OmniOutliner for Mac

December 13, 2006

Stability

  • Fixed a crash when dragging an attachment out of a editing text field and dropping it as a new row.
  • Avoid a crash in Apple's typesetting support by removing the full justification style in the Book Draft template.
  • Fixed failure to load files with corrupted named style references. Now, if a named style isn't found with a given unique identifier, we'll fall back to looking up by name. If that fails, we'll just drop the reference instead of failing to load the file at all.
  • Fixed crash when clearing the undo stack after having dragged in a URL and then undone that change.
  • Exporting to flat file formats (CSV, plain HTML, etc.) will no longer raise an error when the document has metadata set in the document Spotlight inspector.

Interface

  • Fixed title of application-included templates when OmniOutliner Pro is installed in the user's personal Applications directory.
  • Fixed a problem where duplicating a named style could end in a state where you could drag one named style to assign it, but not the other.
  • Named style function key bindings now only go up to F8 since F9 is a system key binding.
  • The row expand/collapse animation will no longer be slow if you are holding down shift unless the animation is due to a mouse click. French keyboard users (where numbers require shift) will no longer see the slow animation when using the keyboard shortcuts to expand and collapse rows.
  • Tabbed inspector icons should be colored appropriate for the selection before the first time the inspector is loaded.
  • Styles applied to the document title tag as well as styles applied in the document header view should now be reflected in the printed output. In the case of a conflict, the style attribute set up in the document title view will win.
  • The spell checking panel 'Correct' button will now replace the first misspelled word when it is in a different row.
  • Inherited styles are now listed at the bottom of each section in the style attributes inspector. This this follows the most specific to least specific layout in the rest of the inspector.
  • Clicking on an attachment, pausing, and then dragging will now drag the attachment as a file reference instead of as a text clipping.

Localization

  • Removing keyboard shortcuts for the column and document inspectors in French. These were mapping to shift-cmd-3 and shift-cmd-4, which are the system screen shot commands. You may assign keyboard shortcuts for these in System Preferences, if you like.
  • In the German localization for the backup vs. last saved alert panel, updated the button labels to be more distinct.

Printing

  • In Standard, you can now enable/disable headers and footers in the print sheet, regardless of whether they are enabled by default via the page setup sheet.

OmniOutliner for Mac

August 30, 2006

General

  • The 'New from Template' menu item is now present in OmniOutliner Standard. Under both Pro and Standard, the menu layout has been structured to show from whence each template originates.
  • Added built-in templates for some common document types.
  • OmniOutliner no longer claims to read .plist files, though it still does. If you command-option drag a .plist file onto OmniOutliner, it will open it. But, Launch Services was too eager to open plist files in OmniOutliner and it was annoying people.

Localizations

  • Added Traditional Chinese localization.
  • Added a missing file to the Japanese help. Updated Welcome document localization for Japanese.

Stability

  • Fixed another case of crashing when dragging in a new Address Book entry that had not yet been saved in Address Book.
  • Fixed a crash on launch under 10.3.9. Thanks to Steve D. for verifying the fix for us (since we could never reproduce it here).
  • Worked around a bug in the copy/paste code in Open Office. They claim to have a string on the pasteboard in some cases, but have actually failed to write anything to the pasteboard. We weren't handling this bad case, and were crashing.
  • Fixed crash in Keynote export when outline column is set to the Number type and has an empty cell.
  • Fixed intermittent crash on 10.3.9 when zero network connections are enabled.
  • Fixed a crash in some situations when doing a copy, paste, undo and then re-paste.
  • Fixed error when using the built-in popup dictionary (control-command-d) in certain cases.
  • Fixed crash when using option-arrow to move a word at a time in right-to-left writing systems (Hebrew & Arabic, for example). There are still bugs in Mac OS X that prevent this from working perfectly, but now there is no crash.
  • Fixed a rare error when typing and navigating between cells in a non-text column (number, date, etc.)
  • Fixed error message after undoing a page setup change in multi-column documents.
  • Fixed error message and possible crash when typing an unparsable number ("x", for example), date or duration into a cell, hitting return to create a new row, undo and then trying to fix the cell.

