RE: VimOutliner and Cream

[BG - B. A. <BAr...@dy...>]

> Out of curiosity, what features do you want most from an outliner?
> Auto-indent? Outline folding? Syntax highlighting? 
> Auto-totaling checkboxes? Other?

- nice looking outlines (syntax highlighting)
- easy to move points/entire trees around (promote, demote, reparent)
- auto-folding (no manual fold marks)
- an extensible base on which any additional features that are needed
might be built, and which I don't have to maintain myself (i.e. there is
a community to support code development)

Right now, I'm still in the discovery stage of using outlines.  I have
some vague ideas what I want/need, but haven't yet discovered everything
that is truly useful.  So while checkboxes and hoisting both look
interesting, I don't actually use them day-to-day.

> The times I tried an outliner (including VimOutliner) I 
> realized it took as much effort to learn this new style of 
> note keeping than it did to simply find a way to write notes 
> in plain text. I've got a few tips for doing this in Cream 
> that I'll share below.

I think this is where Cream would shine.  A nice toolbar specifically
for outlining would help.  Outlining *is* a different way of thinking,
and it's pretty hard for a new user if all of the real power is hidden
behind strange key sequences.  Let's take reparenting a tree in vim+VO
for instance:

- position cursor on tree
- "zc" to fold up the tree into a single line
- "dd" to cut entire tree
- position cursor on new line
- "P" to paste entire tree

This is a bit strange for a Cream user.  I envision:

- position cursor on tree
- press button to select tree (or key shortcut)
- position cursor on new line
- paste (^V or Edit -> Paste)

There's the small issue of not accidentally pasting a tree into the
middle of a line, though.  If you ^V in the middle of a line, you get a
miss.  If you "P" to paste, the line is put above the current line.  But
this is a general Cream issue, not a VO-specific issue.

> Perhaps it would be helpful to think of it as a 
> special mode (like Cream's diff, expert, lite, expert, 
> column) where the user is made fully aware that special 
> behaviors are in effect. I guess you're already on the path 
> of limiting this to certain filetypes (.otl) which is also 
> good. This makes it easier to control, too.

Sure.  That's a reasonable way to go about it.  Hence my idea for a
toolbar.  This should only appear for .otl files.

> > As for outlining in Cream, I find a few tips quite helpful. 
> (Cut/paste this below into a .txt file and then re-open it in Cream):

I'll have to look over these tips in a break later today.  I'm in a rush
to head out to the office.  Just a general comment, though.

Ben