What's always hard for me to explain about this is that a lot of existing applications *seem* like they already can do this. But the important thing to remember about my described method above is that each "block" that is shown has it's own style to it. Most existing programs have their OWN way of organizing things. For notetakers, this falls into a hierarchy of some sort...you know, parent/child relationships. The most typical way is obviously a tree with the parents indicated with folder icons, and the children represented as document icons. And the other programs just make variations on this theme. They may show the tree as bullets, or they may have some funky visual, like circles within circles, etc. Treesheets offers BY FAR the most flexible and elegant of the outlining presentation that I've seen. Infoqube is BY FAR the most powerful of the traditional outline style.
What I'm asking for is the ability to extend the CONTAINERS for each individual outline or hierarchy, or just general note box. You can stick whatever you want in the boxes, I don't care. A mature program would allow the insertion of images, hyperlinks, etc.
I think this is truly the next step for general purpose information managers. I've tried all the others, and they all lack this freeform ability. Their problem is they all lock you into just one way to visualize things, which is usually a diagonal hierarchy. Meaning, as you go deeper in the hierarchy, you are pushed DOWN and to the RIGHT since this is the typical Western language direction. So I'm asking for something directionless and truly freeform.
Onenote is also close to this with it's freeform placement of notes. Onenote's problem is that it offers no way to section off a view the way I've shown above. It's almost like it's TOO freeform. That's the power of grid-based layout: it's pseudo-freeform, but still pleasantly structured. Not too much, not too little.
