My top requests for OmniOutliner Pro > 3.0

[Andrew Abernathy]

On Jan 13, 2005, at 4:44 PM, Brian C. wrote:

> In discussions I've had with the engineers, the fastest route to 
> solving this [...]
>
> Now, of course if anything I just said is factually incorrect, 
> mistaken, or signs of impending dementia, I'm sure Tim or Andrew will 
> hop on and gently correct me. =)

Gently, my foot! You flew past impending dementia long before I met you.

Actually, I'm uncomfortable speculating publicly about what features we 
might add in future releases or how we might add them, except in the 
most general of terms. (There may be exceptions, but this isn't one of 
them). Especially given that we are unlikely to make substantial 
changes in the short term, I really want to try to distill the needs, 
provide the best help given the current state of the app, and to take 
what we learn from that to help prioritize and design future features 
or fixes. (And assure people that we take their requests seriously, 
which we do.)


Kathi, you may have already done this, but if not, please write up some 
specifics and send it to the feedback address (available via the Help 
menu; this is primarily handled by James, so apologies if you've 
already gone through this and I'm simply unaware of it). Make sure to 
include details on exactly what you're trying to accomplish. (You just 
need to see how many are left? View all at the same time, grouped 
together? Select all of them? Just highlight all of them? Rotate 
through them?) Everything to that address gets attention, and most 
everything gets tracked, unlike much of the discussion in this list, 
which is often too freeform to readily track (although much of it does 
get tracked as well, sometimes by less formal methods).

That's not to say that you shouldn't also discuss it here - it's 
obviously valuable to be able to solicit community help, and to get 
some sense of how many others are struggling with the same things you 
are. But in terms of helping us prioritize our future work and so 
forth, it's very helpful for focused requests to go to the feedback 
address.

And I don't want it to sound like we haven't paid this any attention 
previously - we have, especially given that OmniOutliner is sometimes 
used as a project manager. But the work that went into version 3 was 
largely prioritized by and guided by user feedback, and we were unable 
to get in several features that would probably have alleviated this 
situation (at a minimum), because other features had vastly more 
customer demand. That feedback will continue to be a primary factor in 
future demand.


Now, of course if anything I just said is factually incorrect, 
mistaken, or signs of impending dementia, I'm sure Tim will hop on and 
gently correct me. =)

-andrew