Back-to-Basic feature suggestions

[Nathan Kelley]

To OmniOutliner Users <omnioutliner-users at omnigroup.com>,

I should start by saying that I have never used MORE. However, since at 
least half the messages on this list in recent times reference it, and 
most of those references are glowing, I'll assume that it is a great 
application that has many useful features.

> From: "J. Davis" <joel at proofrunner.com>,

> With all that being said, and seemingly universal acknowledgement that 
> MORE is THE standard, why waste time soliciting suggestions on features 
> to implement in OmniOutliner?

One mans' bread-and-butter is another mans' 800KB of free disk space. 
How can OmniGroup know what to implement if they don't listen to their 
user base?

> As far as I see it, there are only four issues to consider regarding 
> further development of OmniOutliner.  1.) Inventory MORE's features 
>  2.) create your own outline interface that mimics MORE's that of MORE, 
> and 3.) do so by liberating yourself from Apple’s Application Kit 
> framework. You simply can't expect to provide MORE’S rich user 
> interface using standard-issue Application Kit interface widgets.

We would effectively have a MORE clone, and one that didn't conform to 
Aqua UI Guidelines, at that. Aside from legal issues, what compelling 
reason would there be to use OmniOutliner, apart from the fact of it 
being MacOS X native? And what is it about Aqua interface elements that 
are unsuitable to building a similar interface?

> As food for thought, I leave you with the System Requirements of MORE 
> II:
> A Mac Plus, SE or II;   1 MB of  RAM;  one 800K floppy drive and a hard 
> disk; and System 4.1 or higher...amazing. And FOURTEEN YEARS LATER on 
> my 670MHZ Titanium sporting 1GB of RAM and 40GB hard drive I’m still 
> running MORE in Classic mode. Because nothing comes even close.

The OmniOutliner 1.2 package is around 2.8MB on disk. It appears to take 
around 5MB with no outlines loaded - certainly small and efficient by 
today's standards, given the computers that run MacOS X. Perhaps 
OmniOutliner will be in use fourteen years from now - it certainly 
deserves the chance.

> Why try to get creative on the basics when what already exists works 
> perfectly? Use MORE's excellent, proven interface as a start, THEN look 
> to adding new features such as columns. We don’t need another “ToDo” 
> app. We don’t need Word’s oblique approach to outlining. WE NEED 
> MORE!!!!

OmniOutliner is already more advanced that other "to do" applications 
(such as Simple To Do) and Word's outline view.

> I will be very curious to see what other discussion group members think 
> of this approach.

I believe OmniOutliner should evolve along its' own path. It may have 
started out as "bring MORE to MacOS X", but a number of the suggestions 
on this list have included requests for features which likely never 
existed in MORE. I think OmniOutliner will end up as useful, but 
different. Different is good :-)

Cheers, Nathan.
________________________________________________
Nathan "Phyax" Kelley

    email | phyax at runbox.com, phyax at mac.com
      icq | 4618849
    yahoo | phyax
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