most facile outliner

Posted by Wolfgang
Apr 15, 2012 at 12:45 AM

I have used single pane outliners on the Mac(Omni, tree, and I forget how many) and for a variety of reasons have come back to Windows. Actually the reasons is Lion, but also much of the scientific software I use is only available on Windows. I have also used and crimped a huge number of outliners in Windows including inspiration, InfoSelect, and many more.
As I am an academic scientist, I need to collaborate and there is no going away from Microsoft Word. Scrivener is nice but it does not allow in situ use of endnote or of the reference managers. There has been one light, unbelievably flexible, OPML aware outliner which had used for years and which now has somehow gone down the gurgler. Brainstorm SW was the perfect tool for crunching text and ideas. I have no idea what has happened to this. To forestall possible substitutions connected text does not do the same job, it is too complicated, and does not deal with plain text in the same totally OPML hierarchical way that brainstorm SW did. Furthermore namesakes were an amazingly useful way to see things in a multidimensional way if you’re crunching a lot of ideas. It seems to me that people who previously liked this program of all of sudden decided that as in the pictures of unsuccessful members of the politburo the 2 progressive inventors of the program and their program has been erased. I could not make sense of all of has since claimed ownership of the program; but surely the work of the original authors and their progressive and super useful program ought not to be wiped from the memories and brain cells of us working academic writers.
The silence and wiping out of from history what was and still is software way ahead of its time is a little disquieting. Perhaps modern writers do not need a simple yet superpowerful outliner-I have no idea but I miss this program very much-and it used to play nice with Microsoft Word.
Am I the only one who misses brainstorm SW, or is it verboten to ask this question? As far as I know there is nothing on the market as good as this. The other new single pane outliners do not have a facility to catch clipboard text nor any of the other super features. I think maybe the program was too simple and powerful for anyone to actually like it. Is there any hope that the 2 wonderful programmers to make this program could come back or that there could be some future for something which in my book was better in the early 90s that anything available on any platform today.
Anyway, just wishful pathetic hope for the continuation of another good software seems to have gone that was so super super useful and which other academics aside from me used to rely on.