A useful property of 2-pane PIMs

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Feb 18, 2008 at 08:22 PM

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>But, as you said, Alex, some are better at this than others… so what’s the secret?
>And are two-pane outliners the best at this? That is, does the outline structure add
>functionality to browsing or hinder it?

What personally attracted me to 2-pane outliners (something I realised after using the software for quite some time) is the ability to combine a view of the structure (outline tree) with a view of the detail (info or note or detail pane, whatever one calls it). In theory, mind maps and concept maps are better at presenting the overall structure, however I find that the relevant software is vastly inefficient in its use of space (I have not as yet tried a dual monitor setup, with the map on the left and the detail on the right, but having the average male’s limited peripheral vision I believe that it would be hopeless).

>I am recalling HyperInfo (or whatever the name of that now defunct
>software was), which had an outline view, but also had an Index view… so that you
>could see your outline flattened with headings arranged alphabetically. I think
>that would facilitate serendipitous browsing.

You are refering to Hyperclip, which I shortsightedly chose over UltraRecall back in 2004, only to find the developer disappearing sometime later. The ‘flat’ view was one of my favourites but only for its sorting capability, i.e. I could view all priority items straight away, no matter where they were in the outline.

>In fact, here’s a feature I would
>like to see: A view listing all items in all open databases, flattened and arranged
>alphabetically—or by whatever method of sorting you like. That would be a powerful
>feature, I think.

I think that more or less any outliner having a database as its underlying mechanism could do this. IDEA! has this as its default view, i.e. all records are shown in a spreadsheet-like table and can be sorted by any field; they can also be filtered at will by the outline folders, as well as appearing in their respective positions on the actual tree. In Zoot one could keep all entries in one folder and group them in ‘smart’/virtual folders rather than regular ones. In UltraRecall one can create a generic search and all items will be listed in the search results table.

alx