Suggestions for development of cross-platform Linux Outliner Note-taking software

Posted by Chris Thompson
Sep 12, 2009 at 10:14 PM

You can run Grandview and PCoutline in your favorite DOS emulator or virtual machine. Someone in this thread already posted a link to how to do this for Grandview. If you hunt around online, you can find both programs. IMHO only Grandview is worth looking at. PCoutline is primitive.

Grandview doesn’t offer much over what ECCO offers. It was one of the major inspirations for ECCO. The only things of significance that were in GV but not ECCO were a view that allowed you to collapse your outline into a linear text (similar to switching from outline view in Microsoft Word to one of the writing views) and macro programming.

Also, since you’re on Linux, you absolutely *MUST* take a look at “org-mode” for Emacs. Despite the innocuous name, org-mode is a serious piece of work. It has columnar and PIM features like ECCO and InfoQube along with a whole set of other features that you don’t find in those programs. In some sense it is close to a hybrid between Ecco and OneNote, but without the graphical emphasis of the latter. I can’t over-emphasize how good org-mode is (and how unfortunate that it’s trapped within Emacs).

I also reiterate the comments of some other posters about the importance of mobile access. For this reason, you should take a look at structured wiki software like TWiki (don’t confuse this with the simple “Tiddly Wiki”). The good structured wikis are essentially like OneNote but with better calendaring/PIM features and less good text editing features. Once you have a smartphone with a proper interface (and we all will within the next 2-3 years, if we don’t have them now), you become reluctant to use PIM software that can’t interact with your phone. I want to be able to snap a picture of something on the go and have it appear in my PIM system, and I want to be able to have all my travel documents that I stored on my computer available on my phone. As software, Evernote is quite primitive, but they do have this right.

—Chris

Carrot wrote:
>Hello!
>Thanks to everyone for your comments. Our group will meet soon to discuss some
>of them
> >I have read many glowing reports about Grandview or PCoutline. Is there a way
>to still run this software so I can test it? I had trouble learning much about it.
>Reading how it works is not the same as trying it.
> >What did these applications offer
>that EccoPro does not offer? Or, better yet, what did they offer that InfoQube does not
>offer?
> >No need to apologize for seeming to sound negative. You are being realistic
>and if we were smart, we’d probably not go ahead with this project.
>We are not going to
>try to compete with Evernote. That’s impossible. Personally, I greatly dislike
>‘cloud’ software and the idea of putting my data on someone else’s server. There
>appear to be many smaller developers out there apparently satisfied with their
>smallish base of customers.
> >We have are mainly interested in making something for
>Linux that will also operate on other operating systems. And it will be open source—a
>drawing point that tends to attract quite a bit of support. Unlike the big players,
>we’re not in it for the money.
> >I’ll greatly look forward to all suggestions and
>comments!
> >
> >