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I was typing notes from a meeting in OmniOutliner and had an epiphany:

As I was typing my meeting notes in OmniOutliner, I was thinking that it would be neat if there was a way that I could "store" all of my meeting notes in OmniOutliner - currently my meeting notes are scattered throughout my hard drive, and having to find and open them all individually and deal with multiple windows kind of sucks.

I was thinking that it would be neat that—borrowing an interface from OmniFocus—all of my OmniOutliner files that stored meeting notes could be listed in the sidebar, and you could group these notes via folders. Then all of my meeting notes would be in one spot, and I could organize them by project, committee, etc.

As I was thinking about note taking (versus outlining in general), I was reminded on how I have been on a never-ending search for a the ideal note taking app on the iPad (I even happened to look at three candidates last night, probably why I made the connection). I have purchased dozens of note taking apps for the iPad, and there are some very good ones, but non of them leave me completely satisfied, they all seem to have one or two great strengths and one or two great weaknesses. Some combine type and drawing, some add photos, some add attachments, some sync to various third party services, some have good text editing (but none of them do outlining/numbering), some of good interfaces, but none have strengths in all of these areas.

That led me to this old thread, and the thought that the iOS version of OmniOutliner is going to be different/limited in some ways compared to the desktop version.

Completing the circle, and realizing that a note-taking application doesn't need all of the bells and whistles that OmniOutliner has, maybe the best approach would be a new Omni app: OmniNotes.

OmniNotes:
•*Based on OmniOutliner, but with a few less bells and whistles
•*Database storage of all of its "files" in the app, using a sidebar like OmniFocus for managing individual notes
• Notes can have tags
• Sidebar supports Folders and Smart Folders for grouping and arranging notes
• Sync in a similar fashion to OmniFocus
• It would be nice to be able to have items in the outline to have checkboxes for To-Do's (meeting follow-ups). It would be nice if only a section of the "notes" would have the To-Do checkboxes, so the entire "agenda" didn't have to have checkboxes. Holy grail would be the ability to send the To-Do's to OmniFocus.

Last edited by joelande; 2011-01-03 at 12:01 PM.. Reason: clarifications