Outliner - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

An outliner is a computer program that allows text to be organized into discrete sections that are related in a tree structure or hierarchy

Hierarchy

A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...

. Text may be collapsed into a node

Vertex (graph theory)

In graph theory, a vertex or node is the fundamental unit out of which graphs are formed: an undirected graph consists of a set of vertices and a set of edges , while a directed graph consists of a set of vertices and a set of arcs...

, or expanded and edited.

Outliners are typically used for computer programming

Computer programming

Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...

, collecting or organizing idea

Idea

In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...

s, as personal information management

Personal information management

Personal information management refers to the practice and the study of the activities people perform in order to acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve and use information items such as documents , web pages and email messages for everyday use to complete tasks and fulfill a person’s various...

or for project management

Project management

Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end , undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value...

. Mind Mappers

Mind map

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Especially in British English, the terms spidergram and spidergraph are more common, but they can cause confusion with the term spider diagram used in mathematics...

and Wiki

Wiki

A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...

s are related types of software.

Design

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

Hierarchy

A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...

. 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 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 and export: Both the content and structure of outlines are conveyed when files are imported or exported (e.g., from and to tab-indented files).

Layout

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 known as an intrinsic outliner because the text itself is organized into an outline format—individual sections (such as paragraphs) of text can be collapsed or expanded, 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 is structured and because several nodes of text are visible at once, it is easy to edit across sections. The drawback is that, because the structure is not always visible, there is not 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.

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 allows 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). This type of structure is useful also as a document management tool where the second pane is a document in place of textual information.

A one- and two-pane outliner may be combined as a hybrid. This allows multiple notes' text and graphics to be shown at the same time. The organizational power of outline in hybrid is in the parent outline structure, not in the second pane text, making it a very effective structure for topical organization. One additional advantage of hybrid is that single pane can be used as single pane outliner with second pane used for notes or reference tracking.

File formats

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

XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

- XML's purpose is to aid information systems in sharing structured data
HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

/XHTML
XHTML
XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....

- outlines relatively trivial thanks to nested markup
OPML
OPML
OPML is an XML format for outlines...

- simple XML-based format designed for outlines, but also used for syndication feedlists
OML
OML
OML is an XML format for outlines. It was originally proposed by Ray Grieselhuber. The specification is designed to build upon the concepts found in OPML, with the goal of fixing some of its limitations....

- alternative to OPML
RDF
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...

- (various formats) has web-oriented node & arc graph model, can be used for outline subset
XOXO
XOXO
XOXO is an XML microformat for outlines built on top of XHTML. Developed by several authors as an attempt to reuse XHTML building blocks instead of inventing unnecessary new XML elements/attributes, XOXO is based on existing conventions for publishing outlines, lists, and blogrolls on the Web.The...

- dedicated HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

-based microformat
Microformat
A microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup which seeks to re-use existing HTML/XHTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes in web pages and other contexts that support HTML, such as RSS...

for outlines
CHM - standard Windows format for help, books, etc.

