@kcase, would you consider adding a clickable focus path above the outline, like Workflowy?
Unless I’m missing a feature, OO lets you drill down using Focus, but you can’t quickly drill back up. Unfocus takes you back to the unfocused top of the outline.
Being able to focus in and out quickly within the hierarchy makes big outline workable. The OO tree view in the sidebar is much slower and less convenient.
I prefer OO5 in many ways, but I can navigate in Workflow much faster and easier.
Related to another point you made here, both Tinderbox and FoldingText provide a menu item / keyboard shortcut that unfocuses the outline one level at a time. This is very useful; I much prefer it to OmniOutliner’s behavior, which is to bring you back all the way to the top of the outline.
So, I second the request for either:
a similar clickable path / breadcrumb bar, or
a keyboard shortcut to unfocus the outline one level at a time
(Of these two options, I’d actually prefer the latter. It also seems it might be easier to implement.)
The clickable path/breadcrumb bar is the more useful of the two, IMHO because it orients you to where you are in the outline. If I’m drilled down into the outline, I may get a little lost. That’s why you need a trail of breadcrumbs. ;-)
Meanwhile, though it’s not clickable, I just use this:
--adapted from https://discourse-test.omnigroup.com/t/breadcrumbs-to-know-where-i-am/6326/3
set shortLen to 30 -- length of excerpt for long text
tell application "OmniOutliner"'s front document
set selRow to selected rows's item 1
set selName to selRow's name
tell selName
if length < shortLen then
set shortName to it
else
set shortName to its text 1 thru shortLen & " ..."
end if
end tell
set crumbTrail to ""
repeat with i in selRow's ancestors
set crumbTrail to i's name & " –-> " & crumbTrail
end repeat
display dialog crumbTrail & shortName buttons "Ok"
end tell
Copy-paste into Script Editor and make sure Script Editor.app is enabled System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility. I’ve put in my Script Menu so I just make a menu choice rather than having to open Script Editor. Could also attach a keyboard shortcut.