Outlining

[AEngineer]

One feature that is key to some of us is outlining.  I would gladly switch to OpenOffice, but its capabilities in that area are so poor that I cannot conceive of working effectively.  I therefore unhappily stick with Word.  I'd be curious if any of the other WPs have capabilities to Word.  None that I've looked at over the years come close.

Jim Mitchell

[mouser]

Very nice point.

[urlwolf]

I agree, outlining is really important.

[f0dder]

* f0dder is an ignorant.

What is outlining?

[AEngineer]

There's a good discussion in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner

[alxwz]

I agree that outlining is very important, esp. if you write long, complex documents.

The best description of outliner features I know is from Ted Goranson's ATPM series (Mac-centric, but you'll get the idea):
http://www.atpm.com/9.10/atpo.shtml
http://www.atpm.com/9.11/atpo.shtml

Unfortunately, no power outliner I know supports footnotes, which immediately defeats its usability for academic papers. So you have to stick with what comes with a word processor like word (and doesn't support features like clonig, hoisting et al.).

[OldElmerFudd]

Odd...I'd completely forgotten about OO's (in)abilities when it comes to outlining. I write papers and articles; building an outline first is just second nature. I'll add that I'm very comfortable with MS Office 2003, especially after beta testing Office 2007. Even if someone gave me the Suite, I'd use the "ribbon" to tie it up and give it back! lol.


OEF

[Ruffnekk]

Okay this made me very curious now. What is The Reference when it comes to outliner applications? I tried searching for it but I keep encountering PIMs and related stuff.

[urlwolf]

I have used some outliners, from plain text (vim outliner) to pretty specialized ones.

I think the best outliner there is is oneNote. it does vertical and horizontal outlining.

The word outliner is not bad, believe it or not.

[AEngineer]

If I had to use only one it would be (amazingly enough) MS Word.
**********

I too have experimented with many, many outliners over the years.  Here's my current usage pattern:

For developing Ideas - Treepad Plus

For refining, formatting and presenting - MS Word

You can buy a nice converter to change Treepad Outlines into Word outlines - the developer actually tailored it to my request.
ABC Amber Treepad Converter $20

There's a good free converter to go from word to Treepad also

[urlwolf]

hmm,
I don't know why but oneNote outlines don't really translate into word outlines (with Heading 1, 2, etc). Surprising considering that interoperability is really big at MS.

[zridling]

Good points, since I'm an outlining freak. The best, of course, was Ecco Pro. But since its demise, the best to come along was Microsoft OneNote. Each tab in OneNote will hold about 60,000 words, and while they don't convert well inside of Word (ironic!), they do convert pretty accurately everywhere else using copy and paste. Inevitably, if you're going to use a word processor's outlining feature to outline a complex document, you'd probably be better off outlining it using another app and building your document using Master documents to gain more control over editing and its ultimate form.

[TomColvin]

I'm very late into this thread, but the remark by alxwz about power outliners lacking footnoting capability prompts me to write.  The new version 7.04 of Biblioscape comes close to your needs.  Unlike most bibliographic software, which bundles reference info and note-taking on the same form, Biblioscape separates the two.  There is the Reference Pane and the Notes Pane, which can be linked.  The Notes section is essentially a 3-pane note-taker.  Hierarchical tree on the left, which can approximate an outline, a list of notes at the top right and the full note in the bottom pane.  Linking notes to references, an easy task, allows full power over footnoting.

Tom