Essential Writer’s Apps: OmniOutliner
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- Опубликовано: 11 окт 2024
- The writing tool and ideas organiser for every writer: OmniOutliner for Mac and iOS. Join the Writers’ Mailing List: eepurl.com/gQTqTT
Links:
OmniOutliner (Pro and Essentials) for iOS: apps.apple.com...
OmniOutliner (Pro and Essentials) direct from the developer: www.omnigroup....
OmniOutliner (Pro and Essentials) on the Mac App Store: apps.apple.com...
Omni Outliner and Omni Graffle have been steady my companions for years now - from idea gathering and sorting, to designing the flow of events, shots and layout. Highly recommend!
I understand OmniGraffle yet I can't really say that I get it: maybe I'm just not artistic or visual enough. But I relish all the the Omni apps. And good to meet a fellow OmniOutliner devotee.
@@WilliamGallagher We are the few, the proud... those with a modicum of money
Just found your videos, William, when looking for an OmniOutliner 5 Pro comprehensive tutorial -- which I've yet to find. However, I appreciated your video, as well as others that you've posted. Excellent. I've been using OmniOutliner since it was first introduced years ago, but never was a "power user." It's always been sort of a spreadsheet for writers. I'm now trying to use it to replace my all-time favorite "Notebook" by Circus Ponies that was discontinued. So looking for more ways to put information (like images and documents) into my outlines. Thanks for your videos!
Circus Ponies must be one of my favourite company names - and yet I never got around to trying their Notebook. That’s such a shame that it’s gone. Have you read the Omni Group’s book about OmniOutliner? It’s a while since I have, but I remember them being free on the Apple Books store and extremely well done. I’m considering doing some editions of 58keys that are longer and a deeper dive into certain apps; if I do that, you can be sure OmniOutliner will be one of them. Thanks for the comments, much appreciated.
@@WilliamGallagher The OmniOutliner User Manual in the Apple store is for IOS, rather than for the desktop version. It is helpful, but I was hoping for a desktop manual. Thanks for the tip.
Hi - first off I'd like to say how refreshing it is to hear the honest and earnest views of a jobbing writer that actually uses these tools to make a living, as opposed to the 'get rich quick by publishing ebooks without writing a word yourself' videos that are so prevalent on YT (subbed for that reason). Am I missing something though with omnioutliner? Does it not allow you to put the meat (content / body text) on the bones (structure)? It's great to be able to manipulate the structure so readily, but if that's not actually manipulating the substance of the thing you are working on then it seems its just a sidenote. I only installed yesterday, so maybe I am missing something, but so far it seems that everything is headings and nothing is 'body text'. Is that actually the case?
Steve, that's very good of you to say: this business of it being the perspective of a writer using this stuff is precisely what I wanted. As for OmniOutliner, though, the developers have told me before that people write entire novels in it. I've written two and three thousand word articles. So yes, you can write anything from a heading to a paragraph or more and then drag to rearrange it. I never set out to do longform writing in it, though: I find I jot down a thought, then wonder how I'll write that in the final piece, think of something, try it out and then automatically, unthinkingly, I hit return and write the next paragraph of the final piece. Next thing you know, I've accidentally written the entire article. I like that, I like how absorbed I've got and especially how OmniOutliner has not got in the way. But it also means I don't then tend to need to drag the paragraphs around very much. I love OmniOutliner for letting me get the thoughts out of my head and arrange them, rearrange them, fiddle with them, get them straight before I go to write them. I still prefer doing the actual writing part in something else like Pages or Scrivener. Scrivener has its own outliner and it's very good, but somehow OmniOutliner gives you more features and, best of all, is better able to let you forget you're using anything and just think as you type.
@@WilliamGallagher Thank you for giving me such a considered reply. I have Scrivener, but have never really got to grips with it. I'll try watching your Three Biscuit Guide to remedy that! So far as OO is concerned, it just seems that it would be so trivially easy for them to add the ability to attach body text / content to any level of the headings hierarchy that it seems a bit of a glaring omission that they have failed to do that. I don't expect it to spit out a complete and 'ready for print' long form document, but OO is so good at manipulating the structure of a document, that it seems a shame that it cannot readily be used to output a complete logical structure with content, without using a workaround (e.g. using a particular heading level for the content, or using 'Notes', which seems intended for notes about the content). Thanks again for your insights!
Just came across this while contemplating purchasing. 3 years later, are you still using it? And hey, Wolverhampton is in the Premier League, congrats 👍
Go Fulham.
That's a football thing, isn't it? You can't fool me, I can spot these things. But yes, I am still using OmniOutliner - quite possibly to excess. Planning events, planning certain longer articles, writing scripts even. Love that app: I hope you get as much from it as I have.
@@WilliamGallagher Glad to hear it!
I'm loving OmniOutline and I would like to use Voice Control with it. Is there a command that simulates the Return Key?
Apparently Voice Control includes a command called “Enter that” which presses Return. I haven’t used it myself, I’m afraid, but that’s what Apple says. Would you mind letting me know if it works?
Is it just me (very likely) or has the recent update of Omni Outliner Pro added the "Focus" feature as an option whilst working with outlines?
