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CrossLine - an outliner with cross-link capabilities in the tradition of Ecco Pro
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Posted by Rochus
Nov 4, 2018 at 01:14 AM
In case you are interested: I open-sourced an outliner tool which I developed as a byproduct of my consulting work during the last ten years. You can download the source from here: https://github.com/rochus-keller/CrossLine. There are pre-compiled binaries for Windows and Linux as well as a demo repository containing some documentation.
Posted by Chris Murtland
Nov 4, 2018 at 04:57 AM
Hi, and welcome to the forum.
I started playing around with CrossLine, and like it so far. One question: how do you transclude or show an item from one outline in another outline? I see how to link to an item, but I am talking about the grey alias items you have in your demo database.
Also, it would be great if there were a keyboard shortcut to expand/collapse the current item.
Posted by cicerosc
Nov 4, 2018 at 11:18 AM
Wow this is great! Thank you! This is one of the best implementations of an outline-focused Ecco alternative I have ever seen. I hope you will continue developing or that someone else will fork. Would be nice to have some type of button bar. No doubt columns would be much harder to implement, but even as is this looks like a great outliner. Thank you again!
Posted by cicerosc
Nov 4, 2018 at 12:02 PM
Two more comments:
1) The search box and the way it provides a clickable list of hits is outstanding!
2) I don’t see a way to select and then copy/paste text across multiple items. Unless I am missing something you can drag to select text within ONE item, or you can select multiple items by clicking on their outline number (but only to a limited degree within one top-level header), but you can’t freely start in the middle of one item and drag the cursor across multiple items to select only the exact text you want, as you can in Ecco. Hopefully I am missing something there as the ability to cut and paste sections of an outline into emails and other programs is something I use a lot.
But again I can’t praise what I am seeing highly enough!
Posted by Rochus
Nov 4, 2018 at 12:02 PM
Hi Chris, thanks.
Concerning your question: if the outline is in the same repository, CrossLine supports live transclusion, i.e. the transcluded items immediately update when the source is changed; if the outline is in a different repository, the item is pasted as a static link, i.e. the text is pasted and doesn’t change unless you manually change it (CTRL+SHIFT+L). Live transclusion links have a blue background color while static links have normal background, blue font and are underlined. Note that there are two ways of transcluding: either as alias items or inlined items. You can create the former by selecting one or more items, then clicking on the handle of the item under which you want the alias, then CTRL+SHIFT+V; the latter are simply created instead by pasting into the text of another item.
Best, R.
Chris Murtland wrote:
Hi, and welcome to the forum.
>
>I started playing around with CrossLine, and like it so far. One
>question: how do you transclude or show an item from one outline in
>another outline? I see how to link to an item, but I am talking about
>the grey alias items you have in your demo database.
>
>Also, it would be great if there were a keyboard shortcut to
>expand/collapse the current item.