WU-04: Outliners Idea Tree Mountain House Publishing, Inc. $69 #7073/1502 is a non-resident thought processor or outliner that uses a tree or "organization chart" type of approach rather than the usual "outline" look. Personally, we think that the standard outline approach is more compact and easier to grasp at a glance, but Idea Tree is easy to use and has a very professional look to it. "Pull-down" menus at the top of the screen means that you can use the program almost without looking at the on-disk documentation. You can use Idea Tree as a business tool as well. You can record customers by products with names, address, phone numbers and a brief commentary, make organization charts with descriptions and assignments, and develop project schedules. Other features include a word processor, output preview, a composition organizing system, and more. Kamas Kamasoft $39 #7073/2454 is an outline processor. Kamasoft claims to have originated the genre in 1984. Our highly subjective opinion is that Kamas is a hair less intuitive, less slick and less powerful than other outliners we have seen, such as Grandview and PC-Outline. On the other hand, it costs about 10 times less and does do a reasonable job for a low-end outliner. As best as we were able to determine from the limited documentation, it will not function as a TSR (pop-up), but with the growing popularity of task switching programs such as SwapDOS and DESQview, any program can be made into a "pop-up" whether it was written that way or not. The bottom line is that if you want to try a good, basic outliner, this is worth a look. Support is provided for Windows 3.0, ThinkTank, PC-Outline, MaxThink, Wordstar, MS-Word, and Word Perfect. PC-Outline Brown Bag Software $195 #7073/549 is an outlining program that can be used in resident or non-memory-resident modes. While originally designed for writers to use in outlining ideas, it can actually be used as a kind of free-form database program. After storing information about a subject, you can hide the information so that only the subject line remains visible. This way you can see several topics at once and view the next level of only the one(s) you choose. If you are writing, you can export the finished outline to your word processor. If you have never tried an outlining program before, you really ought to give this a try. In the resident mode, it uses a minimum of 80k of RAM. (Note: Brown Bag does not allow the latest versions of their programs to be distributed as shareware. The registration fee shown is for the latest version of the program, which is substantially different from this one.) Ravitz Editor Ravitz, Cary $25 #7073/2377 is a combination outliner and text editor. That is, lines can be hidden to make it easier to work on the structures of programs, outlines and documents. A trash buffer temporarily preserves modified lines. It is very powerful, with integrated outlining and overviewing. It uses a command line, function keys, menus, and has mouse support. It is configurable, programmable, and DESQview compatible. It will let you view two files or parts of the same file at once. A change tracking system lets you review new and modified lines. The program uses XMS upper memory blocks, 42K of the XMS high memory area, and 64K of EMS memory. OutlinePlus Toliver, David E. $25 #3268 makes the creation and management of outlines and other structured text easy. It has built-in decimal and classical labeling notation that automatically adjusts to changes in the structure. It feels like a text editor with such features as full screen and file navigation; the ability to delete and restore text; search and replace; the ability to reformat paragraphs and the document; definable margins and more. Files are saved as ASCII text. Data can be imported and exported. We found the program to be intuitive and easy to use. EasyFold 1.2 [EF12] Michael Reiss $49 is a combination text editor and outliner. As you type, you can press a key to "fold" a section of text up so that only the first line shows. Menu options as well as folding/unfolding can be executed quickly with a mouse or keyboard. Professional features of the editor include macros (for keyboard and mouse), undo's, edit up to 250 files at once, splitscreen editing, search-and-replace, and SVGA support. (Special order from the 10-93 CD. 112k) ]]]]]