Re: outliners for win

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 656

Posted by aaces
2000-07-09 09:20:03

Windows outliners:

There are innumerable choices. (I’ve tried well over 50 outliners and PIMs myself.) Most are of tree form, like Win Explorer with a tree on left and notes on right.

Two that are of true outliner form are Inspiration ver. 6 (http://www.inspiration.com) which I use (Ver. 5 has a bug that ver 6. has fixed), and the new PC Outline for Windows which I am testing. Unfortunately, it is quite slow. Also, while it goes a great job of importing small GV files, it chokes on large (e.g. 210 kb) files. Hopefully these difficulties can be fixed, because it has a lot of nice features and great potential.

TreePad is quite nice, but it seems that Henk has stopped developing it. Try Jot+ (http://www.kingstairs.com) instead. The author of Jot+ says he’s working on a major update, but I expect it will be a few months in coming. Jot+ is VERY easy to use…I use it all the time.

Skwyrul is also a possibility. Its author is also working on a major update. It has a lot of nice features, but at the moment is lacking a couple that I need. The secret of its power is in the right mouse button.

I finally broke down and purchased InfoSelect this past Friday, but cannot yet comment on it.

The most powerful PIM that I am aware of, and one which has some outlining capability, is Ecco Pro 4.01. Netmanage owns it, but has stopped all development, although it still supports it and there is a quite active news/support group for it. I picked up my copy for $40 at a computer fair. There are Win 3.1 and Win 95/98 versions with essentially the same functionality.

A couple of new ones that appear promising, but which I haven’t tried yet are:

GoldenSection Organizer v0.97, http://www.tgslabs.com

DataExpress, http://shellfish.hotmail.ru/dexinfo.html

Maple, http://shellfish.hotmail.ru/maplinfo.html

TreeText Outliner, http://www.grange.clara.net/treetext/

Nodez v2.0.4, http://www.loungecoders.com

Outline!
http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/swlib/hotfiles/info.html?fcode=000ZZ0 , or
http://www.ays.softwaredesigner.com/Products/Outline__1_5/outline__1_5.html

As with any software, there is always a chance that something might crash your system…BUT GOOD! I have had such an experience with two outliners (one of which I purchased for about $100). I have NOT named them here, but I cannot say for sure that the ones I have mentioned will work fine on your computer. I can say that I, personally, have not had my system damaged by using Ecco, Inspiration, Jot+, or Skwyrul, all of which I have used a fair bit.

Finally, I should add that I have installed GoBack on my computer ...just in case something does do damage.

-Steve C

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