Hello Soulo
I have campaigned for a true outliner as part of NW for years -- with what we have now, I think we are pretty close. Let me explain ...
You can't expand and collapse, but you can still make a pretty good outline. Viz:
Set up a series of Paragraph Styles for headings. These incorporate both the "Headlings" from the Lists palette to get the numbering, indents, different types, sizes and styles, etc. PLUS Table of Content level AND a body text style as "Next Style". You assign it a keyboard short cut. I have my headings Styles called "Heading 1", "Heading 2", etc., and naturally the keyboard shortcuts are option-command-1, option-command-2, etc.
Also set up a series of Paragraph Styles for body text. For me, these are all the same except that they have different left indents to match the head indents. These are based on my standard Body Text Entry Style, using Verdana 12 for easy viewing on screen. These are named Body 1, Body 2, etc. and each is the "Next Style" for the appropriate head. You don't need to give these Body Styles shortcuts, because they are invoked in your document as "Next Style" by their heads. You certainly do NOT give them Table of Contents recognition.
Now -- when working in your pseudo-outline mode, go Menu Bar > View > Show Navigator and a panel will open on the left side of your window.
Start writing. As you go, your headings appear in the Navigator because it is showing the Table of Content and you have designated all your heads for the ToC. You don't have expand or collapse, but you have a collapsed view available in your Navigator all the time.
You insert your first head "Heading 1" (option-command-1) then type. When you hit return, you move into "Next Style" which is "Body Text 1". As you continue to hit return for new paragraphs, you stay in that style.
Then you get to where you want to move into another head. If it is at the same level as the first, you just do your return out of the previous paragraph, do option-command-1, and you get another first level head which numbers itself "2". If you actually wanted a second level head there, you would hit option-command-2 and you would get a second level head which would designate itself -- in my cse -- "1.1"\, or "b" or whatever you had set up in the List styles. You type your new head, then return, and you get Body Text 1 style kicking in if you have made another first level head or Body Text 2 if you have a second level head.
And so on!
You can move aroujnd in the documnent by clickming on the items in the Table of Contants.
Now, you want to move a section? You have to select both the head and the following body text. No option but to drag down from the head to the end of the body attached to it.
Now, I have all these text sections set up in Verdana which, if you printed it, would likely make you chunder on the pages. You want to transform them into a nice printer font. For this purpose, you have a single Character Style (Character NOT Paragraph) with your type specifications for print set out -- e.g. mine are Adobe Caslon, 12 pt -- and name it. Mine is "Body Text Print". Okay -- you are ready. So you drop your cursor into a Body Text 1 Paragraph Style paragraph (i.e. text to come after first level heads), go down to the bottom of the Styles Palette, click on the gear wheel, and you see a command "Select All With Style" and ALL the Body Text 1 paragraphs will be selected. Now click on that Character Style, "Body Text Print" and they all transform into your selected print type while RETAINING their Paragraph Style characteristics and any individual type styling you have added, like italics.
Regarding the selection of whole sections; I have suggested to Nisus that while they are taking their time to work up true outlining, they could help us with the whole head + selection thing by giving us a selection option constrained by Paragraph Styles, so that if you set up your outline as I have suggested above, it would automatically select the whole section. The logic of such a selection tool would be:
Select the paragraph with the current Style PLUS any subsequent paragraphs which complied with the "Next Style" of the current Style. This would mean it could pick up a head plus the body dependent on it if the Styles were set up as per my scheme above, but selection would end when the Style changed to one which didn’t follow as a Next Style, i.e. when the next head was inserted.
Yes, it is not a dedicated outliner, but it is pretty useful.
Cheers, Geoff
Geoffrey Heard, Business Writer & Publisher
"Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes" -- Revealed! The secrets of how you can use type and layout to turbocharge your messages in print. See the book at
http://www.worsleypress.com