Oh! I haven’t spotted that. I’m surprised how little I use Focus in even OmniFocus. I must dig in.
have you tried Roam research? It also have an outline feature.
I haven't, no: hadn't heard of it before. But I'm off to dive in right now. Thanks.
Hi William, how did you manage to use iPad‘s Split Screen for presentation and showing only Keynote and not OmniOutliner?
On my older iPad both apps are displayed on the wall.
Try using OmniOutliner in Slide Over. The iPad I had when I made that video died a while later and on my replacement, I couldn't seem to pull off the side by side trick -- because, I think, my iPad was smaller. But Slide Over worked so well I've kept on using it.
@@WilliamGallagher Thank you so much for this quick advice, it works really well this way and my problem is solved!
By the way: Omni Outliner became my most used writing tool, it´s amazing.
@@keepitsimple954 Brilliant, I am so pleased.
An interesting app but not sure I'd want to use it myself as I use Dynalist for my outlining. I can also use Roam and Notion as well and Obsidian at a push.
Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about Obsidian: can I ask what you do or don’t like about it, please?
@@WilliamGallagher I like that it's local storage, so all important files are kept on your computer. It has a great look and feel with an already established community that's building lots of plug-ins for it. I also like the graph view, so you can see how everything's connected!
Thanks: I hadn’t heard of the graph view at all
@@WilliamGallagher it's one of the more powerful features of Obsidian! :-)
Thanks for presenting omnioutliner. But I know you use scrivener. So why one app more? What can you do with OO that you cannot do with scrivener?
Perhaps if I’d come to Scrivener first, I might like its outliner more. Even then, though, I’d tend to use it for books or particularly complex articles. OmniOutliner is my preferred app whenever I’m dealing with any kind of idea that is more involved. I plan workshops and events in it, for instance. Any time that I need to dump a lot of ideas out of my head and then massage them into some kind of order, OmniOutliner is superb. I’m not knocking Scrivener’s outliner, but I don’t find it especially great. Mind you, I tried outlining in Microsoft Word and that’s enough to make you give up writing.
@@WilliamGallagher I understand better when you write you used OO before Scrivener. I am in the opposite situation. Outlining ideas with Scrivener is quite powerful, you write in 1 text everything that comes to your mind, then you split in chunk then you order these chunks. Moreover you can add for each text a note and a resumee. You can add labels and sherry on the cake you can add documentation in any form.
Hierarchical thinking is powerful and a limitation at the same time. Trying OO I was disappointed to not being able to format the numbering as I want (I want to make a 2 digit numbering like 10.01, 10,02,..,10.10, 10.11 for a Johnny decimal classification) and the numbering OO is proposing is so limited …
And about price… twice the price of Scrivener!!
So you’ll guess my conclusion: a nice app but way too expensive (price and energy to master one more app) and with incomprehensible formating limitations.
I add: I tried OO because you presented it and I trust your advices (it doesn’t mean we have to agree every time :-) )
@@chr_aikicom Ah, now, that’s so interesting about numbering: I never number anything. May not even have tried out OmniOutliner’s numbering. But the ability to so quickly re-order and change the smallest part, I love that. And I have dragged images and files into OmniOultiner; the fact you can then click the disclosure triangle to hide them away is saving me headaches on a project now. Maybe a difference is that I also use OmniOutliner after I’ve planned out something: I will present Zoom workshops with an OmniOutliner document above the video window. How fast you can move around and change things, add things, it’s tremendous. But I admit I’d forgotten the price entirely: well worth it to me, but I see not to you. Let us agree that Scrivener is ace, absolutely.
@@WilliamGallagher I would love to use Omnioutliner as an addition to scrivener for novel writing. Because sometimes you have to leave the room and look at your writing from a different view. But it‘s actually the poor implementation of numbering that puts a drop of poison into this great app: If you want to outline a book with three parts and, say, 21 chapters, OO will start numbering the chapters in each part from 1, without the possibility to continue numbering of rows across the higher level. I could not believe an outlining app with „Pro“ in its name misses such a simple feature. What a pity!
If you like OmniOutliner, as I do, then you may want to try my favorite creator app: iThoughts: www.toketaware.com/. It's a mindmapping tool for Macs, iPads and iPhones and windows. It works the way I think through projects. Amazingly flexible. Among its many features, you can also export your mindmaps in several formats that include an outline or MSWord document.
Thanks very much: I’ll take a look. It’s going to be difficult to wrench me away from MindNode, though....
@@WilliamGallagher Oh, great as long as you're using a mindmap solution. I really find that architecture so helpful.
West Wing DVD box shout out :D
Hmm. I can’t tell whether to be pleased that we’re both clearly fans - or wonder how you noticed when I was doing my best to be fascinating. So love that show, though.
@@WilliamGallagher Ha I was paying attention! I am rewatching the show and have my DVDs out just now, I found I’d been avoiding it the last four years for reasons. At any rate, I was curious about third party outliners as I currently use Scrivener but I am a novice writer and am just delving into my first long form.
@@themelligator I’m so relieved you said all of this: I was feeling guilty for mine about attention. Mind you, I was also wondering whether you were also like me over the last four seasons. I’ve tried. I have..