Performance

  • Fixed slowness in clicking on some attachments in notes when viewing notes in a pane.

Interface

  • You can now change the compression setting on a document when the Advanced tab of the Document inspector is visible at application launch time.
  • The compression checkbox on the Advanced tab of the Document inspector no longer gets stuck in OmniOutliner Standard if you close all documents.
  • Fixed a regression in the style inspector that prevented changing the font size via the text field and caused an error alert in some cases.
  • Correctly restore the drawer visibility in the case that notes are shown in a pane.
  • The "Open With" context menu on attachments now deals with applications that are missing the CFBundleName entry. These applications should now show up in the context menu.
  • When changing the summary type of a column to None, the values in parent rows will now be cleared in the view. Previously they were left cleared internally, but were still presented in the display as the old summarized value.
  • Changing the summary type on a column with a sort ordering specified no longer results in two separate undo operations.
  • Using the option-left/right arrow key to move a word at a time will now correctly move between cells in the document, though only in left-to-right scripts. Bugs in Mac OS X prevent this from working in Hebrew or Arabic.

AppleScript

  • Changing the 'selected' property of a row will now work as expected.

OmniOutliner for Mac

May 3, 2006

General

  • More detailed information about the application version is now available in the About panel and is sent with any crash reports.
  • Various types of errors now log to the console more details about where the error occurred.
  • Fixed a couple of memory leaks.
  • Various performance fixes.
  • Minor updates to built-in Help.
  • More scripting support for Kinkless GTD (details below in the AppleScript section).

Stability

  • (Pro only) Fixed crashes when upgrading Kinkless GTD documents to 0.83, also, likely fixed rare crashes when running the KGTD synchronize script.
  • Dragging a brand new (never saved) Address Book entry into OmniOutliner will no longer crash. Instead, the drag will be rejected until the entry is saved in Address Book.
  • Avoid crash in the system frameworks under 10.3.9 when using the up/down arrow keys to move into a newly created empty row.
  • Fixed a crash when dragging a label or URL from an attachment editor and dropping it as a new row.
  • Fixed error when hitting delete in an empty child row with a Hidden summary on the last column.
  • Fixed a few edge cases where attached files with Unicode names wouldn't get loaded correctly.
  • Worked around a Cocoa scripting bug where 'last character of SomeText' could crash.
  • Avoid an error in the control-cmd-d popup dictionary when used over an attachment in some cases.

Attachments

  • (Pro only) Fixed audio capture support on Intel Macs.
  • Handle PDF files exported from older versions of OmniGraffle as PDF instead of falling back to QuickTime.
  • Default label for attached files no longer has 'localhost' in it.
  • Closing a document that has open LinkBack attachments will now result in an alert warning of possible loss of changes if the attachment isn't saved in the editing application.

Software Update

  • We now report a few extra pieces of information back to Omni (Hardware name, CPU name and Video adaptor name). You can see what we report by clicking the "Learn more..." button on the Update preferences pane.
  • Fixed an Intel specific issue with gathering the connection speed set in the QuickTime preferences.

