Other outliners

[Stephen Chakwin]

There's been some discussion in the Tidbits discussion forums -- you can see
them at www.tidbits.com.  The issue of a "super-outliner" -- something that
means different things to different people -- is alive there and there have
been some vigorous exchanges.

For me, it means something that goes beyond the fine realization of a
standard outliner with some enhancements that OO presents.  I want something
that will allow sophisticated and simultaneous classification and reordering
of information the way that the old Lotus Adenda, an eerily intelligent DOS
program, did.  Some outliners and quasi-outliners have tried some forms of
tagging of bits of information, but so far nobody's gotten it to the point
where it convinces me.  My inner jury is still out on Tinderbox, which seems
to have much of Agenda's complexity and learning difficulty, but may or may
not have enough of Agenda's power to make the investment of time and
attention worth it.

Other people want more web-oriented or graphic-oriented attributes or more
programmable things.  There's a lot of interest, but the killer
"super-outliner" doesn't seem to be there yet.  Meanwhile, OO is a fine
product, slowly catching up in features to More and perhaps even More's DOS
cousin, Grand View, which had its own toolchest.  Also OO has its own
scripting and display capacities which seem to me beyond what the older
products could do.  Perhaps OO can evolve into the super-outliner we're
looking for, but I don't know if enough of us agree on what the One would be
for this to be possible.

Stephen Chakwin