I have just installed LibreOffice 3.3.4 on a laptop I have just converted from windows to linux, with the full confidence that OpenSource alternatives must have outliners built in by now. But lo and behold, the old problem of a lack of an outliner persists. I actually stumbled on this post while searching for help on outlining within this version of LibreOffice. All I get is a Navigator with no intuitive way of using it, and a need to have other little windows open. A totally unproductive way of working.

I CANNOT WRITE WITHOUT AN OUTLINER !!!! .. So, I have to dig up some extra memory and install virtualbox or xen so I can once again install MS Office for producing documents that align with the logic of my thinking, and allow me to be quickly productive.

Surely, after 5 years of having a sensibly critical article like this, one would have thought this matter would have been laid to rest a long while ago. Well, perhaps MS does have plants within these opensource projects .. :-)

Is there some sort of Microsoft patent conflict looming?

I’m starting to thing MS is bribing developers not to do it.

Alas, considering many people don’t even know the “1920s typewriter” page mode is not the only way to work, it’s a long way to go…

I was especially angry that Abiword that more or less pretented to duplicate MS Word doesn’t include outline mode…. grrrr…

I’ve come back here a few times for a look-see, so I thought I’d better add this note about the Mac version STILL being useless.

The functionality is, of course, necessary on all platforms.

Would any of the development team who read this page please give a few minutes to explain the ongoing refusal to address this issue?

It’s not like they’re not putting any work into the project…

Why has this become an “Us and Them” situation when it is, after all, simply a selection of “us” developing something of benefit for the rest of us?

Is the problem simply this:

having initially not acknowledged the requirement for a full outlining feature – possibly because the requirement was misunderstood to be something else – the Writer software was blocked-out inside some sort of paradigm envelope that won’t actually support the addition of a feature which is too fundamental to be an add-on, but would, in fact, have to be a sort of foundation for the entire program structure?

If this is the case, and the whole Writer project would have to be started again from scratch to support the #2 most requested feature, then isn’t all of the work being put into continuing an essentially non-viable product simply a gesture of monumental arrogance? It’s the sort of behaviour one might expect from a government – well, now we’re here in power, we’ll do what we want, not what you want – and then impose our thinking on you instead of representing you.

It’s no use bleating about all the hard work being put in gratis – if it is moving away from what is wanted, it is merely self-serving and not otherwise useful.

So – what’s the inside word?

Is the request being refused simply through willful stubbornness or did the developers get it completely wrong in the first place and are now pretending to continue misunderstanding what outlining is because they haven’t the balls to admit to a fundamental error?

I’d rather it were some other reason, and if this is so, could you please tell us what it is?

If this issue of fully collapsible, hierarchical outlining is NOT going to be addressed, please have the decency to let us know and we can cease courting an attractive but unresponsive prospect, abandon any future interest in the project and go back to looking for alternative solutions rather than constantly taking it out to dinner and getting to know its peculiar little ways with a view to a long-term relationship.

If OO Writer is never going to give us a proper outlining mode I, like many other serious users I have spoken to, would rather stop wasting any more time and expectations on what is, at the end of the day, going to be nothing more than a grandiose and expensive personal hobby for the developers.