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Outliner

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An outliner is a computer program that allows you to organize text into discrete sections that are related in a tree structure or hierarchy. Text may be collapsed into a node, or expanded and edited.

Outliners are typically used for computer programming, collecting or organizing ideas, Getting Things Done, as Personal information management or for project management. It is generally acknowledged that Doug Engelbart was the first to see the advantages of the expandable-outline user interface paradigm in software[citation needed]. Mind Mappers and Wikis are related types of software.

Hierarchy - principal attribute

The principal attribute of outline editors is that they support or enforce the use of a hierarchy. For example:

  • Editing: Sound parent-child relationships are enforced when the user modifies the document structure. For example:
    • Promoting, demoting, copying, or deleting a parent has the same effect on the children.
    • Every item entry must be within one level of its predecessor, such that each item must be a sibling or child of the preceding item (thus, no item can be a great-grandchild of the preceding item).
  • Viewing: The tool enables the user to affect the display by level. For example:
    • Applying styles by outline level (e.g., bold all 1st level items)
    • Displaying selected levels (e.g., show all 1st and 2nd level items, but none deeper).
    • Hoisting an item hides all parent and sibling items; thereby focusing, or zooming in, on a particular branch. De-hoisting again reveals the full outline.
  • Search: The tool retrieves all items that contain the query terms plus the ancestors (parent, grandparent...) that give them context.
  • File import / export: Both the content and structure of outlines are conveyed when files are imported or exported (e.g., from and to tab-indented files).

One-pane vs. two-pane outliners

There are two basic types of outliners - one pane or intrinsic and two pane or extrinsic, each with its strengths and weaknesses. A one pane outliner is also known as an intrinsic outliner because the text itself is organized into an outline format - you can collapse or expand individual sections (such as paragraphs) of text, while keeping others in view. Everything is displayed within a single area, hence the term one pane.

One of the strengths of one pane outliners is that, because the text itself is what's structured and because you can see several nodes of text at once you can typically edit across sections more easily. The drawback is that because the structure isn't always visible, you don't have as strong an overview of the whole or ability to quickly navigate between sections as with a two pane outliner. Some word processors, such as Microsoft Word have an Outline Mode to help with structuring documents. [1] [2]

A two pane outliner separates structure from content - the structure is extrinsic to the text. A tree structure with node titles is presented in one pane, and the text is shown in another. Since the structure is always clearly shown at all times separately from content, this format allowing for a quick overview of the structure and easy navigation. The drawback is that since only one node's worth of text is shown at one time and navigation has the additional step of crossing panes, the structure is more rigid, making editing across nodes more difficult. This view is similar to many file browsers and email programs (which can be thought of as three-pane outliners). [3]

File formats

Several file formats support an outline structure natively or encourage the use/creation of outline structures.

  • XML - XML's purpose is to aid information systems in sharing structured data
  • HTML/XHTML - outlines relatively trivial thanks to nested markup
  • OPML - simple XML-based format, also used for syndication feedlists
  • OML - alternative to OPML
  • RDF - (various formats) has web-oriented node & arc graph model, can be used for outline subset
  • XOXO - dedicated HTML-based microformat for outlines

See also

Look up outliner in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
  • Two-pane extrinsic outliners
    • 2DO Notes management application (Microsoft Windows, freeware/GPL)
    • ActionOutline Outliner that allows you to add colored flags to nodes. (Microsoft Windows, shareware)
    • Exstora Outliner and Personal Organizer. (Microsoft Windows, proprietary software)
    • The Guide Simple but open source outliner for Windows
    • InfoHesive A program to organize your data files and share information (Microsoft Windows, proprietary software)
    • Jreepad Java based Treepad Lite clone multi-platform
    • Keynote Open Source Win32 multi-feature tabbed notebook outliner. Can store files in an encrypted format. Development discontinued in 2005.
    • KeepNote Open source three-pane outlining and note taking (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)
    • KnowIt Open source outlining (Linux)
    • Leo, an outline editor that supports literate programming (open-source, free, platform-independent, written in Python)
    • Maple A useful outliner and document organizer (Windows, proprietary software)
    • MyInfo Two-pane outliner and organizer (Windows, proprietary software)
    • My Yellow Notepad Easy to use outliner and organizer application (Microsoft Windows, proprietary software)
    • NeoMem NeoMem allows you to store and organize all kinds of information in a cross between a word processor and database. (Microsoft Windows, proprietary software)
    • NoteCase Open Source Outliner (Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Sharp Zaurus, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, Nokia N770/N800/N810) (free/open source)
    • NoteCase Pro Advanced version of Notecase outliner (Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Sharp Zaurus, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, Nokia N770/N800/N810) (proprietary software)
    • OmniOutliner Outliner for Mac OS, by Omni
    • SEONOTE Freeware outliner and information manager for MicrosoftTM WindowsTM XP, 2000, NT, 98 and 95 systems.
    • Springnote An online notebook web application with collaborative features, tree-view organization, and auto-saving. (open-source, free, written in Ruby on Rails)
    • TOMBO Tree-View NotesTaker run on Windows/CE. It has encrypt notes and regular expression searching, too. (open-source, GPLv2, free, Windows & Pocket PC/WinCE/Windows Mobile)
    • Treeline An outliner that doubles as a free-form database. (Linux, Windows)
    • Treepad Free & pay versions, Treepad Free stores files in an open plain-text XML-like file format. Pay versions add rich-text editing, encryption, and multi-user versions. (Windows, Linux, freeware and shareware, OSX via Java, see Jreepad)
    • Tuxcards Open source outlining (Linux)
    • Whizfolders Extrinsic outliner for Windows. Shareware. Delux version adds single-pane editing.
  • One-pane intrinsic outliners
    • Buzz A web-based outliner designed for linking outlines together.
    • Dynamic List A web-based outliner for MS Internet Explorer.
    • Ecco_Pro Abandoned and then released free by Netmanage. Native intrinsic outliner, extension available to convert to intrinsic/extrinsic with full RTF/HTML/Web/Word/Excel capture/clip/export capability.
    • Frontier Writing in Outlines
    • InfoQube One and two pane outliner with spreadsheet/database like "grid" formatting. (Proprietary, Windows based, free during beta)
    • JEdit A text editor with text-folding capabilities. It performs like an intrinsic outliner when folding based on indents (hiding sub-entries in an outline).Provides a SideKick-like tree which displays folds rather than language-specific structures (like a two-pane outliner) using the outline plug-in. It can run in Windows, OS X, and Linux and is open source.
    • Microsoft Word can be used as a single pane outliner. (Multi-platform, proprietary)
    • Personal Project Planner works as an extension to the file manager. It renders file and folder as an outline document. You can add notes to files, or create documents, emails, and notes linked to web URL, emails and local files. Planner is a PIM tool that uses file system as storage instead of using a proprietary file format or database. (Windows with ties into Outlook & Internet Explorer)
    • TkOutline Tkoutline is a single pane, cross-platform outline editor written in Tcl/Tk

References

  1. ^ http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/EDELCompEduc/Themes/outline-word/outlineword.html
  2. ^ http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309365
  3. ^ http://john.redmood.com/organizers.html
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