[Vimoutliner] Proposal: reverse indenting outliner

[Steve Litt]

On Saturday 10 March 2007 09:25, ImLikeWhoa wrote:
> I keep a lot of note and project files in the form of outlines.   I now
> just read them as text files, but would like to fold away sections of my
> file the way vim's TVO does.
>
> The present TVO presents outlines in the form like the normal Word outline
> style, namely
>
> Main heading
> 	subheading
> 	another subheading
> 		subheading of this subheading
> 			smaller headings and text.
>
> My outline format is based on the notion that indenting a paragraph marks a
> division and so more indenting (leading tabs) should mark larger divisions.
> so my outlines look like this:
>
> 					Main heading
> 				subheading
> 				another subheadding
> 			subheading of this subheading
> 		smaller headings
> text
>
> It seems like the TVO vim plugin could be taught to handle this
> indent-based outline style with a few minor changes in the program.  The
> scheme would be the same as TVO, except that more tabs indicate a higher
> level of heading rather than a lower one.  The indent style is readily
> distinguishable from the normal outline style in the source file, because
> the first line in the indent style begins with several tab characters,
> while a normal .otl file does not.
>
> 			So I have two queries for you forum members
> 		Do you know of anyone who has thought about implementing this
> indent-based outline scheme using the TVO plugin?
> 		Would you be interested in implementing this mode within TVO if I paid
> you?   Since it would fit easily into TVO, others could then use it, too.

There are two different Linux outliners, TVO and VO. We're VO. Is that who you 
wanted?

It would be trivial to create a program to take a normal outline and reverse 
it. I think a good name for the program would be mirror.rb :-) It would be a 
2 pass program -- pass 1 counts the highest indentation in the outline, and 
pass 2 recalculates indentation based on (max - this).

As far as using VO to create a "reverse outline", I think you can do that with 
VO the way it is, always assuming you can think that way.

SteveT