Bug 54772

The outliner should be invokable with a "VIEW" command. 

So in addition to:
Print layout
Web layout
should be: 
Outline layout

A simple, true intrinsic outliner called tkoutline is available but is very out-of-date. It uses an obsolete tclkit and recognizes only bitmapped fonts, so it looks very bad. It has no drag-and-drop but works adequately with simple keystrokes. Perhaps as a short-term solution it could be updated to run with the latest tk / tcl and marketed as a text-only "brainstormer" addition to LO. 
It exports to OPML and XML.

I love the idea and can confirm that it's a valid enhancement request.

My guess is that this is a big project that will take some time to implement but I doubt it would come as a whole new program - much more likely to just be in View -> Outline View or something like that.


Marking:
New (Confirmed)
Enhancement (already set)
High (very functional addition to writer)


Thanks for the suggestion!

P.S. Can you tell us other software you know of that has great outline views?

Created attachment 71819 [details]
screenshot of Noteliner, an outlining program

This is a screenshot of Noteliner, one of the best outlining programs. Note  that the view concentrates on putting the maximum amount of information in front of the user in a clean manner, and that the levels are noted with carats and can be collapsed individually or in groups. (Something like CTL-1 collapses everything to the top level, for instance. 
Individual instances can be collapsed or expanded with the right/left arrows and moved up or down with the up/down arrows. 
Level 2 can be moved to Level three with a similar keystroke, such as CTL-right-arrow. 
I like Noteliner. I'm a writer and I like things that can organize a lot of information in a more or less linear fashion. 
Colors help. Sometimes in some programs the "indent" carats are different colors for each level. 

Some outliners such as UV Outliner can create lists and check boxes as well as simple outlines. I know this feature is popular. 
OmniOutliner is the outliner concept on steroids, but it does have some good screen shots. 

OmniOutliner for Mac is probably the gold standard, and compararble to Basket NotePads. 
Other good ones are C

Other good ones are also for the Mac. Circus Ponies is fun but probably not helpful for you. 

The LO Navigator panel is, visually, a good place to start. It is clean and very clear to the eye. If I could just adjust the type font to slightly larger and edit from it, I might stick with that. Although I would like the option of keeping Navigator open as my index, and edit from an outline in the main panel. 

For instructions on what not to do, look at the intrinsic outline function in Microsoft Office. The indents are enormous, space is wasted, and all the formatting shows. It's like it was made for grade school students with a 5-paragraph essay to write. And it's tiring to the eyes.

The following commands are essential. They should be included in the TaskBar and there should be options in Tools / Customize /Events to add or change shortcut keys. 

View All (Expand All)
View #1 (View Level 1 only) 
View #2 (View Levels 1 and 2 only)
View #0 only (view all headings, hide text)

Promote heading to next level
Demote heading to next level

Move section up (including subtrees and text)
Move section down (including subtrees and text) 

Collapse all under current heading
Expand all subheadings under current heading
Expand all under current headings (including sub-headings and text). 

Import / export opml or equivalent

If you notify me when it is first available for testing, I can do bug checks and so on.

Just a heads up, I suspect it may be quite awhile before this is tackled. We have a long list of bugs to tackle, in general enhancement requests take awhile and require interest on the side of a developer to accept it. We'll see if we can find someone though