AppleScript

  • (Pro only) When creating a new named style or enumeration, you can specify an initial 'id' property.
    make new named style with properties {id:"my identifier"}
  • (Pro only) Added a new 'organize' command. This takes a list of rows, a list of columns and a destination and then builds a tree of rows based on the values in the specified columns. More details available in the script definition in Script Editor. This is vastly faster than trying to write the same operation in AppleScript.
  • (Pro only) Added scripting support for conduit settings via the new 'conduit setting domain' class. Each document and row has a set of conduit settings, which are identified by a reverse DNS identifier. This allows scripts to store extra information with rows and documents.
    For example:
    set MyDomain to conduit setting domain id "com.mycompany.myproduct" of MyDoc
  • The 'level' property now gets updated correctly on children of rows that were duplicated via 'duplicate' (or via copy/paste in the UI).
  • Fixed description of 'conduit setting domain' in the scripting terminology.
  • Added an 'automatic level styles' property on the 'document' class.
  • Rewrote our 'move' command support to have better type checking support and to fix several bugs with the existing type checking support.
    It should no longer be possible to do something crazy like "move every row to end of columns". Previously we'd catch some cases of this, but now we should get them all. Also, moving multiple objects at the same time should work in all cases now.
  • Likewise, when creating a new document, the identifier for the default topic and note columns can be specified, though this is less pretty.
    make new document with properties {|noteColumnId|:"note id", |topicColumnId|:"topic id"}
  • Human-readable error messages should be reported in more cases.
  • AppleScripts that are run from the toolbar will now create a single undo action. AppleScripts run from Script Editor or the system script menu won't have this convenience, however, since we can't know when the script is done running.
  • Added support for disabling undo operations. Using this should be done with a great deal of care as it can cause the user to lose edits, but this can provide a large performance boost for AppleScripts that cause lots of edits to the document (like Kinkless GTD) or that create documents from scratch.
  • Setting a document's alternate row color, background color or grid colors to 'missing value' now turns off that color.
  • Scripts can now edit styles on the document title.

Inspectors

  • Merged concepts and code from OmniGraffle 4's inspectors into our common inspector code base:
    • Inspector title bars now display the names of the selected inspectors or the inspector that the mouse is hovering over.
    • Inspectors can have zero tabs visible, in which case only the button ribbon is visible.
    • Buttons for inspector tabs should be dimmed if that tab doesn't apply to the current selection.
  • The Document inspector is now tabbed.
    • 10.4 only - Added a new Spotlight inspector that allows you to set some common metadata properties on your document. The Spotlight importer in this version of OmniOutliner understands the changes to the file format this caused. Make sure that you uninstall all earlier copies of OmniOutliner and OmniOutliner Professional (both!) to avoid having Spotlight pick the wrong importer plugin.
  • Labels on the column type inspector get grayed out when there is no selected column.
  • Worked around Cocoa bug that caused adjoining inspectors to slightly detach from each other when moving the inspector group between screens.

Printing

  • In Standard, the upper-left corner of the printout will now have the outline title (as set in the text view from View > Show Outline Title) instead of just the file name.
  • Fixed empty printouts that some users were seeing, mostly under 10.3.9.
  • Fixed incorrect text positioning in some cases with ligatures or other special font features.
  • Fixed a faint gray line running down the right edge of printouts at some scales and paper sizes.

Interface

  • (Pro only) Documents can now have custom toolbars. This can be toggled via the View menu or the Advanced tab of the document inspector. Documents that have their own toolbar store that toolbar in their file, including the items, size, text/icon mode and visibility of the toolbar.
  • (Pro only) Fixed a layout issue in the Audio Capture preference pane that caused Cocoa to come up with a crazy ordering for tabbing between controls.
  • (Pro only) Named styles no longer require unique names. This is nice when swapping the names of two named styles. This does have an implication for AppleScript references by name, though. We'll now return the first named style with the given name when you do something like:
    named style "My Name"
  • Paths to AppleScript toolbar items are now archived relative to the user's home folder (if the script is in the user's home folder). This means that packages like Kinkless GTD can distribute templates with custom toolbars that include references to the expected install location of related AppleScripts.
  • Fixed a regression that prevented toolbar items from being created for scripts in /Library or /Network/Library.
  • Values in enumeration columns no longer require unique names.
  • Fixed a case where dragging a row to the trash would result in an error panel.
  • Clarified text on the 'backup exists' dialog.
  • Escape will now select the row if you have a popup or checkbox cell selected.
  • The gear action buttons in the app and preferences now support keyboard access.
  • Command-clicking the drawer toolbar item of a background window no longer toggles the drawer of a foreground window.
  • The drawer icon orientation is now accurate for each window.
  • Tabbed inspector titles are now correct immediately after launching. Previously this wasn't the case if the inspector didn't have the default tab selected last time you quit the app.
  • When opening a document that has a column with both a summary and a sort order defined, the document will not become dirty on open.
  • Clicking a popup cell (or activating it by hitting space with the cell selected) will now correctly position the popup over the row.
  • The menu that comes up for editing popup values will now use the font of the popup column.
  • Added more search terms in online help.
  • Enabled spell checking in the default document template. If you have customized your template already, you won't see this change. You can set this in your template or click 'Reset' on the General preferences pane to revert your template to the built-in version.

