Zavala - An open source outliner for Macs, iPads, and iPhones

Posted by Maurice Parker
Nov 14, 2021 at 06:36 PM

On a different topic…

I’ve been thinking about the Focus command that lots of outliners seem to have. I’m hesitant to implement it in Zavala because I haven’t had anyone ask why I haven’t yet. Besides, my outline editor context menu is almost too long as it is, which is where the Focus command would logically go. I can see that you might find part of your outline something that you want to focus on, but just zooming in on that row the best solution these days?

As an alternative, I am thinking about making an Extract command. If you “Extracted” a row, it would create a new outline with the row as the title of the new outline and any decedent rows as rows in the new outline. In its place would be a row with the title of the new outline linked to the new outline.

I think this has more utility than the Focus command and would be useful for creating knowledge graphs instead of just large outlines. It would add to the editor context menu, but I think it might be worth adding another item if it packs enough punch.

If I implemented the Extract command, does anyone think I would still need the Focus command?