[Vimoutliner] Proposal: reverse indenting outliner

[Steve Litt]

On Saturday 10 March 2007 15:37, ImLikeWhoa wrote:

> Thanks SteveT -- Thanks for pointing out that VO is not the same as TVO.
> You propose a conversion program that would let me use the existing style
> of VO.  But this would oblige me to manage both outline modes at once.  I
> would get confused.  Since the reverse indent style makes more sense to me
> and I'm totally habituated to it, I'm hoping to get a program that would
> adapt to me (and others who like reverse indent style).  It was easy for
> you to make the conversion program, and I'm grateful.  Maybe it would be
> almost as easy to augment VO or TVO.  ...
> Wistfully, ImLikeWhoa

Hi ImLikeWhoa,

The existing program will quite easily create documents the way you envision. 
I was one of the early adopters of VO, and back in those days it did little 
more than go to the same indentation level you were on, which it would do for 
you. Another feature that would work right out of the box is executable 
lines. I don't know whether interoutline linking would work with reverse 
outlining -- check it out. If not, it shouldn't be hard to get it to work.

There are two things that won't be easy -- checkboxes are one, and then the 
big cahuna of difficulties -- expand/collapse. Expand/colapse is done 
primarily by Vim, not by VO. To enable expand/collapse, you'd need to write 
quite a bit of Vim language code. It wouldn't be at all trivial.

You have me curious. What do you use a reverse outline for? Where did you 
learn to think like that? Certainly not in school, they teach forward 
outlining exclusively. As a matter of fact, before your email it never 
occurred to me to reverse an outline.

What are the advantages you derive out of that method of outlining?

Thanks

SteveT

Steve Litt
Author: Universal Troubleshooting Process books and courseware
http://www.troubleshooters.com/