Good note taking/outlining app?
 

I'm looking for any current apps that are good for note taking in an outline format, not just simple post it notes type of thing, more of a study for class/test. I found some old threads but nothing recent.
I've been trying in openoffice but its not working real well.

I use Open Office, but I had to go into the template and create my own outline format. I did not find the default one at all friendly.

If I have a major beef about OOo, it's that modifying the styles is a cumbersome and esoteric process. This site is a big help. I even bought one of her books.

Sounds like OOo is your best bet, but alternatively you can try KOffice or abiword. Haven't tried them for outlines, though.

I have a thread in the openoffice forum because halfway down through my document heading two has decided to not indent and heading three never seems to. I also don't like how they g from bold to bold and italic and back again in the defaults, but that seems to be some sort of standard because Microsoft word does the same, even one of the books I'm making notes from I can't tell sometimes what heading level something is, if its the start of a new section or a subsection of the previous.

You could try Emacs org mode. It makes lists like

which can be folded and unfolded. I use it for to-do lists and other brainstorming projects.

If you are familiar with Vim, you can try using the VimWiki add on for note taking. http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2226

Those look nice but I need more of a word processor for the spell check, fonts, graphics, etc. I'm almost tempted to setup mediawiki on my system and use that.

I like Keepnote,
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.1/office/keepnote/

xournal
http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.1/office/xournal/

Incidently, it's been reported that the venerable, and still unsurpassed, EccoPro runs OK under Wine:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/e...o/message/5511
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/e...o/message/8342
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/e...o/message/8738

Keepnote looks decent but crashes with a message about vboxgtk, virtualbox must have done somehting with gtk that it doesn't like. Looks like its made for taking a bunch of smallr notes still though, I want somehting that can make a huge document in an outline form.

Looking at some of the screenshots from that it has some interesting features. I like how it shows things in a timeline, I always wanted someting like that, somehting that would show everythig you did on a single calendar view instead of having to open a calendar, journal, todo, e-mail, etc and have 5 different views to see everything you did in one day.

Here's a mash-up of Ecco:

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/7...troduction.jpg

Ecco is really a GUI to add items to a database, whether through the Calendar, Contacts, or outliners ("Notepads").

Items can be further defined through any number of columns ("tags", in today's parlance), so you could for instance, find all the items that have been marked as "Work", or "Research", etc.

Notepads are really views that will SELECT all the items that were defined through the folder/column you selected in the Folder list on the left (which is normally hidden; I just showed it here for educational purposes.)

As you can see in the JPG, any item in a Notepad that has a date item will also be shown in the Calendar section.

Ecco could also sync with Palm PDAs, which was great for note-taking on the road.

Unfortunately, Ecco was killed in 1997, the company never released the source-code (citing copyright issues), and no one ever picked up the ball :-/ There's simply no other PIM that's as good and comprehensive as Ecco. At this point, a few people keep using it, but with Ecco unable to sync with smartphones... :(