[Vimoutliner] Discrepancies with Debian/Ubuntu, documentation, and some questions

[Ross Boylan]

On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 10:29 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thursday 22 May 2008 00:25, Mark S. wrote:
> 
> > QUESTION: Why is the vimoutliner.org site so dormant? It looks like nothing
> > has happened since September 07. I'm asking because I'm hesitant to start a
> > new learning curve on a product if its no longer supported.
> 
> I think we're not doing much development because we're satisfied with the main 
> VimOutliner product. Except for cloning, it has everything Grandview had, and 
> it's MUCH faster for a touch typist. My understanding is that VO is right up 
> there with the "golden age" outliners of the late 1980's and early 1990's.
As someone who still runs GrandView, I notice some features that VO
lacks.

GV has categories, initially importance, date, and who, but extensible.
These provide the ability to slice into the outline in different ways.
The recent schemes for GTD like functionality seem to offer something
like this, at least for the GTD categories.  But they sound not as
integrated to me.

GV knows it's an outline and sometimes VO doesn't.  If you move a
selection from one part of the outline to another, GV will automatically
adjust its level. VO does not.

VO can't read GV outlines, which is one reason I keep using them.  I
have made some stabs at reverse engineering, but without much luck.

I don't use it much, but GV has a couple options for easily sorting
members of an outline.

There are a number of things I know how to do easily in GV.  I suspect
if I knew VIM better they could be done there too, but I'm not sure.  In
GV you can graphically drag parts of the outline around with a mouse.
You can mark disjointed parts of the outline and move/copy/clone them to
another location.  GV supports fancy formatting options.

I think GV can easily change the depth of outline displayed for a
particular part of the outline; I think in VO you have to do it to the
entire document.

There are things VO has that GV doesn't: outlines are easily readable in
other tools; it is open source and works with current operating systems
(GV is not only closed source but dead); it is not limited by the DOS
memory limits.
> 
> VO is now a pretty mature product. Speaking for myself, it does everything I 
> could ever dream of except cloning, and I doubt cloning is possible using Vim 
> as an engine.
> 
> The other VO feature not mature is hoisting -- it sometimes does bad things 
> and I wouldn't use it. Personally, I don't need hoisting, and I guess most 
> others feel the same way.
> 
> The main action in the VimOutliner world has been addons, the latest of which 
> is the TKDO project, which, if I understand correctly, implements a loose 
> subset of GTD (Getting Things Done methodology) using VimOutliner outlines as 
> its native format.
> 
> As far as the worry that it isn't supported, don't worry about that. If our 
> current maintainer and main developer, Noel Henson, was run over by a train, 
> and then a future Vim broke VO, I can probably name at least five people 
> ready, willing and able to make it work again. I would be one of them. There 
> are probably more than 20 people on this list whose daily business activities 
> are completely integrated with VO. I'm one of them.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> SteveT
>  
> Steve Litt
> Recession Relief Package
> http://www.recession-relief.US
> 
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-- 
Ross Boylan                                      wk:  (415) 514-8146
185 Berry St #5700                               ross at biostat.ucsf.edu
Dept of Epidemiology and Biostatistics           fax: (415) 514-8150
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA 94107-1739                     hm:  (415) 550-1062