being not as good as either of them.

Whereas I have grown so fond of that particular feature that it makes trying out other software difficult for me. I have long been a fan of Microsoft's Tablet PC concept, and even though only like 10% of my notes involve 'digital ink' over the years, OneNote is unique in its ability to integrate a hodgepodge of digital ink, tables, attachments, rich text, shapes, etc on an 'borderless 2d canvas'. You can re-arrange all those different things effortlessly. It's interface is....soft and fluid...and yes, dumb. It shines only if you think of it as a digital canvas, not a database. There are lots of programs that allow you to ink and a few that allow you arrange stuff on a big 2d board instead of limiting you to word processor space. But none of these let you ink with a pen, then paste in a screenshot, then collapse some text into an outline with embedded micro-tables then draw shapes with a mouse then attach a pdf and an email....all on the same page with absolutely no friction. It's the same as it was in 2007 and that in-the-page fluidity still feels revolutionary. But it ends there, your recent description is spot-on.....

the user interface is superbly designed to help the new user and to make the operation of the program obvious. But the program itself sucks, many of its capabilities are superficial and gimmicky. They are included just so that the advertising department can tick the box saying it has that capability. If you use OneNote for any serious work then you come up against its limitations very quickly. It is a typical product of Microsoft ‘focus groups’ which tend to make things so they are easy for the new user and difficult or impossible for the power user.

It's absolutely demoralizing for users like me, who fell in love with the fluid power of desktop OneNote 2007, to watch Microsoft peddle a LESS CAPABLE offering aimed at the lowest-common-denominator user in 2018. So I want out, I'm actively seeking a new daily driver. It just feels like a step back to limit myself to hard grids, and note types, and a word processor interface after years of not having those constraints. The even greater challenge is the change in paradigm from a few pages of information to structured nodes. That's the part that most people get wrong in comparing OneNote to Evernote or most any other system. With Evernote/Rightnote/Myinfo/ConnectedText etc, notes are more granular. Each 'page' is generally a single idea, single attachment, single ITEM etc with discrete metadata and the structure comes from where that note as a NODE is within the database. OneNote should never be used that way where a page only contains a single ITEM. For example, I can contain all my ideas, activity log, references file attachments, sketches, etc about any topic (car maintenance, life insurance etc) within a single page and frequently do. That's not more powerful than how you'd lay out the data in MyInfo but it is a very different way of thinking about how to structure your notes. I'm having trouble forcing myself out of the OneNote Way, my brain says its for the best but old habits die hard!

If you like the 'infinite canvas' approach then you might like 'Instrumind Thinkcomposer'.

It used to be a commercial product but the author wasn't making very much from it so unusually he decided to take it open source. You can now download it for free.

There are panels around the work area which take up a lot of screen but some of them can be reduced and/or folded away when not needed.

It isn't an outliner or really a note taking program but it does do lots of different diagrams which can be linked together in a structure. Anyway it's worth a look for free :) .

Thanks again Paul! I've been thinking about doing a hybrid thing where I can use a more powerful organizer as a front end to the type of editor I like.

nathanb wrote:

Thanks again Paul! I've been thinking about doing a hybrid thing where
I can use a more powerful organizer as a front end to the type of editor
I like.

I wasn't suggesting lots of different diagrams in Thinkcomposer linked by another program, althaugh this is possible and I often work with content spread across several different programs linked together. That's why I like 'Universal Links' (URI links) so much.

What I was saying is that in Thinkcomposer you can make it so that one node links to a different diagram so you can have multiple diagrams in a structure and clicking on the right bit of a node takes you to a different diagram on a different page.

It's a bit like 'Compendium' in that respect.

Thanks for mentioning ThinkComposer -- I've used it for a very long time. It's very powerful for diagraming complex inter-related concepts or processes. The UI is odd and takes a while to figure out.

A similar, slightly more polished and rather pricey product is Southbeach Modeler (http://www.southbeachinc.com/index.html The downside it that Southbeach hasn't been updated in years so it's looking like abandonware, though it still operates on the current release on Windows 10.