Best Free Outliner

Noticed that you don't have UV Outliner mentioned. It's a free multi-columned outline program for Win in the style of the old Symantec dos products, Grandview and ThinkTank (remember those?)

If you're looking for a great outliner, this is it.

www.uvoutliner.com

I must have tried out over a dozen outliner programs and tree-based information organizer programs in the last two days. I've only found two that meet a very important requirement of mine, which is the ability to print and/or export the entire tree and notes with formatting (rtf is fine), INCLUDING having the tree nodes/note titles indented to reflect the tree hierarchy.

This seems like such a simple, obvious feature for an OUTLINER, and yet it is a very rare feature. A couple of others at least had the ability to number the nodes hierarchically (1.1.1.1) in the output, but no indenting.

The two that I have found are [edited out*]. I do like TreeDBNotes very much (I tried the free one today), but it won't output the way I want to.

[*Moderator's note : Commercial software edited out. This is a freeware site, and we discuss about freeware only. Commercial software are not allowed to be discussed. The second product mentioned was commercial. First had a lite free version, but it was crippled, and the feature about exporting to RTF was present in the commercial version. Can't be allowed, sorry. Please keep discussion to freeware.]

Smereka is another good free information organizer.
http://yp.lviv.ua/smereka/en/index.html

I haven't used it much, but feature-wise it seems very competitive with other products mentioned here.

Also XMind (xmind.net) is great alternative to FreeMind.
Both Zim and WikiPad seem pretty good.

I use a TreeDBNotes (http://www.mytreedb.com/treedbnotes_free.html) like my diary or journal. I like some useful functions: tag cloud and table editor. I lacks some features, but I hope they will in the future. Also I use TreePAD and KeyNote.

I find MemoMaster is one of the best outliner. It will also support Microsoft Word and Excel.

-> www.memomaster.net

I've never understood the rationale behind calling these programs outliners. Old school (for us "old f@rts" ) outliners are used for outlining thoughts, speeches, presentations. Noteliner web.me.com/hawksworth/i/Main.html is an outstanding example, and is currently under active development.

Keynote NF (formerly known as just Keynote) is a "RIM": random information manager (I think I just made up that term, released to the public domain). But it is so much more: clipboard history manager, RTF editor, tree-based notes organizer. Multiple tabs allow me to apply some structure to my random pieces of info that don't fit into a structured application, but I can make a note that links to, say, an .xls file, clicking on it opens the file with the registered app.

One of my tabs has a tree for Project Gutenberg eBooks which are stored on my local drive. Ebook notes have links to the eBook, and I can add comments to the note for each each.

Another tab is used just for continuous clipboard history; another tab is for each clipboard capture to be stored in a separate note, with a tree structure to help in organizing.

Noteliner outlines can be easily printed out as a single document with formatting. The outliner programs included here don't easily do that (as far as I can tell -- and heavy emphasis on the easily). (FWIW, I suppose Noteliner could be used as an information manager.)

I've tested, tried and used dozens of different programs, freeware, shareware (registered user of AZZ Cardfile and Treepad) and commercial (Info Select, registered), for managing bits and snippets and other random pieces of information, but Keynote still works best for me. And I think the reason is that it doesn't impose a structure on me, I impose the structure that works for me, be it a tree, or a single document.

Anyway, in my opinion, Noteliner is an outliner, and Keynote, et al, are information managers, sometimes acting like a PIM as well as a notes organizer. I think it might be a disservice to call them "outliners". Maybe change the category to Information Managers, and reserve Outliner for programs like Noteliner that are truly outliners.

Not that I really have a *strong* opinion on the subject...

I believe Keynote NF is the best. SEO Note seems pretty good too but is not truly portable like Keynote. After ten years of using Keynote, the only shortcoming of Keynote that I have noticed is the inability to create tables for text.

However there is a workaround for this. Create a table in MS Word or OpenOffice or any word processor that supports tables and then copy the table and paste it into Keynote. You can then create a table template within Keynote and hitting tab in the last cell will automatically add extra cells at the bottom of the table. No easy method of resizing it though.

