How would you use OO4?

I am interested how others use Omni Outliner to store information and have a real world problem I would like to solve. I also except that Omnioutliner might not be the best tool for this task and would be interested in knowing what other software I should be using.

I am thinking of buying a new sit-on-top kayak and would like to copy information found on the web into a document and analyse compare the key features and then create a score sheet for each boat to aid comparison.

The information from the web is basically text and pictures which can be stored in one or more cells the more challenging part is conducting the comparisons. If I were using pen and paper I would create some tables with a column for each boat across the top and the attributes like length, beam and weight down the side. I would then write a second table with the same headings and rows where scores could be assigned for each boat/attribute. A total for each boat (column) would offer an indication which boat would best meet my needs.

The problem boils down to attempting to combine tabular data (which includes simple addition) with free format text. OO3/4 multiple columns could be used for the tables and I think its maths features can count the scores but I am not sure where all the data sourced from the web should be stored.

I want to avoid having sections where the default column is blank so perhaps I should use the notes feature or should I use a simple single column for notes and have the tabular data in other outlines that are stored inside the parent?

Any thoughts ideas welcomed!

best wishes

Simon

I recommend using one OO4 outline for the comparison, and either one more for all of the Web captures or one doc for each kayak’s Web captures.

That way, your summaries of columns would be accurate in the comparison outline and the others could be as free form as you want. I think trying to put it all into one will mean in practice that you have two different setups in one outline, and you could have a cleaner headline and notes distinction in the Web capture outline.

It’s really easy to copy items between OO4 outlines. If you really want only the OO4 to show comparisons, then I would advise using a tool like Evernote or DEVONthink for the information storage.

Have fun!

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