Outlining Software is designed to capture a user's data entry and let the user flexibly categorize and link the information at a later time (or do it right away as the user enters the information).

See also: http://outliners.scripting.com/ .
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An outliner should:

* allow "stream of consciousness" recording of thoughts (mind dump)
* allow asynchronous organization (don't force me to organize while I think or dump)
* allow different focus (HOIST in the old More terminology), meaning I should see nothing other than the node (and subnodes) I am currently concentrating on.
* show me only the detail (to level depth) I want
* not distinguish between structure and content (ie. don't make names or nodes different from content), and allow one to become the other easily
* allow single keystroke promotion, demotion, repositioning
* not get the thinker distracted by formatting issues when thinking
* be fast, so that it doesn't get in the way of my thinking (dumping)

-- SamHahn
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* LotusAgenda - available free; see http://web.archive.org/web/20021016195044/http://home.neo.lrun.com/pim/agendadl.htm for instructions and links. (Installing is painful, though, requiring formatting four floppies as 720K and then extracting disk images for them with a provided DOS utility.)
* The built-in outliner in MicrosoftWord
* TkOutline by BrianTheado (a well-known teckler); has the capability to hyperlink to other outline files; available at http://tkoutline.sourceforge.net/
* GrandView by Symantec, for DOS
* ThoughtStream
* TheBrain

* ThinkTank by Symantec - see http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=ThinkTank
* Acta http://www.a-sharp.com/acta - cool outliner for MacOS by DavidDunham

LinuxOs:

* orGenta - http://home.earthlink.net/~jdc24/orGenta/orGentaFeatures.htm
* kJots is a simple outliner
* TreeView

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Yes. Ecco, by Arabesque Software (acquired by NetManage, then run into the ground, last at v4.01?) is a Win16 app I still run on XP (successfully!), that has probably the best outliner capabilities in Windows. Not the equal of More (on Mac, from Living VideoText, derivative of ThinkTank), but acceptable. Unfortunately, a PIM cluttered the product somewhat... (SamHahn)

Another fine Mac OS X outliner is the aptly named OmniOutliner http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/ and, of course, there's always EmacsOutlineMode. -- RobertDaeley
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'''Outliners for the Palm'''

* For the Palm: ShadowPlan at http://codejedi.com/

* Progect is another one for the Palm (it's free! :-). It's open source, available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/progect. Further info at http://www.alawa.ch/index.php?show=16&language=en&menu=0&mainlang=eo (it used to be at http://www.alawa.ch/progect_main.html.)

** Although still in development, I've been using it for about a week with no problems. It's slanted toward project management but handles outlining very well.
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See also TreeEditor.

Discuss outliners at http://www.outlinersoftware.com .

CategorySoftwareTool