Missing Outliners

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I’m a big fan of outlining software. What surprises me is that it’s not a standard feature in writing software. VS Code doesn’t have good outlining plugin. Neither do text editors like Vim, Geany, and Textadept. Outside of Emacs, I’m not sure which desktop software has outlining features. (Zim has some useful features but isn’t quite there.) Software in the browser with outlining includes: Logseq, Roam, Dynalist, Remnote, and Workflowy. Outlining software goes back at least to work by Dave Winer.

What do I mean by “outlining”? To qualify, by my definition a piece of software can be used for outlining if it supports simple creation and reorganization of outlines. The required features:

• Creation of bullet lists with different indentation levels
• Ability to change the indentation level of items and subtrees with minimal effort
• Ability to move items and subtrees up and down
• Ability to select items and subtrees for copy, cut, and paste

11 December 2021