FO (was Re: New outliner!)

[Alexandre Enkerli]

No, this is not to bash or plug either product. But discussing 
different outliners has been a fairly common activity on the list with 
good reason. The OmniGroup has been kind enough to provide this list 
which serves the community of OmniOutliner users and some of us are 
still looking for the perfect solution, which might be based on more 
than one outliner.
Sent a message about FO a while ago (January 21) and have been using 
that program since. Like any product, it's neither perfect nor 
perfectly lousy. Version 0.9q is the last version I've been testing and 
it's expiring shortly.
Again, I don't want to plug it or bash OO. Just sharing my experience
What I personally like most about FO is the status bar which not only 
includes classics (like line/character numbers) but, oh joy, timestamps 
for every single item, both date created and date modified. It also has 
a cool bookmarking feature, the panes (editing/notes) can be set 
side-by-side, can split/collapse the editing pane, you can select 
multiple lines with keystrokes, can show either top lines or full 
items, and has a split/merge feature.
It exports to Plain Text, Tabbed Text, RTFD, HTML (with themes), and 
OPML. Have used the OPML quite a bit and it works as it should.
Features I haven't used but that seem nice include keybinding 
customization, cloning, encryption, file-linking, hide/show items, 
labels, and copy/paste ruler/font. I don't really do scripts and 
haven't checked if it's scriptable.
What I don't like has to do mainly with navigation (keystrokes or 
dragging items) and the overall interface (which I find a bit "loud"). 
Of course, it doesn't have a nice community like OO does and the author 
may not be as responsive as the OmniGroup (only sent him a few comments 
so it'd be hard to know), but overall, it's at least worth a try.

Again, this is not to say any of us should switch to FO and abandon OO 
but it does serve as a good opportunity to talk about features.