A look back at the old outliners

Posted by Foolness
Sep 18, 2012 at 02:27 AM

Thanks for the Treesheets info. I actually haven’t downloaded the Linux version as soon as I saw it was in tar.

Don’t sell your list short Pierre, it may not be updated but it’s still the most comprehensive link out there. If you edit it today, you probably only need to add 10 or so items. This is the first time I’ve actually seen it actually but skimming through it, you’ve got all the unique one of a kind software that future one of a kind developers could do well to study.

You’ve got my favorite software in there.

You’ve got GemX which is still lacking a clear alternative despite having a successful well praised model in it’s heyday.

You’ve got Jarte with it’s Auto-Outline + Wordpad that’s also missing: http://www.jarte.com/help_new/creating_outlines.html

In terms of old software, I could really count 1-2 names missing in that list and the biggest name missing there is your own InfoQube.

As far as why RedNotebook is more powerful, much of it’s reputation actually comes from how blogs like this accepted it’s reception:

http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/11/rednotebook-versus-evernote.html
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rednotebook-rocks-fullfeatured-private-journal-tool/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/rednotebook—advanced-diary-keeping

It’s probably the first modern non-Linux user praised (well not all Linux users) Linux software that had a name that made sense to casual users. An interface that was unanimously hyped by authors as if it was a Windows freeware. It’s still relative but it has the reputation for one of the more well polished Linux software out there and when it comes to Linux, that’s as much a win on usability as it is on features. After all a software is not just there to be powerful, it’s there to be used. In that area, RedNotebook’s inclusion of a clear calendar pushes it ahead of Outwiker in terms of power. Albeit as mentioned, it’s really not an apples and apples comparison as RedNotebook is supposed to be a journal but it captured something that Linux outliners are solely missing: that Apple usability design concept where people just get it. Of course it might be worth mentioning that I’m not one of those. I could barely understand the program much less type something on it but I’m not much of a journal user.