Oh Please

[J. Davis]

Looks like I really started something.

Regarding Brent's retorts:


I said:
"And of course, we haven't even begun to discuss MORE'S presentation
capabilities, such as tree charts, bullet charts and slide shows."

Brent replied with:
"You know, I don't really care about presentation capabilities. I want a
simple, easy to use outliner.  If I wanted a bloated presentation tool, I'd
buy PowerPoint."

My response:
Brendt, within your educational educational environment, don't
you routinely present ideas for collaboration or review? If you buy the
fact that an outline is the foundation of a project, wouldn't it be nice to
easily and quickly present those ideas?
And your implication that you don't want a 'bloated' presentation tool is
very telling. If you knew MORE (sorry, couldn't resist) you'd know that it's
approach to presentations is simply a different way to view outlines, just
like it's Tree function. Bloat? It's bare bones. No fades. No transition
tools. No animations. What bloat? I suspect that you're criticizing a
product that you don't know anything about!

I said:
"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 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."

Brent replied with:
"This is a pretty dumb idea.  The clarity and  simplicity of Omni's products
stems from the use of the AppKit. Further, for them to roll their own
interface kit and more importantly, to maintain it, would mean that OO would
likely be priced in the $100+ range, not the $20 range."

And went on to say:
"...and someone suggests *throwing it away* because they don't think
the system can give a 'rich user interface.'  Oh, please."

My response:
Brent, you'd benefit from your own advice. Just as you admonished Max with
"Read my post more carefully," I suggest you do the same to avoid misquoting
me as a means to further your position. With regards to  Apple's interface,
please show me where I advocated "*throwing it away*". I never said that.

It's clear that you fancy yourself as somewhat of an expert on the AppKit.
Maybe later we'll take your programming bravado for a test drive to see just
how qualified you are to draw conclusions on Mac programming.

But for now let me say that the fluidity of MORE stemmed from it's
non-standard GUI. I feel that the beauty and originality of MORE arises from
it's interface tweaks. For example, the mouse pointer changes as you move it
around the outline, being influenced by the what whatever actions are
available. Normally a solid arrow, it becomes white (an outline) indicating
areas where you can double click to expand or collapse a headline. If the
pointer is gray, it signifies that there are no subheadlines to be expanded.
As you move to the left of the the text, the pointer takes on the form of a
little document icon, indicating where you can double-click to open a new or
existing document window. After a couple minutes of use, these pointers
become provide rapid, essential insight as to the construct of one's
outline, making navigation a snap.
These type of tweaks don't require 'throwing out' the whole toolkit Brent.
What they do require is that developers need to think beyond the box to
embrace what's good and find innovative ways to implement desirable
additions. My goodness, IBM's ViaVoice let's you just talk, and it does the
typing for you! Imagine the constraints they were faced with!

Brent stated:
"MORE had a bevy of small, flat, b&w buttons that were  absolutely
unrecognizable unless you spent time with those hefty manuals you
waxed rhapsodic about.  "Rich user interface?"  Feh."

My response:
What on earth are you referring to? MORE is exceptionally intuitive. And
regarding the 'flat, b&w buttons' you refer to, what's that all about?
ANYONE can learn to use MORE's fundamental features in 2 minutes. And the
greater the outlining requirement, MORE's feature set continues to pass
muster. And incidentally, have you even seen the manuals? I think not.
Criticizing their size is akin to a child picking up a small dictionary to
look up a word, because they think it would be more work to find the word in
a dictionary with more pages. The organization, cross-referencing, writing
clarity and indexing are what matters.

I said:
"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."

Brent replied with:
"Good. Keep running it. If you want a native  version, pester Symantec to
pick it back up.  There are those of us who like  OO's interface pretty much
the way it is, are pretty satisfied with the feature set and look forward to
where the Omni guys are going with it."
...and continued with...
"We don't want a MORE clone...we need OmniOutliner. *You* need MORE. So keep
using it, and let the Omni people do their own thing."

My response:

"We. WE???" Read the threads, Brent--speak for yourself.

Jan M.J. Storms, Sun, 10 Feb 2002 said..."As for the development of
OmniOutliner: definitely match MORE. You can't go wrong with that."

and...

Richard R, Sat, 09 Feb 2002..."I'm inclined to side with folks who want OO
to emulate More almost completely, commands, buttons and all."

and...

max30, Fri Feb  8 20:54:01 "I think that those who know outliners
acknowledge More as the best of breed and worthy of emulation. I don't know
why anyone would take a position against this." "More people need more than
you might imagine."

  
But maybe you're right Brent. Let's not share our ideas. Let's
Not seek out and discuss desirable features for inclusion in this evolving
product-- even if the authors intended this forum for that purpose. Let's
not waste time deconstructing historically important programs like MORE,
ThinkTank, Acta, et.al. That way, none of us will run the risk of suggesting
any more "DUMB IDEAS" as you chose to characterize mine.

Enough of this nonsense. Let us focus on providing the OmniOutliner crew
with meaningful insight and help it to grow into something worthy of its
adoptive lineage.