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MaxThink: Another one-pane outliner bites the dust
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Posted by Jeffery Smith
Nov 26, 2018 at 11:55 PM
I do use OmniOutliner now. And I am still putting Aquaminds Notetaker 4.0 (beta) through its paces. I very much liked Notemap when I was on Windows, and thought it was the closest thing to Grandview but on Windows. I started with ThinkTank back in 1984. What MaxThink provided that other outliners didn’t is “hoisting” and “de-hoisting” with ease using arrow keys. That really made it great for brainstorming (idea processing), not just the formatting in outline form. Once Notetaker is out of beta, I’ll probably use that for most of my notetaking.
Posted by Jeffery Smith
Nov 27, 2018 at 12:17 AM
I failed to mention that Notetaker does have undo, but I cannot find the number of levels of undo possible.
Stephen Diamond wrote:
Jeffery Smith,
>
>What do you use on the Mac? OmniOutliner? How would you rate the defunct
>NoteMap compared to OmniOutliner?
>
>The best outline processor for writing on Windows today, it seems to me,
>is far and away Inspiration 9. (Despite its promotion primarily as a
>concept mapper.) (This omits InfoQube, but my hunch is that a program
>that’s difficult to learn, as IQ is apparently, will not be fluid to
>use, unless you really use it a great deal.)
>
>Inspiration is also available on the Mac. How would you rate it compared
>to Omni?
>
>So many questions! I too use an outline processor primarily for writing
>legal briefs.
>
>By the way, my impression is that MaxThink could have been great in its
>Windows incarnation, despite its limitations, if only it had a
>(multiple) undo capability. I made too many mistakes to continue using
>the program, but if I could have undone them, I think my fingers would
>learn. I see “Undo” as a basic outliner functionality, but it is
>absolutely indispensable when the interface is terribly complex.
Posted by satis
Nov 27, 2018 at 05:13 AM
Jeffery Smith wrote:
> I do use OmniOutliner now. And I am still putting Aquaminds Notetaker
> 4.0 (beta) through its paces.
Without breaking any NDA can you give an idea of how you’re liking Notetaker? If you used the app before it was discontinued, is it essentially a rewrite that works the same way, or has it been rethought or reskinned?
Posted by Listerene
Nov 27, 2018 at 05:37 PM
MacOS complains about Inspiration 9 but it runs, albeit with a powerfully ugly interface. Feature-wise, Inspiration has a better basic feature-set than OO with better text processing and mind-mapping but import-export is sad ... as you might expect for an app which hasn’t been updated in 5-7 years+ and has been, basically, abandoned in the general market. I don’t expect that an update is coming, any time soon.
IMHO, btw, MaxThink is better off dead. It had an awful interface—even in an *era* of awful interfaces—and I found its developer a pompous ass the few times that I met him. It’s not terribly surprising to me that he couldn’t master Windows programming; he’s one of those dudes who you could retire on if you bought him for what he was worth and sold him for what he thought he was worth.
BTW(2), if you’re looking for a good 2-pane outliner with very capable outlining and extensive rtf word processing in the text pane then it’s hard to beat the granddaddy of them all, TreePad. It’s simple. lightweight and feature-rich. For the most part, it’s like an MS Word which allows sub-documents for easy organization OR as a more stable Scrivener (albeit without handy things like tagging and corkboards). Unlike Scrivener, tables, lists, outlining and compiling panes into a single .rtf file work flawlessly. Treepad is Windows-only but it works great in Parallels (and probably VirtualBox) on MacOS because of its minimal requirements; working well on a 2GB Windows VM.
Posted by Jeffery Smith
Nov 28, 2018 at 02:11 AM
I don’t think Notetaker had ever been discontinued (Circus Ponies Notebook is dead, though). Notetaker had been sort of neglected, and late v3 builds seemed too unstable for me. Happily, the v4 beta seems very stable. I haven’t noticed any new features, and most betas don’t have a help file. I just happy to have a stable, reliable build with its v3 features. I feel that it is reliable enough to trust it with my important work-related information.
Jeffery
satis wrote:
>
>Jeffery Smith wrote:
>> I do use OmniOutliner now. And I am still putting Aquaminds Notetaker
>> 4.0 (beta) through its paces.
>
>Without breaking any NDA can you give an idea of how you’re liking
>Notetaker? If you used the app before it was discontinued, is it
>essentially a rewrite that works the same way, or has it been rethought
>or reskinned?