Reviews of OneNote vs. other outliners

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 25, 2012 at 06:00 AM

Steve,

I’m posting here a note on XML export as it applies to all outliners and not just Bonsai. Also, because I think it would be useful for others who might have expectations from XML import/export.

XML is a universal format, much like ASCII or CSV. In brief, it includes the following info: hierarchy, fields names and values.

The format is as flexible as can be, to the extent that it provides no limitations or standards in terms of what field names one should use, or what kind of values can be included. Therefore, one outliner may call the tree items “nodes” and another “branches”. One may accept names 256 characters long, and another allow for full paragraphs of text in titles. So outliners are not able to recognise each other’s XML out of the box. Some kind of conversion is required, from one outliner’s XML format to another. For example, I have found tools for converting Freemind XML to Gantt Project XML. In theory one can convert any XML variation to any other, but programming knowledge or an (expensive) special tool will be required.

Some XML formats have become de facto ‘standards’ because of the popularity of the originating software. E.g. Microsoft Project XML can be read and written by a variety of software including Rational Plan, MindView etc. In fact, this goes for all Microsoft Office *x formats (.docx, .xlsx…) which are just XML documents inside a zip container.

In the outliner world, Freemind/Freeplane XML and MindManager XML are variations that quite a few programs and online services can read/write.

There is of course OPML, an XML variation which you will find can be read/written by many programs. The downside is that it includes very limited information.

You can explore any XML document with a program such as Microsoft’s free XML Notepad.