Thoughts on Ecco in light of recent events

Posted by Hugh
Nov 8, 2008 at 11:07 AM

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

>The Mac world makes having different views of your PIM data easier—as many
>programs integrate with the Apple calendar application, iCal. In Circus Ponies
>Notebook you build outlines, any item of which can be a task, which can be sync’d to
>iCal, for instance. But even in Macs, having customizable columnar data is not
>common. I’m sure there are other choices, but the only one I’m aware of off the top of my
>head is OmniOutliner, but that doesn’t have a calendar application.
> >Steve Z.

Steve

Just to add TAO Outliner, which like OmniOutliner does customisable columns but also does clones and other functionality that OO doesn’t yet: http://artec-software.com/products/neo/en_index.html.

Not to be confused with a Windows application with a similar name.

It’s easy to be critical of TAO (the UI for one is very far from from straightforward, development seems to be sporadic at best and I’ve suffered the odd freeze, though never lost any data), but once you’ve figured it out it’s very versatile. I’ve recently used it successfully to plan a book in a way that would probably have been less easy if not impossible with OO.

I hope OO 4 will provide a step forward - soon. But I’m led to believe TAO already approaches the sorts of levels of functionality possessed by old-style outliners like More and Grandview that I’m too much of an upstart to remember!