An outliner's "profound and brilliant insight"

OmniOutliner
#1

Just came across a fascinating 2007 article from the British newspaper “The Guardian” about the late, great, Ecco Pro. In it, columnist Andrew Brown writes that after Ecco’s demise: "the profound and brilliant insight that spreadsheet grids combined with outlining offers the best way to understand complex information has never been followed up."

It seems to me that OmniOutliner - with its use of columns - is almost there. It’s so close. And it wouldn’t take a lot of work to get it the rest of the way. Simply letting us filter an outline based on columnar data would do it.

Link to Guardian article

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#2

Thanks for that. I’d still be using Ecco Pro if I hadn’t switched to Mac. For all its limitations by comparison to modern alternatives, it still works very very well indeed.

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#3

I am still using Ecco Pro through Parallels on my Mac with Windows 10. The filtering capabilities of Ecco are unsurpassed. It is amazing that a program that has not had a new release since the late 90s has capabilities that other outlining programs like Omni Outliner can only dream about.

i just purchased Omni OUtliner for my I phone and will give it a try but the people at Omni would do well to look at what Ecco was doing back in 1997.

#4

A day doesn’t go by when I don’t wish OmniOutliner had filtering capabilities.

I’m struggling with a research project right now, using mostly DevonThink and a little OO, because OO can’t filter. It’s so frustrating, since OmniFocus has the ability: they call it Perspectives. All they need to do is give OO the same capability as Perspectives, and OO would offer something no other application can.

#5

Agreed - the lack of filtering is a major drawback to my use of OO. I’m looking for a replacement for Circus Ponies Notebook which had a handful of critical features that OO lacks:

  • Filtering and serious power searching
  • Clipping
  • Tremendous flexibility in adding attachments, drawings, annotations and all sorts

I don’t expect OO ever to support the last of these - I think one of Omni’s great strengths is avoiding feature bloat - but the first two seem essential to me.

Ecco Pro was a product way ahead of its time - it’s a minor tragedy that it died so young