Strange to be looking for something so basic, but it's still hard to find an excellent one-pane outliner with deep levels.

It seems Inspiration 9 is the only real alternative for book-length writing. Am I wrong?

Org mode is what I use but that's quite a rabbit hole and will require some setup and learing. Dynalist and Workflowy are fantastic one pane outliners, but if you are actually trying to draft rather than just outline, they are not recommended. Most good outliners for writing are two pane like Scrivener.

Honestly the best one paner for writing I can think of is MS word in outline mode (which is actually pretty solid). However, I don't have a mac and mac has a ton of apps for writing.

Word has an OK outliner, but I want more than the 9 levels Word affords.

You've been commenting about this type of outliner for maybe 15 years Stephen, so you're probably aware of the best current alternatives - especially if you read this forum!

Hello Stephen.

When you ask for a one-pane outliner, I'd also recommend Word 2013 or 2016 for Windows (can't speak about the MacOS version as I don't use it). I wasn't aware of the fact that Word only supports 9 levels - the maximimum I needed for my non-fiction books was 5 levels.

Have you tried Inspiration 9 recently? When I installed it on 2 Windows 10 machines a few months ago, it wouldn't load.

Hi Stephen,

I have never actually needed more than nine levels _for writing_, but MS Word's arbitrary limitation has nevertheless been a reason for my looking elsewhere for 'real' outliners.

My own tool of choice for long and complex documents is Silva Elm Sense, about which I've written here in the past, e.g. https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3909/0/sense-editor-recent-updates

It's Windows only, and I hesitate to propose it if you needed it soon, as there is currently an issue with its purchasing; see it here in the words of its developer, Dave Ewins https://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/31978

I'm using a temporary build provided by Dave, which implements the new licensing scheme he mentions, but I assume that this only works for existing license holders.

That said, I believe that Sense is in a league of its own as a tool for developing and working on structured texts.


Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Strange to be looking for something so basic, but it's still hard to
find an excellent one-pane outliner with deep levels.

It seems Inspiration 9 is the only real alternative for book-length
writing. Am I wrong?

OmniOutliner for iOS picked up some glitches in an update a few weeks ago, but they were promptly fixed. It can work in either one or two pane mode.

I’d prefer a plain text outliner, but OO works. At present, I need to move between my iPad on my Macs. DEVONthink is working well as a sync vehicle, OmniOutliner for per-project to-do lists as well as outlines, and Ulysses for writing.

Those apps cover what I need and work pretty much the same on iOS and Mac systems. DEVONthink is nice for syncing because the DEVONthink dadtabases become just another browseable location.

Anyway, I've heard OmniOutliner criticized for being behind the times, and it doesn’t support tags. OmniFocus, which I’m addicted to, is much more evolved. On the other hand, OO works well.

By “another browseable location”, I meant on my iPad where apps, the ipad’s file system, and syncing don’t always prove a good mutual fit. DEVONthink makes syncing simpler, and, of course, does a whole lot more.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Strange to be looking for something so basic, but it's still hard to
find an excellent one-pane outliner with deep levels.

It seems Inspiration 9 is the only real alternative for book-length
writing. Am I wrong?

Dealing with a book-length manuscript in a single-pane outliner is likely to be awkward, unless there are ways to zoom in / hoist.

You could check out Frank's book on how to write a book in WorkFlowy (which does have zoom, and I believe he had some other bolt-ons such as CSS scripts and various browser extensions to enhance the experience).

And then there are the old options, some which might be still on sale (Outline 4D), while others might not be that easy to get hold of (I'm thinking of the first version of SmartDown).

UV Outliner is a one-pane outliner which is free, offers rich text, styles and has multi-column support. It reminds of a modern GrandView for Windows

http://uvoutliner.com/

I'll definitely check it out. As to levels, the Word outline mode is basically for organizing headings, and it's hard to imagine needing nine heading levels. Six may indeed be the limit.

Thanks, but I should have stated I need a Windows program.

I wouldn't have expected UV Outliner as a contender, which it is now.

I had no problems installing Inspiration 9 yesterday. (Windows 10 Home system.)

I'm trying to figure out why nobody has agreed with my first impression that Inspiration 9 is (sadly) the best choice, at least on Windows. Is it because the aesthetics are awful? (Bad enough to make me hesitate.) Or is it because the keyboard commands are so arcane? (Another thing that bothers me.)

I wonder how stable it is for long documents. Your technical problem makes me worry that there are others.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

Thanks, but I should have stated I need a Windows program.

Have you considered InfoQube ? It provides for an excellent writing environment, as Paul J. Miller recently wrote on his blog:

https://pauljmiller.wordpress.com/2018/10/23/a-comparative-review-of-four-note-taking-programs/

Pierre
IQ Designer

I haven't found any provision for a distinction between headings and text. Did I miss it?