Import/Export

  • MORE and Acta imports now work on Intel Macs.
  • Updated the XML DTD to be accurate about the current state of the file format.
  • The expand-all option on HTML exports will now handle cases where handles are hidden.
  • Exporting to OPML no longer drops single quotes.
  • Fixed another case where a control character could get written to XML output (preventing exporting to HTML, for example).
  • Fixed exporting via a Keynote 1 theme of various special XML characters.
  • Removed Keynote export preference pane. The release of Keynote 3 broke our exporting (again), so now we export via a built-in Keynote 1 theme always. This should make exporting more stable, as well as address some issues with changing certain attributes within Keynote. Once you open the exported file in Keynote, you can select the theme.
  • Exporting to RTF no longer loses links and attachments in the notes.

OmniOutliner for Mac 3.5

December 1, 2005

Highlights & New Features

  • OmniOutliner now requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. Removal of 10.2 support allowed us to simplify a good chunk of code and the vast majority of users are not using 10.2 any more. See our software update statistics for more information.
  • Added LinkBack client support. This allows you to embed editable content from other applications into your OmniOutliner document. More details below.
  • Updated Tier-1 Localizations are now present (French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Japanese). If you see anything inside OmniOutliner that is not localized for one of these languages, it is a bug and we'd love to hear about it as soon as possible.

AppleScript

  • Fixed a performance issue with scripts that look up text values on rows for the purpose of merely reading them (notes, topics or other text columns). For example:

    first row of section 5 of front document whose note contains "Bob"

    is now much faster. This eliminates progressive slowdown in the Kinkless Getting Things Done scripts.
  • Duplicating hierarchies of rows will no longer erroneously apply automatic level styles to those rows when the document has this setting disabled.
  • Fixed a workaround that we had in place for a Cocoa scripting bug dealing with nested 'whose' specifiers that matched zero objects. Our over-zealous fix was causing a failure in the KGTD package's scripts.
  • Exporting documents via a specific XSL plugin is now easier/possible. In particular, this means you can control which of the many HTML variants are used when saving to a 'html' extension.
    save TheDocument to "path" as (id of ThePlugin as string)
  • Enumerations are now accessible with the 'id' reference form.

Attachments

  • Added LinkBack client support. This allows you to embed editable content from other applications into your OmniOutliner document.

Import/Export

  • We have switched from using Apache's Xalan XSL library to using libxslt. Libxslt is provided with Mac OS X as of 10.3.9, meaning our download size is now smaller and Apple gets to perform any necessary security updates on the XSL library instead of us. If you have custom XSL plugins, please try them out and let us know if any new problems appear (should be few, if any).
  • Updated the plugin loading code to require that the plugins have unique bundle identifiers and switch to using the bundle identifier as part of the AppleScript identifier for the plugin-defined file type.
  • We now refuse to load XSL plugins that have executable code. This was never used for nefarious purposes, but it seems like a good idea.
  • Fixed another case of plain text file attachments getting grabbed by QuickTime.
  • Enumerations now have unique identifiers that are stored in the file.
  • RTF export will no longer reserve space for handles if all the handle types are empty in the RTF Export preferences. Likewise, space will no longer be reserved for the checkboxes if all the checkbox options are empty.
  • Fixed issue where inadvertently added control characters could break exporting via our XSL plugins. OmniOutliner will now discard these characters.
  • Fixed issue with breaking the dynamic HTML export.
  • Some fixes to HTML export for row numbering.