Desktop outliners

Name	Operating system	Notes
Acta	Mac OS 9	Single pane outliner, free to download
ActionOutline	Windows	Double-pane outliner. Multiple outlines per file, selected via 'worksheet-style' tabs.
AllMyNotes Organizer AllMyNotes Organizer AllMyNotes Organizer is an outliner application for Windows, and it allows you to store all documents and notes in single storage file. Documents are organized in a hierarchical tree representation for quick browsing by topic...	Windows	Can password-protect file access, supports Skins. Free and Portable editions available.
Bonsai (Desktop Edition)	Windows	Designed to synchronise with the Palm OS version of Bonsai
Circus Ponies NoteBook	Mac OS X	Single-pane outliner designed to resemble a spiral bound notebook
Code Browser	Windows/Linux	folding text editor, can outline source code
Deep Notes	Mac OS X	Freeware single pane outliner. Only 1.7 megabytes, runs on OS X 10.4 or later.
Ecco Pro Ecco Pro Ecco Pro is personal information manager software based on an outliner, and supporting folders similar to spreadsheet columns that allow filtering and sorting of information based upon user defined criteria....	Windows	Freeware outliner. EccoMV add-on for RTF pane.
GJots	Linux
GrandView	MS-DOS	Powerful single-pane outliner dating from the 1980s
Idea Cruncher	Windows	Minimalist two-pane outliner
In Control	Mac OS 7/8	Vintage outliner from Attain Corp. which could sort or filter outlines according to keywords or metadata attached to each topic
Jot+ Notes	Windows	two-pane outliner where the 2nd pane supports Rich Text formatting and embedded pictures and objects, such as spreadsheets. One can navigate not only via the topic hierarchy in pane one, but also via hyperlinks in the text of pane two.
Jreepad	Platform independent	Compatible with Treepad. Written in Java.
KeepNote	Windows/Linux/MacOS	Notes saved in HTML. Written in Python Python (programming language) Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive... .
KeyNote	Windows	Mozilla Public License Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation... . No longer supported.
KeyNoteNF	Windows	Mozilla Public License Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License is a free and open source software license. Version 1.0 was developed by Mitchell Baker when she worked as a lawyer at Netscape Communications Corporation and version 1.1 at the Mozilla Foundation... . Evolution of KeyNote.
KJots KJots KJots is a free and simple outliner text editor for the KDE Software Compilation environment. It is part of the Kontact group of software. It uses a basic tree structure to organize information: it refers to nodes as ‘books’ and leaves as ‘pages’...	Linux
MORE More (application) MORE is an outline processor application created for the Apple Macintosh in 1986 by software developer Dave Winer. An earlier outliner, ThinkTank, was developed by Winer, his brother Peter and Doug Baron....	Mac OS 7/8/9	Classic Mac outliner from the late 1980s & early 1990s
MyInfo MyInfo MyInfo is a personal information manager developed by Milenix Software. MyInfo collects, organizes, edit, stores, and retrieves personal-reference information like text documents, web snippets, e-mails, notes, and files from other applications....	Windows	Two-pane, but can emulate basic one-pane outliner too
Leo	Windows/Linux/MacOS	Python application (use Tk for the UI)
Neomem	Windows	3-pane outliner. Website last updated July 2008.
NoteCase	Windows/Linux/MacOS	No longer supported.
NoteCase Pro	Windows/Linux/MacOS
NoteKeeper	Windows	Lightweight freeware two-pane outliner
Noteliner	Windows	Lightweight freeware outliner with todo capabilities, tagging & tables
OmniOutliner	Mac OS X	Fully featured single/double pane outliner with columns and extensive customisation capabilities
Opal	Mac OS X	Single pane outliner, essentially a port of 'Acta' to Mac OS X
OPML Editor	Mac/Windows	GPL
OrgMode Org-mode Org-mode is an editing mode in the text editor Emacs which supports the editing of plain text hierarchical documents. It has specific support for a number of different use cases, such as writing to-do lists, project planning, and writing web pages...	cross-platform	Emacs outlining mode
Outliner Lighto	Windows	Free software, console-based outliner written in FreePascal
Sain Outliner	Windows	Low cost, very simple single-pane outliner
Scrivener Scrivener (software) Scrivener is a word-processing program designed for writers. Scrivener provides a management system for documents, notes and metadata. This allows the user to keep track of notes, concepts, research and whole documents for reference...	Mac OS X; Windows & Linux beta	Flexible content generator for writers; powerful multipane outliner
SEO Note	Windows	Free lightweight two-pane outliner
The Guide	Windows	Free lightweight two-pane outliner
ThinkTank	MS-DOS	Early PC outliner, now abandonware
Tkoutline	Platform independent	Written in Tcl/Tk
ToDoList	Windows	Free (Eclipse Public License Eclipse Public License The Eclipse Public License is an open source software license used by the Eclipse Foundation for its software. It replaces the Common Public License and removes certain terms relating to litigations related to patents.... ). Portable. Large number of node attributes. French and Spanish versions.
Tombo	Windows, Windows CE, Windows Mobile	Minimalistic. Regex search. GPLv2.
Total Text Container	Windows	Freeware 2-pane outliner
Treeline outliner Treeline outliner TreeLine is a free and simple outliner with advanced data element definition and export abilities. It uses a basic tree structure to organize information, and allows the user to define different types of nodes and leaves.- Export :...	Windows/Linux	Free 3-pane outliner; 2nd pane shows details of highlighted node, 3rd pane lists details of its children
Treepad	Windows/Linux	Two-pane outliner. Free and paid versions.
TuxCards	Linux	Freeware 2-pane outliner
The Vim Outliner	cross-platform	Vim Vim (text editor) Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface... plugin
UV Outliner	Windows	Free, single pane outliner
Vault 3	Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android	Free Outliner. XML import and export. Optional 128-bit AES encryption.
Vim Outliner	cross-platform	Vim Vim (text editor) Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface... plugin
VOoM	cross-platform	Vim Vim (text editor) Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface... plugin, emulates two-pane outliner. Requires Python Python (programming language) Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive... and Vim compiled with Python interface.
WhizFolders	Windows	Two-pane outliner
WikidPad WikidPad WikidPad is an open source, Python-based wiki-like outliner for storing thoughts, ideas, to-do lists, contacts, and other notes with wiki-like linking between pages....	cross-platform	Wiki-like outliner.

Mobile Device outliners

Name	Operating system	Notes
Android Outliner	Android	Sync with Natara Bonsai on Windows desktop via USB or DropBox; due-date based filtering; supports multiple outlines. Under active development, with very user feedback-driven feature selection.
CarbonFin Outliner	iOS	Outliner for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Web app with synchronization is also available.
Vault 3 for Android	Android	Outliner for Android devices (Android 2.1 or later). Desktop versions are also available (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X).
Zeptoliner	iOS	Outliner for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Online outliners

This table shows a list of online, browser-based outliners categorised by the functionality they provide (see 'Design' above).

Name	Promote/ demote	Copy	Styling	Expose/ hide levels	Hoist	Search	Import OPML	Export OPML	Export other	Collaboration	Files
ActionManager
Checkvist
Knowcase
Loosestitch
Lucid
The Outliner of Giants
Tidylines										Limited users
Thinklinkr
WorkFlowy

External links

Comparison of desktop outliners
Comparison of online outliners
Overview of Windows outlining programs (at least 4 years old)
Expanding Brain Outliner Wiki
Outlines: The Do Everything Tool
OutlinerSoftware.com, Discussion of Outliners

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.