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
> Thanks, but I should have stated I need a Windows program.

Have you considered InfoQube ? It provides for an excellent writing
environment, as Paul J. Miller recently wrote on his blog:

https://pauljmiller.wordpress.com/2018/10/23/a-comparative-review-of-four-note-taking-programs/

Pierre
IQ Designer

Franz,

I think I may see what you're saying re installation problems with Inspiration 9.24. It seems not to install in the start menu! That means that you can't find it by typing Insp...

I reinstalled and retained the desktop icon. Discouraging to find such an obvious bug in such a mature product. Another annoying bug (or lack of an obvious feature) is that setting default styles has no effect on the outliner--only on the diagram.

But the outliner is full-featured unless you're interested in columns, which I'm not.

Franz Grieser wrote:

Hello Stephen.

When you ask for a one-pane outliner, I'd also recommend Word 2013 or
2016 for Windows (can't speak about the MacOS version as I don't use
it). I wasn't aware of the fact that Word only supports 9 levels - the
maximimum I needed for my non-fiction books was 5 levels.

Have you tried Inspiration 9 recently? When I installed it on 2 Windows
10 machines a few months ago, it wouldn't load.

The Sense Editor is the most intriguing product I've seen in a long time. I'm reluctant to get into it because I'm not sure I can ever buy it. (My credit card now doesn't work internationally. When did that bs start?)

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Hi Stephen,

I have never actually needed more than nine levels _for writing_, but MS
Word's arbitrary limitation has nevertheless been a reason for my
looking elsewhere for 'real' outliners.

My own tool of choice for long and complex documents is Silva Elm Sense,
about which I've written here in the past, e.g.
https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3909/0/sense-editor-recent-updates

It's Windows only, and I hesitate to propose it if you needed it soon,
as there is currently an issue with its purchasing; see it here in the
words of its developer, Dave Ewins
https://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/31978

I'm using a temporary build provided by Dave, which implements the new
licensing scheme he mentions, but I assume that this only works for
existing license holders.

That said, I believe that Sense is in a league of its own as a tool for
developing and working on structured texts.


Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
Strange to be looking for something so basic, but it's still hard to
>find an excellent one-pane outliner with deep levels.
>
>It seems Inspiration 9 is the only real alternative for book-length
>writing. Am I wrong?

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

I haven't found any provision for a distinction between headings and text. Did I miss it?

Hi Stephen,

I'll write some documentation on how it works. I've been meaning to write it for quite some some, so it is a good thing you ask.

(hint: it uses outline styles with or without the use of the Doc pane, your choice)

Pierre

(OT: How about going from https back to http, in order to spare users endless clicking for exceptional permissions, for every single page here? FF-only problem? Persists for a month or so now.)

It's beyond me why somebody who wants to write a text of 100 pages or much more (for publication) would want to insist on doing so within a ONE-pane outliner, really; since the 2-pane paradigm becomes of even more value with every single page you'll write beyond 20 pages or so...

Fact is, ALL outliners /1/2/3-pane) are bad for mathematical and other formulas; if you need them, you'll need a traditional text processor, Word, WordPerfect, that German offering (free/paid), that OpenThing offering (free) and its spin-off (can't remember all those names), or then, that outrageously expensive XyWriter spinoff - which may be the very best solution after all.

Fact is, if you need intralinks, you'll probably prefer one of the aforementioned "classics", since intralinks in outliners are either not even available (all (?) 1-pane outliners?) or not exportable then (some 2-pane outliners): Sometimes (e.g. in UR) links from within one item to another item (in its entirety) are available, MI being the only one to my knowledge which lets you do links to text passages (paragraphs, etc.) within the source item - non-exportable, as said.

So for this reason alone, you will probably prefer one of the aforementioned "classics" (?), their respective "outlining" quality / ease-of-use possibly determining your choice among them; in any case, you should try out their respective intralink exportability first, and perhaps also their respective ease of creating, and of changing/shifting (!), those links (target, source).

But I've said this here, some years ago: It's perfectly possible to create pseudo-links within any (even plain) text, by e.g. using
£nBegin of your source/"target" paragraph anywhere.
and
Some text and then the link(#n), ...,
the "(#n)" before export to some DTP tool (e.g. Quark Express, FrameMaker, InDesign) to be resolved into something like "(see page n)", and then the DTP tool resolving the "#n" into the real page number and deleting the "£n" - according to the DTP tool which will come into play, you probably must re-arrange the codes in some way, in order for them to be duly processable; refer to the respective manuals.

