Export entries as documents

[stan]

Is there a way to export an outline so you end up with a folder full of separate documents, each one containing one entry from the outline?

[Ed Renaud]

I have never come across any mention of this type of capability.

I guess you would have to use AppleScript to copy each section in turn to a new document and save it separately.

[stan]

Years ago there was a program that beat most of the current outlining software available by a longshot. For some reason, the model was pretty much ignored and everyone went the way of standard linear outliners.

This program had some wonderful features which I've never seen anywhere else, including "burst" which took an entry consisting of a paragraph of text and split it into separate entries for each sentence. You could arbitrarily select any number of entries (not necessarily contiguous) and "unburst" them into a single entry. They had something called "binsort" which allowed you to quickly step through a series of entries and put them in different categories (you can do this in any outliner, but this was particularly elegant). You could select a group of entries and randomize the order (this was for brainstorming, helping you to find less obvious relationships, etc.). There were a number of other features as well that facilitated the thinking process.

[stan]

Since my previous post I've discovered that the program is still around. It's called Maxthink:

http://www.maxthink.org/indexflash.htm

The website is minimal and does not really tell you much about the features. And unfortunately, it is Windows only. I'm actually trying to figure out how to install Windows on my Mac just to run it.

[DerekM]

Is there a way to export an outline so you end up with a folder full of separate documents, each one containing one entry from the outline?

There's no built-in option to do this, but could be done with AppleScript.