Quick question: it seems like I’m missing something obvious, but I would love to set certain row styles to just use bullets instead of numbering/lettering… Anyone?
I’m actually pretty sure I’ve already gone down this rabbit hole, before eventually just giving up on OminOutliner altogether because it couldn’t fulfill this one (seemingly) basic need for me. I’m coming back to it now because there are other attributes of OmniOutliner I really like, and I might as well since I already bought the pro version of OO 5 when it was released (hoping it could work for me).
Please tell me this is possible and I’m just not seeing the obvious!
Search for Row Handles in the OmniOutliner Pro Manual (under the Help menu) for details on using bullets.
Row handles come in two styles: bullets , which indicate the row has no children, and disclosure triangles , which mean the row has child rows indented underneath. Click a row’s disclosure triangle to show or hide its children.
Use the Row Inspector’s Handle controls. Row handles can be shown at all times, only on mouseover, or hidden completely. It sounds like you want them to be shown at all times with the style of bullets.
I’m aware of row handles, but it’s my understanding that row handles are a user-interface element, not formatting, right? What if I don’t want a disclosure triangle, but a sub-bullet (empty bullet) instead?
Maybe I’m not explaining this well. Sorry. That’s how I know to add bullets is to show them in the row handles in the row hierarchy.
If you want to add bullets into your text, click on the A in the Font inspector, then from the gear dropdown go to Characters, then pick bullets. It looks like this.
Lanette, thank you for trying to help, but I’m sorry, but this just tedious and not what I’m looking for. The short of it is OmniOutliner does not offer a bullet feature in the same way it can number things.
I haven’t used the latest versions of Outliner, but there used to be a way to specify to use a bullet. There’s information in the Row section of the online manual, although admittedly it’s not very clear. In the Inspector, in the Row section, in the Numbering item, you can set not only numbering but also prefixes (and suffixes). If you set the prefix to the bullet character, it will appear in every item, I if remember right.
We have a feature request open on the ability to customize the row handles and disclosure triangles. (I think I see an email you sent early last year attached to that request.)
For better or worse, the main thing our development process revolves around is trying to spend our finite development time on the things that benefit the greatest number of customers.
This request has, on average, one customer added to it every six months. We’re not opposed to this; we just can’t prioritize it over items that other groups of customers are requesting more frequently.
I know that’s got to be disappointing, but I hope it makes things more understandable, at least. (As much as possible, we also try not to benefit from selling things people won’t get any benefit from. If you submit a support ticket with a link to this thread, I can see if anything can be done about the OO 5 purchase.)
I have no expectations of the developers taking on my pet feature request, nor do I want a refund. You guys work hard and it’s my fault for not researching the app more before hitting ‘purchase’. I guess I just I don’t understand is how so many folks use OO without bullets…? Maybe ‘outlining’ is something I just don’t do ‘correctly’.
I’m not going to cry about it if bullets never get implemented the way I imagine they should be as outlining is not something I normally do—I’m a photographer, not a writer. But—as a fan of bulleted lists for note taking, I bought OO hoping for a fast, cross platform way to lay out my thoughts, be able to quickly re-arrange and nest them and then export into whatever format I need. As it is, OO get’s me most of the way there but there’s more mental overhead involved because I’m constantly trying to make sense of the hiarchy OO imposes (unless you turn numbering off completely). Ideally, I would make a custom note Style that works for me (primarily with bullets), then format with numbering after the fact, as needed.
In any case, I suspect the core user of OmniOutliner uses it differently than I want to.
In the sidebar, select “Whole Document” (or select the row levels you want this to happen on)
In the inspector window, under the “Selection Style” tab, turn off handles (under the “Row” heading), then
click on the “Numbering” drop-down list. Leave “None” checked (or select it if it is not already) and then, at the very bottom of the “Numbering” drop-down list choose the “Custom …” formatting option. In the box before the letter `a’ appearing in the dialog box, put a bullet (I used alt-8 to get the one shown in the attached screenshot).
“Save as Template …” (under the File menu) if you plan to reuse it frequently.
