Word processor/text editor with keyboard-based hierarchical structure?

November 18, 2011 12:33 PM

Is there an app that displays keyboard-editable hierarchical structure in the left pane and text editing/word processing in the right pane?

I'm looking for a Mac or web-based app that will allow me to create and modify hierarchical structure (in the form of multi-level bulleted lists) in the left pane and do text editing/word processing in the right pane.

I wish I could combine Workflowy and Scrivener into one tool.

The good thing about Scrivener: It displays the hierarchical structure of my document in the left pane (with headers, subheaders, subsubheaders) and displays a text editor/word processor in the right pane.

The problem with Scrivener: Creating new sections, moving sections around, nesting one section beneath another, etc is cumbersome. Every time you want a new level of the hierarchy, you have to choose "new text," name it, and use the trackpad (not the keyboard) to drag it to where you want it in document folder structure. Blech.

The good thing about Workflowy: Creating and modifying the hierarchical structure is so easy. You create a new list item simply by hitting enter, promote by hitting tab, demote by hitting shift-tab, and move list items around easily using the keyboard.

The problem with Workflowy: no text editor pane.

What I want is a tool that's like Workflowy in the left pane—quick keyboard-based creating and modifying of hierarchical structure—but with a text editor/word processor in the right pane.

With the tool I envision, for each bulleted list item in the left-pane hierarchy, I could enter right-pane text. At the end, like Scrivener, the tool would "compile" a Word document, excluding the hierarchy of headers and subheaders and including only the right-pane text.

I can hack a solution to this with Workflowy by just entering body text below various list items in the structural hierarchy and adding a #bodytext tag for each paragraph of prose, then running a search for #bodytext and exporting only the paragraphs that appear thus tagged. But it would be more far more useful to have a split-screen navigation so that I could see the body text in a separate pane from the hierarchical structure.

I looked at OmniOutliner, and with that tool, I do not seem to be able to select and export by hierarchical level, so I don't think I could isolate the body text.

Does such a tool exist? What solutions would you suggest? Thanks!

posted by incandescentman to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Best answer: Actually, Scrivener's left outline pane is quite a bit like what you describe as wishing to have. It is true, one could use it in the way you describe, laboriously clicking the Add New button and dragging thing around with the mouse, but it does have a pretty good set of keyboard shortcuts. I wouldn't say it rivals a dedicated outliner, but for what you put forth in the Worflowy "Good things" section, you can do. For instance, Enter does work to make new items by default. The first Enter will stop editing the current row, if you are indeed editing it, and the second Enter will start a new row below it at the same level. I prefer Cmd-N because that works whether you are editing or not.

Spatial movement is all done with Ctrl-Cmd-ArrowKeys. Left and Right for promotion and demotion, and up and down as you would expect. This can work on multiple objects if applicable. Ctrl-Opt-UpArrow and DownArrow will select the last or next container, respectively. LeftArrow all by itself will ascend to the current container. So an easy way to add a new item to the bottom of the current sibling list you are in, for instance, is to tap LeftArrow and then hit Return.

Something you might find useful, if you do not wish to mess with the folder vs. file dichotomy and just use it like an outliner, is to enable the "Treat all documents with subdocuments as folders" flag in the Navigation preferences pane. That will cause file stacks to act like folders in every way, including automatically adding new items as children when they are selected, for container selection with the above shortcut, and also to trigger group view mode in the main editor when they are clicked on in the binder.

If you do like folders, you'll probably like Cmd-Opt-G to group a selection of siblings, and Cmd-Opt-N to make a new one. And of course, you can convert folders to files and vice versa whenever you wish in the right-click menu.

Let's see, to get a purist text-only output in Scrivener, when you compile definitely use the Format As "Original" preset. That won't inject any headers, as many of the other presets do. If all you do want is headers, to get a clean no-text outline, the Enumerated Outline compile preset is nice. Or you can use the OPML export in the File > Export menu.
posted by MysteriousMan at 10:12 PM on December 22, 2011 [2 favorites]