Caveat: I'm not sure if this is the right category... but this is the closest thing to a "If I could program, this is something I would create" category Maybe this is already out there (and oh! please! tell me if it is...), but I can't tell you how useful for me it would be to have a program where I could build an outline and populate it... then the output of the program would be a document wherein I could expand and collapse sections of the document to effect changes in the scope (granularity) of the outline.-- Vis10n, Sep 22 2000 more 3.2 http://discuss.outl....com/msgReader%2422Haven't looked at this, but it's supposedly some sort of outlining tool. [PotatoStew, Sep 22 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004] hyperbole outliner http://www.lns.corn...OMP/info/hyperbole/Hyperbole is what happens when emacs gurus build the ultimate outliner [tenhand, Sep 22 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004] Dave Winer: Outliners.Com http://www.outliners.com/The motherlode of outliner discussions. [jutta, Sep 22 2000] ThinkTank 2.41 (1987) http://www.outliner...m/thinkTank2Pc.htmlFree-as-in-beer, unsupported, PC text based, but keeps resetting my system date to 1985... [jutta, Sep 22 2000] Freshmeat search for "Outliner" http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=outliner [egnor, Sep 22 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004] OmniOutliner http://www.omnigrou...tions/omnioutliner/For Mac OS X. [wiml, Sep 22 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004] [Admin: moved from Computer: Programming to Computer: Feature. Don't worry 'bout it.]-- jutta, Sep 22 2000 Don't most modern word processors have an "outline" mode that lets you expand and collapse nodes?
If not, there are certainly plenty of "outline creator" programs out there. If nothing else, you could use the filesystem this way, since most desktops offer a tree-view mode.-- egnor, Sep 23 2000 Wordstar used to have something like this, but I havn't seen one in a while. Doesn't sound too difficult to program, try shareware sites. If you can't find one, check back in a few weeks (or months maybe - see "How Long Things Take"), I'll see if I can whip one up, I could use one too.-- Scott_D, Sep 23 2000 Egnor: I don't know about most, but Word doesn't... at least not one that I can find. I thought of using PowerPoint, which only allows the user to expand/collapse a single level. I thought of using the filesystem viewer as well, but it's just too kludgy (sp?). Scott: When you finish... just let me know. =) Man! I love this site.-- Vis10n, Sep 23 2000 What version of Word do you use? Word 97 and 2000 both have it. View/Outline.-- StarChaser, Sep 23 2000 Word for Mac... Maybe I should look a little harder. Even so, I can't imagine anything in Word being as elegant a solution as I'm hoping for. But I'll take whatever I can get at this juncture. Someday (and soon, I hope), software will become more of a widget-based market, where I can build the functionality I need ...and service-providers will be the preeminent revenue model. *Sigh* Until then, I appreciate everyone's input.-- Vis10n, Sep 23 2000 Eep, sorry. We support the Mac Office here, but we don't have a copy and the Mac person isn't here on the weekends. <And they keep wondering why the calls sit until Monday...>
StarChaser the Tech Support Tyger-- StarChaser, Sep 23 2000 I just checked on Mac Word 98... Under "View" in the menu bar there is an option for "outline" and for "outline layout." Outline will let you create an outline for the document, and you can expand and collapse sections. I'm not sure if it has all the functionality you wanted (I couldn't figure out how to expand/collapse from the regular document view, which is what you seemed to want), but you may be able to figure out more of it than I did in my 3 minutes of playing with it.-- PotatoStew, Sep 23 2000 Emacs' outline mode can do this to a certain degree. Not very intuitive though (kinda useful and neat anyway).-- amadeus, Sep 24 2000 This is funny. I've spent hours in the last few days trying to find an outliner for unix. I'm probably going to go offer money on one of the opensource sites.
Word does indeed have the best outliner I've found. Sadly, word is now a layout program & it's outliner mode doesn't export to other file formats. Html output is laughably bad.
Handheld software for palm or wince may be a fruitful line of enquery.
Since my mind has been warped to think in tree structured lists, I'm quite frustrated that there isn't a better tool out there.-- tenhand, Sep 29 2000, last modified Mar 12 2001 If you like using emacs, there's M-x outline-mode.-- jutta, Sep 29 2000 I have something called Brainforeston my Palm that does this. I havn't played with it much myself yet.-- rwhamann, Nov 14 2000 Like a Windows Help Contents File? (.cnt I think) - Created by Microsoft Help Workshop, which sucks, but this is one thing it can do.-- jabbers, Aug 15 2001 XML! (Should I delete my previous post for redundancy now?)-- jabbers, Aug 16 2001 [Rods]: Yer yanking my chain aren't you? XML Notepad on Windows? Provided by Microsfot? Where?-- st3f, Aug 16 2001 [Rods]: Very nice. st3f likes. My only worry is that they've failed to transition it out of beta in over a year. Good call, though - I'll be using it (until it does someing nasty anyway).-- st3f, Aug 16 2001 xpsetup.exe... XP... So microsoft have designed their new Windows and Office based on their XML-Pad? ;)-- jabbers, Aug 20 2001 random, halfbakery