Single-pane outliners

Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 18, 2011 at 12:21 AM

I’ve used Natara Bonsai, both on desktop and on my beloved AlphaSmart Dana PalmOS-based keyboard - it’s not bad, but suffers (as some have already remarked) from being over-fussy. I also very much like an application that is, I fear, no longer developed: ThoughtManager, also optimised for AlphaSmart Dana, but a very nice application on PC desktop as well. Although I have to say that Noteliner is significantly superior. UV Outliner is quite nice, but given its relatively sophisticated interface, suffers from lack of image/link support. But I’m hoping it will evolve into something closer to OmniOutliner on the Mac.

Iliumsoft’s ListPro is still developed, although only slowly - I have it on PC desktop and on iPhone, and it really isn’t bad. In fact, I keep all my favourite personal data on it - one of its strengths is the ability to make a spontaneous remote backup at the drop of a hat, something very few outliners support. And the notes now support rich-text formatting, although the process is rather clunky (unlike PhatNotes, ListPro doesn’t have a toolbar). But it’s well-designed, and I regard its deceptive simplicity as a virtue. The iPhone version is really quite clever, with a neat customisable view editor.

It’s not exactly single-pane, but it’s not exactly double-pane either - I’m talking about Zim, which has evolved into a very powerful tool on various platforms (started on Linux, and is now available on Windows and - I think - on Mac). It has some nice features, like wordcounts and easy (wiki-inspired) linking. The only downside is that it’s a Java-based app, and I have to say I don’t generally like Java-based progs. I’ve been playing with InfoQube, but - I’m really sorry, Pierre - I find it almost ridiculously complex and unintuitive. I think the Ecco model has been stretched beyond what it can bear. Having said that, it’s a very impressive technical achievement - just not, I fear, a very enjoyable one.

I hadn’t realised UltraRecall could be used as a single-pane outliner - I’ll definitely take a look at that!

Cheers,
Bill