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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

And I second Chris Murtland's question - I can't figure out how transcluding of the grey text in your sample outline works either.

Welcome; I appreciate your feedback. As long as I'm using CrossLine myself (it takes at least another ten years till retirement) I will do regular maintenance work; new features depend on my need; but since the source code is available everyone can implement features in principle; I'm aware though that using the source is not trivial and takes some time to familiarize.
Concerning button and menu bars: all my applications do without menu and button bars because I want to use all available screen space for information display; when I create a new repository I usually press F11 to even get rid of the window title bar.
Concerning columns: I admit that I missed them a couple of times, but there was always a work around and implementing columns in CrossLine would be a more than linear growth in needed user interface and backend functions; and it would waste screen space due to necessary headers, and screen updates would probably slow down, etc.; that's why I was reluctant to implement them.

cicerosc wrote:

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!

cicerosc wrote:

Two more comments:

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.

No, your're right; I'm sorry CrossLine doesn't support selecting text parts over multiple items; you can either select one or more whole items using the handle section on the left side or you can select text within one item. But you can export an outline to HTML and then make in the browser whatever selection is supported there. I actually implemented my own email client which directly integrates outlines and supports linking email messages from CrossLine; I intend to also open-source this application in near future.

cicerosc wrote:
Two more comments:

>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

I actually had a misconception concerning your question and how it is implmented in Ecco. After trying in Ecco I have to correct my previous response.
Ecco too does not support partial text selection over more than one item. As soon as the mouse cursor leaves the item while dragging the whole previous item is selected, so Ecco silently switches between text and item selection. In contrast to CrossLine Ecco supports arbitrary item selections; this is a bit dangerous because you can do a selection which by itself violates the outline constraints. CrossLine therefore corrects selections so only items of the same level (and thus all items below) are selected. You can Copy/Paste the selection to a text processor and get a corresponding representation of the selected items with tab indentations for subitems.