I love to work with tree-structured information. As the tree matures with it’s useful branches, I tend to grasp a clear vision of my info-base. I don’t really “see it” as a hiercharchy but rather view it as “relationships” linking data together. It effectively “bonds” information and this in turn creates “highlights” for data storage.

It’s not because you visually see a tree in front of you that you see hiercharhies… it’s more, how you perceive that stored data. For me, that’s not the purpose behind the much-loved tree type storage option. The tree usefully outlines relationships and data links. It’s a visual aid for locating data, that’s what the tool was designed for – bringing information within reach – helping to highlight focus. It basically has nothing to do with world hiercharchies and systems – and not at all. If you’re looking at tree-structured information, and viewing it as such, then you’ve missed the point. (that’s only my opinion, ofcourse)

But, as a tree’s branches mature, then info storage relationships also mature in representation – if you develop your tree structure as a mature process of data-handling… conveniantly afterwards, well located ideas on the branches begin to develop, and then, so does the related branch. As your ideas mature and develop on the branch, then new ideas are stimulated or generated – just like new branches on the tree will grow – a simple natural progression in life…

When I look at trees in the forest, I never think of hiercharchies. I tend to think that your interpretation is somewhat harmful and not the outlining process which is a valuable aid for data management.

…just my point of view…

thanks
regards
John

But I do have a question. Does Ecco Pro work on Windows Vista? Sooner or later I’m going to be forced to upgrade.

I wish 37s would add at least rudimentary outlining to Backpack or TadaList. I’d switch to that in a second, especially if it output OPML so I could switch away when I wanted to.

Yes, it’s true: Outlines — even outlines with “clones” and “links” — aren’t always sufficient to edit a more “messy” structure and don’t do a good job of representing a table or grid. They’re sort of “one-and-a-half-dimensional,” neither one-dimensional linear lists nor fully two-dimensional grids. But they’re good when you need to flatten information into the “almost linear” format you need to present it as a presentation, an article, an essay, a report, or a book (which are, when you get down to it, linear flattenings — or depth-first traversals — of an outline).

Jerry Seagraves (the author of Borland’s “Lightning” instant spell checker) wrote a program which expanded upon the concept of an outliner by allowing you to “invert” outlines, exploiting the relationships between an item and its “children” and “parents.” It was incredibly clever — so clever, in fact, that most people to whom he showed it just did not understand it. It never became a commercial product.

Ted Nelson’s “ZigZag” (see http://xanadu.com/zigzag/) is even more powerful in that it has multi-dimensional tables, random links (no surprise, coming as it does from the “father” of hypertext) and any number of “views” of the data. But again, it’s so far above the way most people think about thinking that it leaves most people scratching their heads and then going back either to linear lists, outlines, or two-dimensional tables.

So, I wouldn’t say that outlines are harmful. They’re a step up from linear lists (which they subsume) and offer ways to show and hide detail (which two dimensional tables can’t do) and create a structure that’s flattenable for presentation in serial form. That’s what they’re good for, and that’s what I use them for.

Try putting your family tree in a tree – maybe start with ancestors from from yourself, then try descendants from one of those ancestors.

# Julian – yep. I think Dave is attempting to dodge the issue, an editable hierarchy is still a hierarchy, he’s invested too much ego to admit any flaws.

# Les – I’ve tried a lot of outliners/mindmap tools, none of which I’ve found entirely brainstorm-ready. Dave’s editor I find too dependent on Dave’s Own Stack, I don’t want to work that way. I’ve still not tried Tinderbox, that’s me being a cheapskate.

Which reminded me I’ve not looked at Mindraider [1] for a while, and while searching (couldn’t remember its name) I ran into an outliner for Moz [2], but I need to restart FireFox before I can comment on that…

[1] http://mindraider.sourceforge.net
[2] http://outliner.mozdev.org/

As for the perils of being locked into hierarchy – I can say that I agree with the sentiment somewhat: Thoughts in my head don’t usually settle well into parent/child or container/contained relationships – or even a linear list order. Jotting them down in such a structure can prematurely commit me to the structure, no matter how flexibly I can juggle the structure around. Once I’ve gotten notions out of my head and in front of my eyes, that’s the form that starts to gel.

The one tool I’ve used that seems to help preserve vagueness for as long as possible is Tinderbox, with its freeform 2D views which slide easily into outlines and other forms. With a 2D map, I can just quickly toss notions onto the screen and sorta-kinda place them in fussy groupings without deciding order or precedence. Over time, I can sort the ideas on the screen, and eventually maybe commit to a hierarchy.

Picture a pile of index cards, a marker, and a big coffee table. Jot down ideas and fling them onto the table in haphazard piles. Once you’ve run out of mental output for awhile, then you can start arranging. Tinderbox gives you that, albeit with a bit of a learning curve to exploit all its features.

None of this is a real criticism of outliners in general, though, since eventually I end up back in outlines. I just like to maintain a lot more indecisiveness up front while I’m emptying my head.

[1]: http://support.opml.org
[2]: http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox
[3]: http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/
[4]: http://decafbad.com/trac/wiki/XoxoOutliner

Having poured scorn on outliners, I’ll completely reverse the position and say that I love them for brainstorming when the final output is going to be linear text. As Dave Winer says (if I read him right) in the blog that points here, the ability to constantly edit the hierarchy is a great aid to thinking and structuring what ends up as a document.

My rant is really about what Danny describes above as the hierarchical model of data. It’s one of the things that bothers me about OPML, XML and Outliners used as a way of structuring data. It feels like a straitjacket to me.

Next week “Tags considered harmful” and the week after “RDF considered harmful”!