Overwhelmed by TAO

On or about 10/14/04 7:43 AM, thus spake "Eric Durbrow"
<eric.durbrowcomcast.net>:

> TAO reminds me of Microsoft Word--- many features but little grace. It
> seems to me that an outliner should "get out of the way" of the user
> and OmniOutliner and NoteBook does so. Does anyone else feel
> overwhelmed by TAO?

I sure don't. On the contrary, to me it feels simple and slim. I've just
been writing a lecture in it precisely as I used to do with MORE; I had to
learn about three keyboard shortcuts and that was it. Just ignore the
features you don't care about and concentrate on making an outline. m.

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> TAO reminds me of Microsoft Word--- many features but little grace. It
> seems to me that an outliner should "get out of the way" of the user
> and OmniOutliner and NoteBook does so. Does anyone else feel
> overwhelmed by TAO?
>
> <http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07847>

I do. When I first read mention of TAO on this list (I think), I went to
have a look at it, and it seemed ridiculously imposing. The user interface,
at least at first glance, suggests a significant learning curve -- not
something that I personally am willing to take on. I'm sure it does a great
job for serious outliners (deadly serious outliners, I might say), but I
never got past that point.

Khoi

work: www.behaviordesign.com
play: www.subtraction.com

On 10/15/2004 7:25, "Matt Neuburg" <matttidbits.com> wrote:

> On or about 10/14/04 7:43 AM, thus spake "Eric Durbrow"
> <eric.durbrowcomcast.net>:
>
>> TAO reminds me of Microsoft Word--- many features but little grace. It
>> seems to me that an outliner should "get out of the way" of the user
>> and OmniOutliner and NoteBook does so. Does anyone else feel
>> overwhelmed by TAO?
>
> I sure don't. On the contrary, to me it feels simple and slim. I've just
> been writing a lecture in it precisely as I used to do with MORE; I had to
> learn about three keyboard shortcuts and that was it. Just ignore the
> features you don't care about and concentrate on making an outline. m.

There's a clear difference here: Matt used MORE heavily and its way of
working feels natural to him...therefore TAO is easy.

Eric comes from a different background.

I'm sort of in the middle: I didn't use MORE in its days of dominance (nor
did I use the Dave Winer predecessor outliners). I came to Dave Winer's
outlining methods through UserLand Frontier (which outlines essentially the
same way as MORE but for a very different purpose).

When Dave was able to "rescue" MORE and put it up for downloading, I kicked
the tires a little and concluded that I didn't need the program and
therefore shouldn't spend time learning it.

And that's sort of how I feel about TAO (which I haven't tried...no time).

  --John

Has anyone done a side-by-side chart/comparison of MORE and TAO commands/functions to facilitate moving to TAO?

Also, can you export a TAO outline into PowerPoint and retain its hierarchical structure, etc.?

Thanks,

Mark

One way of learning to use TAO, for those of us who enjoy the challenge
or who love outliners: is to place commands; menu items... in an
outline as they are needed or useful in working on real outline
projects.

One or two levels below can be used to explain the upper level item;
briefly is best, for me, but see TAO --> MindMap, below.

Exporting the TAO doc to OPML format text makes it ready for import as
a NovaMind Mind Map. Placing "|" before lower level text causes it to
be a hidden, flagged, text attachment in the MindMap. The
documentation for that new feature is being prepared and a few
experiments will sort it out.

George Wade

Another good comparison would be TAO to OmniOutliner Pro 3, which is supposed to be out pretty soon.

In response to the questions of Mark Levine, George Wade and others,
I made a table that compares the main outlining features of TAO 1.01e
with More 3.1, Omni Outliner 2.2.6, and NoteTaker 1.8.9. The table
can be found on <http://www.knoware.nl/users/arnow/outliners.html>. I
hope it is useful!

Arno.

On 19-Oct-2004 20:14:00 GMT John W. Baxter <jwblist·olympus.net> wrote:

>Matt used MORE heavily and its way of
>working feels natural to him...therefore TAO is easy.

IMHO TAO is easy even if you never used More. As Matt put it:

>>Just ignore the features you don't care about and concentrate on
>>making an outline

Here is how it works:

- Create a new outline.
- Start typing the title of your new paper.
- Type cmd-right and type the title of the first section of that paper.
- Type cmd-right again and type the first point you want to discuss
in that section
- Add more points with cmd-down
- If you want to start a new section put the insertion point in the
section title and type cmd-right

You have now mastered the two most important key-board commands:
* cmd-down to create a new sibling
* cmd-right to create a new child

If you are a mouser these two keyboard commands are all you need! In
fact, cmd-down would suffice. You can rearrange everything in an
intuitive way with the mouse. No problem at all.

Even if you would only use cmd-down you would profit from using TAO
rather than Omni Outliner or More because Omni 's and More's command
to add new items (return) behaves in a strange way: it depends on the
context whether the new item becomes a child or a sibling. This is
not only very confusing, but also makes it impossible to add a
sibling after an item that has children. By the way, in TAO (but not
in Omni) you can also use the menu bar to enter new items (Reorg ->
Add).

However, even mousers can profit from two more commands:
* ctlr-left to outdent (decrease the nesting level)
* ctrl-right to indent (increase the nesting level).
Both commands can also be accessed from the menubar (Reorg -> Move).

A case can be made for the thesis that the three essential outlining
commands are
* add a new sibling (cmd-down),
* indent (ctrl-right) and
* outdent (ctrl-left)
Such a case would betray a programming background. For writers the
approach I sketched above is more intuitive.

If you prefer the keyboard (I do!) you should learn some more commands:
* ctrl-up and ctrl-down move an item among siblings (respectively, up
and down).
* opt-cmd-up and opt-cmd-down move the cursor among siblings
* opt-cmd-left is supposed to move the cursor to the parent (this
would be very useful but it doesn't work in my copy (1.01e)).

If you want more than the very basics, you can profit from TAO's item
splitting features. These commands split an item at the insertion
point. Use the menubar (Reorg -> Split Text To) or learn two more key
strokes:
* ctrl-cmd-down makes the part after the insertion point a sibling under,
* ctrl-cmd-right makes the part after the insertion point a child.

I use the item splitting commands often. Neither Omni Outliner nor
More have item splitting features. To split an item in those
outliners you have to create a new item and move the text with cut
and paste. Very tiresome.

See the pattern?
* cmd-arrow to create new items
* ctrl-arrow to move existing items
* opt-cmd arrow to move the cursor
* ctr-cmd-arrow to split items

* up / down arrow refer to siblings
* left /right arrow refer to increase or decrease of nesting level

This all you need for decent outlining!

--
Arno Wouters, Utrecht, The Netherlands (Europe).
E-mail: Arno.Woutersknoware.nl
WWW: <http://www.knoware.nl/users/arnow/>.