Interface

  • Adding a new row will no longer cause the mouse pointer to appear briefly.
  • Keyboard navigation in preference panes is more consistent.
  • Split out older release notes into a different file.
  • Added a Welcome document to help new users find out more information about OmniOutliner. This will appear automatically once and from then on you can access it from Help > Welcome.
  • The Style Attribute inspector normally merges a group name and attribute name when the group only contains a single item. But, this could result in attribute names being clipped. Now, we only merge the two items if doing so would produce no clipping.
  • Fixed 'enter' key handling on PowerBooks so that it again toggles between editing the note and row text.

Spotlight

  • If an error occurs while indexing an OmniOutliner 3 document, a message will not be logged to the console. We don't know of any such errors making it out into the Real World™, but this seems like a good idea. Let us know if you see any such messages.

Stability

  • Fixed a crash when deleting and undoing a row that matches an existing batch find.
  • After a successful save, we now cancel any pending autosave. Also, after a 'save to' operation, we no longer cancel any pending autosave on the source document.
  • Fixed a problem with mouse tracking in the style attributes inspector that could capture your mouse.

OmniOutliner for Mac 3.0.4

November 2, 2005

Highlights & New Features

  • Added the beginnings of Accessibility support. In particular, with Tiger, you can now use the dictionary popup over text columns (control-command-d while pointing at a word).
  • Unified toolbar is now used with 10.4 and later.
  • When opening a document as the result of a Spotlight query, the batch find field is populated with the Spotlight query.
  • With Tiger, Automator workflows placed in the application's scripts folder (~/Library/Scripts/Applications/OmniOutliner Pro, for example) can now be added to your document toolbar (just like AppleScripts in that folder can). At present, the assumption is that the workflow doesn't need to be based on any inputs. If the active document is desired as an input, this can easily be obtained via the OmniOutliner automator actions.
  • The licensing code now allows multiple users on the same machine to use the same license at the same time.

Interface

  • Added tooltips for some inspector items that were missing them.
  • The notes pane no longer reveals itself when resizing the window after having manually dragged the notes pane all the way closed.
  • Added the beginnings of Accessibility support. In particular, with Tiger, you can now use the dictionary popup over text columns (control-command-d while pointing at a word).
  • When opening a document as the result of a Spotlight query, the batch find field is populated with the Spotlight query.
  • Unified toolbar is now used with 10.4 and later.
  • Fixed jumpy text alignment when navigating between text and non-text columns with different alignments.
  • Using the column inspector is much more pleasant now in the case that you are editing a cell in that column. In particular, if you had an enumeration cell selected in the document and added a new enumeration entry in the inspector, the selection in the document could end up changing to the row, and the column inspector would become disabled.
  • Hitting return to create a new item followed by undo will correctly restore the cursor position again.
  • The Ungroup command will now be available if the selection includes rows with children. Previously, at least one such row had to be expanded or the option would be disabled.
  • Added tooltips for items on inspectors that were missing them.
  • Fixed extra menu separator in context menu for attachments that haven't yet been saved.
  • Dragging a row by clicking in the text area and dragging up/down will now work more reliably (previously, in some cases it would start selecting the text).
  • Switching fonts should no longer cause non-Roman characters to disappear temporarily.
  • Dragging a named style to a text selection in the main outline view will again apply the named style to the text (working around Apple bug).
  • When reactivating the application after dropping a file attachment in to the application, the inspectors will be properly updated.
  • Fixed scrolling when selecting a batch find result with notes displayed in the pane.
  • Window cascading is now more robust in its search for the 'best' available space in which to tile windows. Previously, the location of the inspectors could confuse it and a large window size in your template file could confuse it.
  • Fixed vertical alignment of URL attachments when tags are hidden.
  • Added clarifying text about how autosaves work on the General preferences pane.
  • Improved error message presented to the user when trying to drag one named style onto another would result in circular inheritance.

AppleScript & Automator

  • With Tiger, Automator workflows placed in the application's scripts folder (~/Library/Scripts/Applications/OmniOutliner Pro, for example) can now be added to your document toolbar (just like AppleScripts in that folder can). At present, the assumption is that the workflow doesn't need to be based on any inputs. If the active document is desired as an input, this can easily be obtained via the OmniOutliner automator actions.
  • Added a 'has subtopics' property to the document class to fix a case where document and row weren't accessible the same way.
  • The terminology used in the 'Find related rows' Automator action is less confusing.

