Outliners Create Order From Chaos

Before I had a PC, I wouldn’t have thought of using a paper and pencil outline before writing an article or committee report. Now it’s rare that I don’t use my PC’s outliner. Not only do I compose full outlines before sitting down to write papers, but I prepare most of my course and professional lectures either partially or entirely in an outliner. What makes an outlining program (at least one of the good ones) so much more powerful than paper and pencil is the ease of restructuring a draft outline. The best outliners will let you gather previously unconnected elements to form a new category, promote subhead to headline status, or demote a headline, all with a few keystrokes. Then the program automatically adjusts the numbers and letters for the items that follow the patch. A few helpful features come only in the more powerful software packages. A prioritize command lets you quickly change the priority of subheads in a section, perhaps deciding that Item 2 should not be an item in itself but a subdivision of Item 1. The program then adjusts the rest of the numbers automatically. A randomize command, not essential but interesting, helps you stretch your thinking about the relative importance of subheads in a group. For example you could write a “to-do” list and then use the command display the items in random order. New possibilities and relationships may appear in the list as you are forced to reorder it. Unlike spreadsheets and databases, which organize data in matrices, outliners organize data in trees. For manipulating tree-based data, such as lists, outliners are the ideal tool. For example, an outliner is a useful tool for someone preparing a schedule of speakers for a conference. I’ve now used one twice and find the process much smoother than when I used a pencil and paper. I had to write out the list and then check it and check again to be sure I hadn’t left someone out or scheduled someone twice. With my outliner, I list all the speakers with their time preferences and then make a second copy of their names. I add time-slot headings to the second list and then move the speakers around into the time slots. Without question, the best outliner available is the recently introduced Grandview. Unfortunately, it is also the one with the highest price—even with mail-order discounts, it is roughly twice as expensive as its best competitors. It’s worth it, however, because Grandview is a magnificent piece of software. It is powerful and easy to use, taking advantage of dialog boxes and drop-down menus, features that make it simple to choose and execute commands. It has mouse support that is better than that in any competing outliner. The other packages available are all similar to each other, but I still have a mild preference for two: MaxThink, which has the best organizational tools of any outliner, save perhaps Grandview; and PC Outline, which, like Grandview, supports multiple outlines in separate windows and has an especially simple method for making new outline entries. ThinkTank is the original outlining program and commands the bulk of the market. It has not been upgraded (other than adding the ability to run under OS/2) in several years. Given that its publisher has just released Grandview, my guess is that ThinkTank will soon disappear from the market. I find its interface clunky and vastly inferior to that in my three favorites. Ready!, from the same company, is a similar product but has traded some of its power for memory residency. Several desktop organizers have built-in outline modules, but the only one that is in the same league with the standalone programs is SideKick Plus, whose outline module has many of the standard reorganizational tools, including gather, promote, and demote. SideKick Plus, PC Outline, and Ready! can all be run in memory resident mode. An outline program can be an invaluable tool. Grandview blows the competition away, but if you find its price daunting I recommend SideKick Plus (if its other modules appeal to you), MaxThink, or PC Outline (which is also available on a try-before-you-buy basis). Barry Simon is IBM Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Caltech

Outliners Create Order From Chaos

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