Plain Text (as in .TXT) Outliner?

Posted by steveylang
Mar 18, 2013 at 11:33 PM

Well, that makes 2 of us so there must be a market for it, right? ;-)

Not only are we looking for the same outliner, we’ve tried much of the same software too. I own licenses for TaskPaper and TodoPaper (I got both on sale so the prices were better.) I used them for awhile for task management, but they didn’t suit me as an outliner. FoldingText folds, but doesn’t seem to be able to create proper outlines. But they are both based on the idea of using simple text files as the file format.

There are a few lightweight outliners that I like on both platforms- Tree for Mac, and Noteliner and UV Outliner for Windows. The keyboard interface for Tree is done well even if you don’t use it’s unique horizontal view. To be able to navigate/expand/contract/promote/demote items in plain text files in a similar manner would seem ideal. Bonus points for folder navigation, hoisting, etc. You could even have styles based on hierarchy level for example, since no underlying formatting of content is necessary.

@Arnold- thanks for the emacs suggestion. That’s probably a bit beyond what I want to take on, but will take a look.