Thanks & User Interface Suggestion

[MarkRahner]

I’ve used outlining software for decades and have some enormous outlines. I’ve recently found Bike Outliner. I’m thrilled with its efficiency and scalability. Great job, Jesse!

I have one suggestion that I think would significantly improve the user interface. In the current production release, outline rows can have 3 orthogonal states: expanded, collapsed, or no children. These states are currently represented with the following handles: a ghosted downward triangle (expanded), an un-ghosted rightward triangle (collapsed), and a ghosted rightward triangle (no children). Introducing a distinct graphical symbol to represent the no children state would visually clarify these distinctions and avoid the need to ghost anything. Using a solid circle to represent the no children state would work great because rotating a circle doesn’t change its appearance so it conveys the notion that childless rows can’t be expanded. By avoiding ghosting, this change would make state information easier to see. Also, the more consistent visual density along the left edge of the outline would be more aesthetically pleasing.

Cheers! -Mark

[Erlend]

This can be achieved with the editor styles coming to 2.0! (Which can be tested in preview now.) I totally agree with you — so I did that exact change in my first attempt at an editor style.

Here you can see a screenshot:

Is something like that what you wanted?

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Installing them are a bit complicated at the moment, but Jesse has written good guides for how to achieve it. And if you want to try out my style, it’s linked on the link above.

[MarkRahner]

Thanks! That’s pretty close to what I was suggesting. Those three shapes make the expanded/collapsed state completely clear. I prefer solid (filled in) shapes for aesthetics but that’s a minor difference. You’ve demonstrated that the preview release has the flexibility to do what I want. I still recommend a change to the defaults but will happily customize as necessary. -Mark