Linux outlining notes tool?

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I want a hierarchical outlining note-taker / to-do list program for Linux.

I am using Notecase and reasonably happy with it, except it is an abandoned project (in its free form). I expect some fundamental incompatibility will appear with newer Linux distributions, so I want to switch to something current before I get locked out.

I want my notes in nodes, which can contain child nodes. I want to be able to embed links to web URLs which I can click and open. I want to be able to embed links to documents and files on my PC which I can click and open - I would also like to be able to embed commands, to vary the application which is used to open the file. (I also like to embed frequently used commands, like backup and updating my website). In Notecase it is possible to embed something like "gnome-terminal -c gedit file.html" to edit an HTML file, whereas plain "file.html" would open it in the browser.

GJots does much of what I want, except embedding file and command links. RedNoteBook, Tomboy and Gnotes all seem hopelessly inadequate, while MindMap seems hopelessly bloated (without doing everything I want). I see that TreeLine looks very comprehensive and bloat-free, but I am not sure I can embed a command.

By mindmap you mean freemind?

That could be what I meant! Thanks. I do not want to lay my notes out on a graphical canvas, and I don't need any of colour, images, icons, connecting lines, boxes / containers. I tried Freemind and it just gave me far too many decisions - mostly I collect snippets of text from many places and then I want to organise them, but I need to keep the link to the source (URL or local file) and would like a means to run a command from within the note.

The last bit - running a command that is embedded in the note - is the hardest. You used to be able to <a href="some bad command">erase my hard disk</a> in any browser, which was disabled for obvious reasons.

Basket does not seem to know what it is, from my perspective, with too many layout, colouring and image features. It makes it difficult a) because there is too much choice; and b) because copying and pasting from Basket is unpredictable (Notecase is plain text, with no layout).

And, as with most tools, it is not possible to embed a command - so for instance you cannot have a link to "display image file" and to "edit image file" that will perform different functions.

For outlines, emacs has an org-mode M-x org-mode (which does goood outlines and TODOs)

Can you embed a command in a To Do note? E.g. if I had "Backup my notes: rsync /home/notes/ rsync://myserver/notes/", or "Check recently changed documents: find . -ctime 1" I would want to run those commands with a click within the note.

Not that I'm aware of, but who knows? SOmething to look in to. and M-! is run command if you don't want to bail to a terminal.

I have found a solution that seems to meet all the requirements - vim, with the vimoutliner plugin. Installing one of the GUI packages (vim-gnome etc) provides a graphical front-end.

NB: the vim-outliner package is a little broken, so if the outliner commands are not working, run sudo vim-addons -w install vimoutliner and put filetype plugin indent on in ~/.vimrc (see http://mostlycli.blogspot.com/2010/05/i ... buntu.html and http://mostlycli.blogspot.com/2007/09/g ... s-vim.html for more information).

Once installed, simple commands like ,,zc will close one heading level, ,,zC closes all subheadings, ,,zo opens one level, ,,zO opens all subheadings of the current node. Global folding of all nodes can be set with ,,1 etc.

The best bit is that any line ending with "_exe_ <some command>" will execute <some command> using ,,e, so for instance a line like "Edit the global hosts file _exe_ sudo gedit /etc/hosts", "My website _exe_ firefox http://www.mywebsite.org/" or "Update website _exe_ cd ~/web ; ~/bin/upload.sh" will run the command in stored in the text (asking for root password, if necessary). This is just brilliant for keeping documents about computer-related work, with direct access to the commands I regularly use.

There is a check-box plugin (with percentage of completed sub-tasks) included by default.