OmniOutliner 6 in beta and thoughts on outlining

[Amontillado]

It's great to see a new major release of OmniOutliner 6 in beta. For years it looked like OmniGroup didn't care about it.

In my experience, OO is an apex outliner. Editing outlines without reaching for the mouse is quick, and it's got the interesting plus of supporting columns.

Think of the columns as extra information. For instance, add columns for start and end date, story arc, participants and observers, and you'll find Aeon will read an OO CSV export. Just a few mouse clicks can get a timeline from the outline.

Or, filter on that story arc column you added and get a Plottr-like view of your outline.

OO 6 adds features that will be well received by many, I'm sure. AI conveniences, for example.

You can now open multiple windows for views of different outlines or different parts of the same outline. That's nice, and I think you can drag and drop between windows.

Overall, it doesn't feel like a grand step up. I'll get the upgrade for the multiple windows more than anything else. It's probably my upbringing. I always played with the boxes gifts came in.

In the meantime, I'm once again (still) playing with outlining, and I think I see new possibilities for Zengobi Curio.

Curio provides what amount to white boards on which you can put many things, like mind maps and outlines.

Imagine brainstorming background information in one or more mind maps. Add notes to the nodes to describe things. Note that you're brainstorming about people, places, things, McGuffin's, maybe major story history events, but not plot.

Great, got your story world organized.

Now start writing an outline or per chapter outlines. You can stack multiple outlines on a single white board. You can create outlines from scratch and you can also copy mind map nodes with a little extra zing.

Curio can paste text objects as "synced text figures". If you change the notes or the title of any occurrence of synced figures, they all reflect the change.

Which seems handy. As you refer to a chapter outline you can refine any "global" (synched) entries.

 

[Naomasa298]

Notepad works fine for me.

 

[Amontillado]

I like the idea of post-it notes on a wall, or index cards on a table. I like to be able to pack up my planning and move around, though, so I'm constantly looking for better ways. A spreadsheet will do, but it's not good for longwinded notes.

Obsidian's canvas feature is better. Obsidian would be nicer if you could install a set of plugins to use on every vault instead of having to set each vault up separately.

 

[Amontillado]

This might be like the refrigerator art only Mom appreciated, but I think I have something interesting. If not for writing, then for learning a little about Javascript.

It's a simplification of the offbeat outline plus notes idea I posted here.

Let's say I've written an outline for a book in OmniOutliner. If I click on chapter 3, I can focus on it. That will show just the chapter 3 topic and any subtopics within chapter 3.

Or, I can click on chapter 3, click on the "xref" automation I wrote, and see the same focused chapter 3 plus notes associated with chapter 3. Those same notes could also be associated with any other relevant chapters. Each chapter or subdivision of the outline will fetch relevant notes. The tags on the chapter and its scenes are used to find similarly tagged notes in a Research topic in the outline.

No muss, fuss, or friction, just maintain tags on outline entries and research notes for an instant dossier on any segment of the outline.

I think I'm happy with it. I'm going to try it for the next thing I attempt to write of any length.