Attachments

  • Closing a file while editing a title or URL of an attachment cell should save the changes being made in the attachment
  • Editing attachment labels with folded editing enabled should no longer result in detached label editors.
  • Attaching files with a beginning character of '~' will no longer result in a file that can't be opened (working around an Apple bug).
  • Attached files with various Unicode characters in their names will no longer get lost when reopening the attached file (relatively rare, based on how the attachment name was produced). Workaround for an Apple bug.
  • File URLs that contain '@' get parsed correctly now.
  • Dragging an attachment from a row that isn't being edited into one that is being edited was copying the attachment instead of moving it.

Import/Export

  • Keynote exporting now recognizes themes in subfolders of the various theme locations.
  • We now search ~/Library/Application Support/iWork/Keynote/Themes for themes.
  • The popup on the theme chooser on the Keynote export preferences pane has been reorganized to be more clear about what is being selected (Keynote 1 vs. 2, built-in vs. custom).
  • When exporting to Dynamic HTML, the row handles should respect the 'Under mouse' visibility option in the Row inspector's Advanced pane.
  • HTML export of justified text now works.
  • HTML export now has quotes around font names.

Licensing

  • The license panel will now try to correct for a few more common differences between what owner name the license was generated for and what is entered in the panel.
  • The licensing code now allows multiple users on the same machine to use the same license at the same time.

Localization/Internationalization

  • Updated Japanese localization.
  • Updated German localization.
  • Updated French localization.
  • Sorting is now localized. That is, if you set your locale to Sweden, 'å' will sort after 'z' instead of next to 'a', but if you set your locale to US, 'a' and 'å' will sort near each other.
  • Updated inspector shortcut keys for French to make more sense for the default French keyboard layout.
  • Updated the default 'Edit Note' keyboard shortcut to make more sense on the default French keyboard layout.
  • Fixed corrupt French localized nib for audio capture settings that was preventing editing of audio capture settings.

Performance

  • Opening/closing documents with lots of named style usage is much faster now.

Printing

  • Somehow a few files were getting all their columns set to not print. We now detect this and print the topic column.
  • With 10.2, we now avoid a buggy PDF printing path that was causing clipping problems on multiple-page printouts (part of page 1 could appear at the top of page 2). Mac OS X doesn't have this problem with 10.3 or later.
  • Printing to PDF will now set the name of the printed file correctly instead of always resulting in 'Untitled.pdf'
  • Printing used to show the label if a URL attachment was collapsed and the URL string itself when the attachment was expanded, even if attachment tags were hidden. Now, we always print the label (which can obviously be set to the URL string if that is desired).

Stability

  • Navigating between columns of different types should no longer crash. This was only happening in very rare cases. Thanks to the users that helped us track this down!
  • Fixed a workaround we applied in 3.0.3 for a input manager issue that was causing alert panels in some cases.
  • Converting a text column to numeric now handles more cases. In particular, if you had a negative number expressed as "(100)" or a currency value, the text will be interpreted correctly.
  • In 10.4, pure-gray colors wouldn't get archived correctly due to a change in how Cocoa represents those colors.
  • We should no longer log 'invalid context' errors to the console (was happening sometimes when opening existing outlines with folded editing enabled or the sections drawer exposed).
  • Opening files with corrupted autosaves will now let you know and allow you to proceed opening the previously saved version of the file.
  • Activating an attachment in a header or footer in the Page Setup panel of an unsaved document will no longer result in insanity.
  • Dragging a named style onto another named style will no longer crash if this causes circular inheritance. This used to work, but got broken since 3.0.
  • Editing a URL attachment's URL will no longer crash if you insert an invalid URL.
  • The ruler will no longer crash if you click on an existing tab immediately after exposing it in a brand new file.

Styles

  • "Copy Style" will now preserve the transparency of copied colors, working around an Apple bug.
  • Can now turn off the text border checkbox and some shadow settings when a range of text is selected.