Outlines rarely are created with exactly the structure I want, so I will need to re-organize the topics. You can create sub-topics to as deep a level as you need. Nothing extraordinary, but this is exactly how I want an outliner to behave. Change my mind, use SHIFT-TAB to promote the topic. If a topic should be a child of a previous topic, I just demote it with the TAB key. When I press ENTER again, I get a new topic and am in editing mode, so that I can type the title. When I’ve finished, I press ENTER and Tinderbox suspends editing mode. Now, I can create my first heading just be beginning to type it. For this article, I’m closing the Map view tab. Tinderbox indicates the view type with an icon and the word “Map” or “Outline,” which is a good thing because before you add anything to either view, they look identical - though version 6 does include some helpful hints in these otherwise empty spaces. Map view is selected by default, so the first thing you need to do if you want to make an outline is switch focus to the the Outline view. When you create a new document, two tabs are created and open: Map view and Outline view. When you create a new document, Tinderbox presents you with open tabs for Map View and Outline View, and it gives you some helpful hints about just what to do next. So let’s start by creating a new document. That’s the first test Outline view must pass. That means I should be able to create headings and move them into their proper place in the hierarchy without removing my hands from the keyboard, and the strokes needed should be intuitive and easy enough to use that I don’t have to think about them. I don’t want to think about anything but the project at hand. I want the application to “disappear” when I’m outlining. The first of these is just how easy it is to bang out an outline. I’ve listed on this site in the past a set of criteria for judging outliners. But I’m interested in conveying just how good Tinderbox is as an outliner. In this overview, I will be pretending that the other views in Tinderbox don’t exist. When I’m talking about the information in the note, I will use the term content or note text. All refer to the text that makes up each node of the outline. Note: In this review I use the terms note, headline (or heading), topic and item almost interchangeably. It has the outline tree (Outline view) in the left pane, and the note contents in the right. Where in previous versions you would need to open a note to see its content, now Tinderbox looks, at least superficially, like most other two-pane outliners. When Mark Bernstein, Tinderbox’s mad genius, took the application to version 6, he changed the entire user experience. Note: This overview is using Tinderbox 6.2. In other words, just how good an outliner is Tinderbox? Today I want to look more closely at Outline view, not in context of how it complements Map view, but in and of itself. In fact, Map view is so extraordinary that it can easily overshadow the other views offered by Tinderbox. I know of no other application that gives you such a flexible digital canvas for displaying/organizing/managing your notes. Map view is probably Tinderbox’s claim to fame. Tinderbox is such a remarkably versatile tool for managing information in great part because it provides you with several distinct views of your notes: The Outline View in Tinderbox may be the software’s most under-appreciated feature.
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