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I was pleased to read the recent note that the next version of OO is your priority. Here are my highest hopes for new features:

1) Sort and Filter based on Columnar Data - this would greatly extend the customizability and capabilities of OO for me.

2) Scale images - it's great being able to add images to an outline, but if we could re-size the image once it's in the outline, it'd be even better.

3) Boolean searches - Batch Find is excellent, but I could drill down to what I'm looking for MUCH faster if I could add more specific search criteria.

4) Override styles option - currently, the style for one line overrides the style for that level, and the level style overrides the document style. Sometimes, I've got a whole bunch of different styles at the same level and it'd be great to have the option to make one overall change for the entire level and not have to change those items one by one.

5) Multiple OO files open at once - accessed by tabs

6) More choices for Customize Toolbar - there are some functions I use a lot (Find and Hoist to name just two) for which there are no Toolbar icons. It'd be terrific to have the choice to put any possible menu command up on the toolbar. (It's about the only thing I ever really admired about MS Word.)

7) Can I have all this tomorrow?

Thanks,

roger
 
Thanks for sending these in! Just so you know, feature requests posted here will likely get read by folks on the OmniOutliner team, but if you want to be sure they get added to the development database that the team uses to plan releases, you'll want to shoot an email to the support ninjas with this. ("Send Feedback", under the help menu, will do this.)

One additional request for clarification; can you expand on what you mean with request #1? Ascending and descending searches are both supported in all the column types I can think of, and I believe that the search field filters across all the columns. I'm sure there is stuff you need that we don't do; there's just a lot of room for interpretation in the request as it is. :-)
 
Sorry for not being explicit enough ... let me try this: If I have an outline for a history book, I can list the items in chronological order. But in each item's column I enter a category the item would belong to: politics, culture, science, sports, etc. Another column would list the country in which the event took place.

A filter would allow me to look at only the items that have culture in the column field. (Merely using Search and looking for the word "Culture" might also bring up those items relating to French scientist growing bacteria in a culture medium...and who wants that?) If there were a 2nd column that listed country, I could drill down and look at only those items that involved Russia and culture. It gives us a very convenient way to look at the same information in different ways. Ecco Pro was brilliant at this, and I feel certain OO could be, too.

Again, Search does look across all the columns, but Search would point me to every item that contained the word "Russia", regardless of whether it was in the Category column of the main text entry column.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian View Post
Thanks for sending these in! Just so you know, feature requests posted here will likely get read by folks on the OmniOutliner team, but if you want to be sure they get added to the development database that the team uses to plan releases, you'll want to shoot an email to the support ninjas with this. ("Send Feedback", under the help menu, will do this.)

One additional request for clarification; can you expand on what you mean with request #1? Ascending and descending searches are both supported in all the column types I can think of, and I believe that the search field filters across all the columns. I'm sure there is stuff you need that we don't do; there's just a lot of room for interpretation in the request as it is. :-)
As I take notes during phone calls in OO, I often think of to-do items. I'd love to have a checkmark column called to-dos, so that filtering on that column would show me a list of all my to-do items in one gulp. As an example. The menu would be something like View/Filter/Select Column/Set Filter Criteria. Having the ability to filter conditions in multiple columns would be even nicer, but for now I'd settle for a few simple filters.

I distrust (or don't understand well enough) OO's automatic sorting a fear that if I were to use the sorting feature to show every item with a YES checkmark, my entire file will be jumbled out of order, never to return to its original sequence. Can anyone help me with that?
 
Regarding features desired, I've cruised through this thread and some others, and found the things I feel are important already well expressed, so I will quote them--
>>>>>indicates my comments<<<<<<

Johno from a thread last August:

# Multiple document windows (views)
It should be possible to have many windows open into a document so that it would be possible to have various items hoisted in their own windows. >>>>>And windows with tabs! as mentioned below<<<<<

# Find and Gather
There needs to be a new find tool, with say ⌥⌘F as the shortcut, whereby the results of the find are created as clones in a new window. This find also needs to be able to use regex and to be able to find based on named styles (at present it is not possible to find all instances of say the "Review" style without manually inspecting the whole outline). This find should be able to be run without destroying the results of any previous find by creating a new results window.

# Columns
Need to be able to set a column as hidden (not just zero width) so that when navigating across a row the cursor doesn't enter a hidden column.

Need to be able to filter the display based on column contents. >>>>>>Another person expressed this feature well in a more recent post, "A filter would allow me to look at only the items that have 'culture' in the column field"; that is, even if the search word 'culture' occurs elsewhere in the outline.<<<<<<<<

# Internal Links
Need to be able to click on and follow internal document links which should be styled as links. >>>Yes!!<<<<<< These links should survive HTML export.

# Collapse and Expand
Need to be able to expand and collapse the outline to each level. A ⌘-click on a row handle should expand/contract every other sibling in that view. Keyboard shortcuts ⌃⌘1 to ⌃⌘8 should expand/collapse the outline view to that level. >>>>>>I found the directions to the scripts to do this, but having this capability within the app would of course be better<<<<<<<<<

# Badges
It should be possible to add badges, or icons, to items to help in visually providing information as to their content or import.

and from a recent post on this thread, I very much like these:

2) Scale images - it's great being able to add images to an outline, but if we could re-size the image once it's in the outline, it'd be even better.

3) Boolean searches - Batch Find is excellent, but I could drill down to what I'm looking for MUCH faster if I could add more specific search criteria.

4) Override styles option - currently, the style for one line overrides the style for that level, and the level style overrides the document style. Sometimes, I've got a whole bunch of different styles at the same level and it'd be great to have the option to make one overall change for the entire level and not have to change those items one by one.

5) Multiple OO files open at once - accessed by tabs >>>>>or, different view of same outline in separate windows, accessed by tabs<<<<<<

6) More choices for Customize Toolbar - there are some functions I use a lot (Find and Hoist to name just two) for which there are no Toolbar icons. It'd be terrific to have the choice to put any possible menu command up on the toolbar. (It's about the only thing I ever really admired about MS Word.)

end of quotations

I find OO the best for writing in which I want to quickly get down thoughts or reminders, perhaps over a long period of time and then re-arrange later, but for a long time I have been looking also for more visual representations to help me when I have other files/images/websites which are part of the thinking or material for a piece of writing. At present Curio (which I am just learning) seems to be answering this need better since most "assets" brought into an "idea space" can be viewed as icons or previews, and sized. PDFs can have an icon of any page within the PDF. I recognize that OO is a quite different tool from Curio, and that it does its main purpose better than Curio---I don't want all apps to have everything I want! But if, within its text-oriented identity, OO can add some visual options such as (from above)
# Badges
and
2) Scale images,

that would be great!

I do bear in mind that the app that tries to do everything for everyone turns into (shudder) Word! and then we all hate it, for its unwieldiness, unreliability, difficulty of use, and general cussedness and un-Macness. Accordingly I have no problem with owning several apps that complement one another in the area of writing, researching, and thinking. I am a very happy user of OO, DevonThinkPro, Nisus Writer Pro and a few others. Maybe Curio also, soon. But the feature additions suggested truly seem to enhance OO's core purpose.
 
Reminder - folks that want to see things added to our applications will want to send them in email via "Send Feedback" in the help menu. Posts here on the forums often get read by folks on the various teams, but you're guaranteed a response from the Support Ninjas if you send email.
 
 


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