Try http://checkvist.com
It is a free online outliner and task manager, collaborative, strongly keyboard-focused, online.

Keynote seems to be coming back to life - see, eg:
http://www.softpedia.com/progChangelog/KeyNote-Changelog-35438.html.

Development did stop a few years ago, at version 1.6.5.

The latest of the recent versions that I can run on my notebook with XPSP3 Home is 1.7.4.2.
There are newer versions, but they produce some kind of incompatibility warning.

I enjoy using it. It is dense with keystroke commands at the top level, has no cute windows, and runs very quickly.

I recommend Zim-wiki, a cross between an outliner and a wiki. It markets itself with "Zim brings the concept of a wiki to your desktop. Store information, link pages and edit with WYSISYG markup. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a non-existing page. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments."

http://zim-wiki.org/

keynote-nf
1.7.8.1
http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/

IMO, the "best" outliner or notekeeping software is very dependent on individual preferences. Everyone has a different thinking process and a different way of processing information in their brain, so there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Some people prefer a wiki-type note keeping system, such as Tiddlywiki, which allows everything to be tagged, and bypasses traditional outline or folder/tab organization structures. I use Tiddlywiki, and it has the advantage of being able to be packed on a portable drive, but for me it's only real value has been as a sort of private journal. I don't care for cataloging everything with tags, but that's just me. If you need something that's cross-platform and which you can work on from wherever you may find yourself, without the trouble of always carrying a portable drive, I would expect that a private blog, such as what you can sign up for at Blogger or Wordpress or even LiveJournal, could be made to work.

Others need only a simple, text based, single pane style list and are perfectly happy to use a search feature to look for keywords. A simple text editor can work well for them. For example, I use the QuickNotes extension for Firefox for making my random observations while browsing, which allows me four text documents, each with its own tab. Over the years, this has become four very long text documents through which I scroll when looking for past observations on topics that I find interesting. Admittedly, this is completely unorganized, but since the topics are limited - both in scope and in the "sell-by" date - it works for me. If I were engaged in any sort of significant research, however, instead of my own personal and casual observations (well, okay, they're more like screeds and rants), this note taking extension would be utter rubbish.

Others like a similar approach but with a long scroll of bits of information, links, pictures, files, etc. and perhaps a more robust search function. Or they may want these features, but with the ability to organize the information into a tree-like outline structure, with separate branches for different topics.

Some need to access their notes from multiple locations, so a system that allows syncing from several different platforms and locations across the web serves them best. Evernote is one such system, but it isn't free. The only free application that does this that comes to mind is Google Notebook. Sadly, Google Notebook is no longer being developed, and I can't even be sure that it works for later versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox, much less if it works for Chrome or Opera. Still, if you have an old account, you can call it up and open it as a new browser window or tab, and I still use it to make note of interesting sites and information. I installed Google's portable apps on my Blackberry, and was pleasantly surprised to see Google Notebook among them, and when I opened it up, all my notes were there.

Some notetaking software can do a lot, but is also dauntingly difficult to learn. I've tried some of these, and found that if I can't get the hang of these quickly, they end up wasting space on my hard drive. In the end, I always go back to the venerable old Keynote, which as far as I can tell, has never been surpassed for ease of use and versatility. It suits me to a tee, both with how easy I find it to use, and for the way I like to organize my information. It has limitations; it doesn't easily incorporate PDFs, natively display HTML, or hold sound or video files. Graphics formats it can work with, too, are limited. However, for me, this is not an issue. If I were collecting information for building or organizing a fancy website, with multi-media content, this would be a problem, but for the more literary pursuits, or my technical needs for my job, Keynote is sublimely adequate.

Try SEO Note
http://seonote.info/
It looks like Key Note with some improvements

NeoMem is NOT being actively developed. The last release was 1 March 2006, and the last activity on the website was a 17 July 2008 note that NeoMem might corrupt its data files. The data corruption issue was never addressed, which is about as inactive as a project gets. Both of these facts are relevant, and should be included in the review.

Take a look at AllMyNotes Organizer, it's still in Beta, but it's very bright, with skins, and easy to use.