Why outlining?

DEVONthink Scenarios
1

I read this thread with interest when it came up the first time a couple of weeks ago, and again when it popped up today. But was caught scratching my head. I get that Mori is a better outliner than DTP (then again, Microsoft Word is a better outliner than DTP). And I can understand the notes-on-groups eiron was originally asking for.

I just don’t get why. I mean, I get the outliner part: I love OmniOutliner for creating straightforward, traditional outlines. They’re handy. But I’m struggling to see the value of Mori as an outliner, or even of having better outlining capabilities in DTP. I know I must be missing something, because you’re all smarter than I am, but I haven’t caught the vision yet.

Would anyone care to elucidate? Post a screenshot? Give a real world example of how they use something like Mori (with specifics, as if you were speaking to someone less intelligent than yourself: me, for instance)? How would better outlining in DEVONthink make me more productive, happy, and attractive to my wife?

2

Well, for me, outlining is one of the last things I need to use DevonNote as my word processor. I know Devon was never intended as a WP, and I even have OmniOutliner, and it’s fine, but I’d love to be able to just do all my writing in DevonNote, rather than pasting notes I’ve taken in Devon into an OO outline, then exporting that to TextEdit or Mellel, and thereby losing the other advantages that working in Devon offers.
I suppose I’d need to use a real WP when I need footnotes or comments, but for most of my day to day writing, I don’t think I need much more than Devon already provides; integrated outlining (perhaps working similarly to the feature as used in Mellel or Jer’s NovelWriter or even Word or AppleWorks) is the only crucial missing feature.
I bet outlining would open up other possibilities, so I’m glad you asked the question and look forward to hearing how others would use an outlining feature.