When I was a full-time journalist in the 1980s, I became very successful using a dedicated outliner called PCOutline. When all the major Word Processers came along--MS Word, Word Perfect, etc, the lack of outliner functionality kept me with my archaic outliner until MS Word beat the functionality of PCOutline.
I used outlining as my main method of work when a full-time technical writer in the 90s (e.g., Fujitsu Software in San Jose). While working for a java house, I was so influenced by the negative developer reactions to MS, that I've been wishing to move to OpenOffice or LibraOffice ever since they came along. But you don't have the functionality that I need, and furthermore, the discussions of outlining on this forum seem to miss the whole point, from my point of view. I'm a very motivated wannabe LibraOffice user who currently can't make the switch, because although I'm retired and writing fiction, the power of an outliner for writing in all genres is something I can't live without. So my reasons are complex--sorry about that--but tl:dr will not allow you to understand them. Please take the time. I really want to quit Microsoft Office forever and ever and ever. Thanx. The first functionality I need might seem mickey mouse, but it's the foundation for everything else. This is that in Word's outliner view, there's a button in front of every paragraph that I can drag and drop up and down. It's like cut and paste, but a lot faster. Combined with other features, it's extremely powerful. The second functionality I need is to be able to collapse things. In an article of 25 paragraphs, I can hide every line except the first line of the paragraph, thus allowing me to see the entire article of 25 paragraphs on the screen at the same time. This allows me to completely rearrange the entire article by drop and drag. For editing a single sentence or paragraph, I insert a return between sentences, phrases, and even words, drop and drag these elements into a new order, and delete the returns. Voila! A much better constructed paragraph or sentence in a snap. The third functionality is to collapse things within headers. For instance, if I've interviewed a dozen people for an article or if I've brainstormed 5 pages of random ideas for a blog or a chapter in a novel, I create headers for different topics and then drag and drop paragraphs, quotes, ideas, etc into the headers or buckets I've created. When one header becomes too full and fills too much of the screen, I collapse it, so that it hides all the paragraphs already there, which cleans up the screen. When I'm done with this step, I have half a dozen headers, under which are many different ideas, all of which are completely hidden. So I drag and drop my half a dozen headers into the correct order. Then I open the first main header and create a bunch of subheaders. Once this is done, I reorganize all of the points in this first section into subsections or sub-buckets, collapsing them all as needed until everything is organized into a number of different subheaders. At this point, I can rearrange all of these subheaders into the best order that they belong in. I can even drag a subheader into a different main heading if I choose, where it will remain as a separate section. I can repeat this process as many levels as I wish. This feature in MS Word is fractal to nine levels. From a chaotic mixture of confusion emerges order, insight, and wisdom--in one single step. As a technical writer, I used to sit in a brainstorming meetings, write down every developer idea as fast as I could (including those I didn't understand at all), type it all sequentially, and then very quickly organize all of the ideas into a coherent whole. The developers thought I actually knew how to program. (Mwah-hah-hah!) I could never have done that with LibreOffice as it's now configured or OpenOffice, either. Without my Word outliner, I would have been a shitty technical writer, and I would never have been able to write the developer guides I wrote. As a creative writer today, I currently have a dozen projects that are percolating, as well as one major project that I'm focusing on. I just brainstorm for anything that comes up, drag the ideas into the proper buckets, and I never lose anything of value. (Yes, the word "never" is absolutely accurate.) It's like having a Super Power that's available to everyone, but no one knows how to get it. Currently, this Super Power is only available in MS Word. Please make it possible for me to migrate to LibreOffice without losing my Super Powers. And please make these Super Powers available to the world. Doing so could cause the entire planet to evolve into better writers. You can help eliminate crappy writing! Until you do this, LibreOffice is like Kryptonite to me. I can't come near it, even though I truly want to. I beg of you: Please help poor little Cougar quit his addiction to Micro$oft! (Yeah, I know. Outliners do not eliminate the scourge of mixed metaphors.) For those of you who made it this far, thanx for listening. Cougar -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Feature-Request-Lack-of-Outliner-Functionality-a-Deal-Breaker-for-Me-tp4077564.html Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
