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Hierarchical outliner with the most complete writing tools?
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jun 14, 2009 at 10:19 AM
Hi Derek,
Since your interest is in structirng your writing more than collecting/organising information, I suggest that you take a look at the following two applications (I hope your CRIMP will not object to the first one being free :-)
Chapter by Chapter: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.berthet/cbc/index.html
Page Four: http://www.softwareforwriting.com discussed here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1064
In addition, the following threads extensively discussing writer software may be of interest; you’ll find many more programs mentioned there:
Scrivener-like outliner for Windows? http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1074
Fiction vs. Nonfiction writing/software http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/842
Research Writing Software http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/928
Cheers and welcome to the wonderful and never-ending world of outlining
Alexander
Posted by clacha
Jun 14, 2009 at 10:49 AM
Hello,
You may have a look on Scenari (http://scenari-platform.org/projects/scenari/en/pres/co/)
It is used by many public services as a powerfull authoring tool and is now also used by several banks.
Regards
Posted by CRC
Jun 14, 2009 at 01:11 PM
Hi Folks:
I’m going to flog one of my favorite topics, Styles. All of the outliners I have ever used (and I’ve used many) that have a way to transfer information to Word do not use styles. Some, like the former IdeaMason use headline style, but none of them style paragraphs and characters. They all use the lazy approach of just sending over the rich text.
The closest I’ve found for a style based editor is LyX which is TeX based.
The bottom line is that combining the structure of an outliner (I actually use each outline entry as a paragraph, or bullet item, or numbered list item, etc.) along with paragraph and character styles which result in a document that, when transferred to Word, can still be edited in a reasonable fashion (necessary when collaborating on documents) would be the ideal for me. I’ve built some of my own tools in this space (with something like NoteMap as the base - and when the outline item is just a paragraph you don’t have the overflow problem described above - and my own text based coding scheme), but having real tools that are outline and style based would be my holy grail.
Thanks.
Charles
Posted by Rael Bauer
Jun 14, 2009 at 02:02 PM
You may also want to take a look at RightNote (http://www.bauerapps.com) - 2 pane outliner based on freeware program KeyNote.
As a writer you may be interested in the predefined styles, predefined paragraph styles, text color and background color palettes features.
Regards
Rael Bauer
Posted by Jan Rifkinson
Jun 14, 2009 at 02:36 PM
Derek Cater wrote:
> [snip] My question is, are there other
>hierarchical outliners that major on writing tools (fonts, formatting, bullets,
>etc.) that I should be considering? I do not need the ability to link to external
>documents and do not need fancy PIM tools (I have Mindsystems Amode for that - a
>wonderful programme, IMHO). Export to Word would be an advantage but, failing that,
>copy and paste would suffice. [/snip]
Derek,
I write articles quite frequently—but not 50-100 pages in length.
I do this work within InfoQube & here’s why:
Within IQ,
I can clip or link to bits & pieces of research data from virtually any source
I can order these bits & re-order many times, in multiple places in the outliner
I can write suggested paragraphs in the html window for each of these notes
I can keep track of my changes in different versions of the article
I cannot automate bibliographies, footnotes w InfoQube
I can set due dates for these projects, etc & set reminders as needed to urge myself on
And if necessary I can edit / format all the html data w Word from within IQ
And finally—I looked at Mindsystems Amode—and believe I can do everything that it can do within InforQube.
This last bit is important to me—and may not be to you—I want to work w the fewest number of programs as possible
Is IQ a mature program? That depends on what maturity means.
It’s stable, has a good GUI, growing documentation, a helpful community, a dedicated & responsive programmer
Does it have a learning curve? You betcha.
But, for me, it was worth it.
And I’m still learning.
Just my .02 having worked with a lot of writing programs, outliners & PIMs over more years that I care to remember.
Is InfoQube the end-all that I seem to imply?
That I don’t know but I can say that it offers such a variety of possibilities that it allows me to do everything I need to do on a daily basis, including my writing.
—
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA