Outliners
p. This is the “third part(Outliner Use Patterns)”:http://www.atpm.com/9.12/atpo.shtml in an excellent series about outliner applications on the Mac on [“About This Particular Macintosh(AtPM)”:http://www.atpm.com]. I’ve always had problems “remaining faithful(Outliners)”:http://www.rousette.org.uk/mt-static/blog/archives/000455.html to one outliner, as none of them seem to do everything I want them to. As a consequence, I’ve got more outliner-type things on my Mac than you can waggle a mouse at.
p. I can think of many software reviewers (and for that matter, manual writers) who could learn a lot from AtPM: rather then telling you what the software does, they focus on what you might want to use it for. It seems to me that this is much more valuable than telling you how something works, which—if the application is reasonably well designed—should be fairly self-explanatory with a little exploration.
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I'm a big fan of outliners too. I've yet to find one that I really like, and which is produced at a decent price by a user-friendly company. It's not just features!
BTW, manual writers sometimes know less about how the software is being used than the software and marketing folks - it may even not exist at the time the manual was written!----- One of my favourite addictions too! I have to say that Tinderbox is my favourite. Never really got on with NoteTaker. Have you tried it? Which outliner do you use most? And why?
by jb @ 09/12/2003 8:12 am • Permalink •
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pete: I'm sure that you're probably right about the manual writers: writing the manual before the software would certainly explain the quality of a lot of the manuals I've read!
jb: Ooo, tricky question! I like Tinderbox too for the ability to swap between a standard linear outline and a mind map like representation. I like OmniOutliner for its simplicity, and I often use it to build a Keynote presentation from scratch (it exports to Keynote), without the distraction of graphical widgets. I also use Notebook (very like Notetaker, which I've also tried) as a kind of scrapbook of snippets collected from email, PDFs and the web, which it's particularly well suited to. I'm also trying DEVONthink, which is great for keeping a big database of archived information and searching it easily. I did say that I liked Outliners! I ought to be in OA -- Outliners Anonymous. In my defence, I've got big reductions on all of them because of an education discount or a cross-grade discount. For example, I got NoteBook for $10 because I had Tinderbox.
by bsag @ 09/12/2003 8:12 pm • Permalink •
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I have a huge issue with paying $149 for anything like this. Inspiration was only $69. Many of these other applications are two to three times more expensive than they should be. I am a complete software whore, I will buy damn near anything for what I consider a reasonable price. SO am I crazy?
by Ross Winn @ 16/12/2003 2:12 am • Permalink •
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