Ditto for footnotes and for pictures (or even formulas), of course, e.g. by "(#fn)", "(#pn)" or similar; put pics and formulas all into the same sub-folder, the DTP tool will handle them as expected.

Of course, and since no outliner comes with such functionality, you must either print out a range for n = 1...1000 or whatever you'll need (the end-")" giving the clue as to the number of digits, or you do a range 0001...1000 for fixed length), e.g. per excel (i.e. no need to write down all these numbers by hand), and then you must cross out any used number (when in doubt, just skip it since just doubles will be a problem, gaps will not), or you must create a little AHK/AutoIt macro (which I did, and) which counts the numbers for you, and even stores the current number in an .ini file, for counting from there within the next session: 1-key for "new link" (or similar), i.e. for "(#programmatically-attributed-number)", and then your macro tool will lock your keyboard, except for the navigation and "enter", and the "enter" key will then insert the same number before the source (i.e. link target) paragraph, together with the leading £; Brits could use the Yen character instead.

The irony here being that even MS Word's intralinking is so awkward that even the manual procedure described above will be preferable to it.

Then, the only disadvantage of a 2-pane outliner is toggling between tree and text/content; that should be possible by the tab-key, and thus the tab-key isn't available anymore for inserting a tab; on the other hand, in most manuscripts for books and the like, you would use tabs quite rarely if at all (and then, they would be available by shift-tab or something).

If you use a 2-pane outliner correctly, you will not need title formats: Just like in the 1-pane variety, it's the indentation level which will correctly be processed by the DTP tool (if the outliner correctly "exports" it all, putting the respective number of tabs before the titles), and that implies that you will create new sub-titles within the tree, instead of creating them within the text (which would create "format" problems in many 2-pane outliners, and not really be very clear in most 1-pane outliners, anyway, let alone the ease of shuffling text parts around in the 2-pane variety, or the geniality of having the (relevant part of the) table of contents available concurrently to the current content: not just one paragraph, but everything which is enclosed within the current sub-title).

The neatness of a 1,000-page manuscript within a 2-pane outliner (with perhaps 500 to 1500, even 1800 tree entries) is incomparably better than whatever you could try with it within a 1-pane outliner, be that "the real thing" or not: I think functionality should prevail, but that's just me.

(Indented paragraphs (! ie text parts within a sub-title) could be marked "up" (or was it "down"?) by a leading "#i", even additionally to the indendation seen on screen but which may, or may not, faithfully exportable to DTP; boldening and italicising would be transferred without any trouble: no need to dive into mark-up (or was it mark-down?) excesses. You could also have pic "previews" within the text, together with the above-mentioned, exportable links to the "original" photos/tables/whatever, with (much) higher resolution: just put a "#d" before each such "work illustration", indicator for "to be (automatically) deleted". Beware of 2-pane outliners which come without "global replace" if you want to experiment with such codes even later, i.e. without sufficient preparatory work.)

This being said, it's obvious that a well-used good 2-pane outliner excels if you don't have too many formulas, for one, and if there will be use of a professional DTP tool before publication: If the end product is to be formatted within MS Word, forget it: Then, you'll need Word for the redaction work, too.

But using 1-pane outliners for heavy work is beyond me.

"the real thing" = to some, only 1-pane outliners are outliners: so what?; German tool: TextMaker/SoftMaker, Word clones: LibreOffice and that Oracle thing, XyWriter spinoff: Nota Bene. (I'm Windows only.)

Speaking of Nota Bene, Papyrus should be mentioned, too. (I don't know either of them personally, but both strive to help with serious writing, but NB seems to do it in some convoluted ways, here and there, judging from the pics on "See what's new in Nota Bene 12": frightening! Such a fuss, for re-organizational tasks which would be utterly simple in any good 2-pane outliner...)

@Stephen: There seems to be confusion about what you are really looking for. Is it a "simple" outlining tool (such as Inspiration, UV Outliner) or a full-featured writing environment (Word, Scrivener, Sente).

Re Inspiration: Installation simply did not finish correctly. There is an Insp9IE.exe on my hard drive but it won't start.

Have you looked at Lyx? Not exactly an outliner, but designed for books, based on structured text.

Franz is quite right. And of course you can turn Scrivener into a simple one-pane outliner if you want to (using the appropriate Workspace setup). But with all the bells and whistles in the background if you should need them...

Franz Grieser wrote:

@Stephen: There seems to be confusion about what you are really looking
for. Is it a "simple" outlining tool (such as Inspiration, UV Outliner)
or a full-featured writing environment (Word, Scrivener, Sente).

Re Inspiration: Installation simply did not finish correctly. There is
an Insp9IE.exe on my hard drive but it won't start.