[Enkerli]

There might be something special about us, users of outlining apps. These apps are such an integral part of our work that we might react as strongly as if spell-checking were taken out of a mainstream word processor. At the same time, outlining remains in something of a niche. Many apps do outlining, often for a specific purpose. But the ideal outliner isn't there, yet.
And it's quite possible that the 4.0 version of OO won't be it. In some key ways, it's even possible that MORE 3.1 was closer to the ultimate outlining than OO will ever become. Part of the reason is that the market for the ultimate outliner is either dormant or simply too small.

The comment about NetManage EccoPro (now hosted at Compusol.org) does get me. When I was in exile on XP for a few years, it was described as an appropriate replacement to OO. I tried using it for quite a while and did manage to integrate it in my workflow, to an extent, but it still didn't do some of the most important things I wanted and needed to do, especially in terms of producing documents for both classroom and study use. For a while afterwards, I was using OneNote. But that still wasn't ideal. When I came back to Mac OS X, OO was among the first things I installed. And I still like it (though I've switched a significant chunk of my note-taking to Toodledo). Far from perfect and showing its age in terms of "computing paradigms." But still useful.

Over the years, I've probably spent inordinate amounts of time looking for the ideal outliner. From the description of upcoming features, OO4 isn't it (at this point, I really need seamless synchronization and an innovative approach to outline entry; I don't need cloning, but I do need seamless sync). TaskPaper would be much closer if it had import/export features (which seems so easy to do, given the format). And I can just imagine how much of a dream outlining on the iPad could become. If only we had the ideal app...

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Hopeful in Montreal (aka Alex)