So, what is the perfect outliner? I wanted it to be project related. Ideas and project files should be organized in one simple way. I tested many outliners, but they all had the same problem: some stuff stays in the Finder (important but unsupported project files like Freehand, Illustrator etc.) and other stuff (ideas, mindmaps, notes...) goes into the outliner.
So you need the Finder for the project files, and the outliner as a conceptional layer. That just didn't feel right. I think the Finder is still the best way to organize files and folders for projects. So I just needed some way to store text and multimedia in one file inside these project folders ... and there is a somewhat obvious way: .rtfd files.
These are textfiles with the option to store any Apple-supported media files within them. Movies, pictures, bookmarks, you name it. Now every project folder contains a folder with the cheesy name projectname__ideas. I made the name unique with the two underscores. Later you will see why. Inside is one (or more) .rtfd file containing notes, tables, bulleted lists, pictures, movies, basically all project-related stuff.
But what about a nice sorted overview of all ideas, like in a classic outliner application? Well, I just saved a Finder search for the term __ideas. Thanks to Spotlight, you get a nice list of all folders whose title includes __ideas. Thanks to the unique naming with the underscores, only the expected folders were found by Spotlight.
That's all I need for my outlining needs: a folder-based project structure with all contextual information in one place, and a quick overview of all that information. What's missing is some inline view of the .rtfd files to make this concept perfect. But I really believe that the future of the Finder will include the ability to work with even more metadata, to make it a nice tool for organizing all your data in one place. The ultimate outliner.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20051128135523956