ndxCards update

The next release of ndxCards will support selecting multiple items.  When multiple items are selected choices for follow on operations after a ‘Cut’ or ‘Copy’ depend on the nature of items selected. If the items selected are not contiguous or do not contain entire branches when contiguous (i.e. some elements are ‘orphaned’ by separating a subset of the elements from the parent ), then the ‘Paste’ operation would not be allowed. Instead a ‘Paste flattened’ option would be allowed, which behaves in a fashion similar to what you describe.  When the selected items are contiguous and there are no ‘orphaned’ items outside the selection, then ‘Paste’, as well as ‘Paste flattened’ choices will be allowed. I hope this explanation was not confusing.
In addition to the multiple selection above, the outlining tool will also have a number of other capabilities not present in the current version. For instance,
There is a ‘Keyboard’ option, which will allow you to type the outline just using the keyboard. Type the heading and when you press enter, automatically a next heading is created below the current one for you to type. If you start that heading with a ‘Tab’ key, then it becomes the child of the previous entry, & if you start it with a ‘Shift/Tab’ then the heading moves left to be a sibling of the parent of the previous item. If you press enter on an empty line, the Keyboard option is cancelled.This allows you to generate an outline quickly before you ‘Drop’ notes on to the outline.
You can change a ‘heading’ into a note - a new note with the heading as the first line will be opened for you to add additional text, and will use the previous note’s subject and card type. Combined with the previous option, ndxCards can combine the benefits of using your research notes, and brainstorming done as part of outlining.
There are tool bar buttons (and drop down menu choices, and keyboard short cuts) for moving an item up/down/left/right. Behavior of these movements depend on where the note is in its hierarchy. For instance, you cannot move an item to the right if it is the first child of its parent.
Outlines will not be separate project files (as they are now). They will be part of ndxCards database. This is to facilitate the use of outlines just as a way to show relationships between note cards & not necessarily use as a pre-cursor to writing or presentations. Of course, you can continue to export them into draft papers, presentations as now.  The change in storage will allow us to add future capabilities for analysis e.g. Asking for a list of ‘related’ notes to a selected note (which will list all the notes that share the same keywords, all the notes that were part of the same outline etc..)
Multiple projects will be opened in the same window separated by tabs. Current version opens separate windows. The change will make it easier to copy/paste between outlines (for instance, you may write several proposals that all share a common section that you wish to reuse- say your capabilities).
The outlining tool will evolve to being part of a ‘work space’ (not for the next release), extending the metaphor of using index cards. You will drop a set of your index cards on to this work space and arrange them as outline, or juxtapose them visually (without having to export the notes to PowerPoint).