Hi Cindy

I find that the "lines" are distracting, when you want to work
intensively in outline mode.

Basically, I would like a kind of combination between the document map
and the outliner. The document map takes up space, and I can't edit in
it. The outliner has a pretty bad visual appearence, I can't easily
add e.g. legal numbering, it doesn't use the standard symbols for
expanded/collapsed levels, when I select text from somewhere in the
middle to the end of a paragraph, it selects the whole paragraph,
which is annoying, the indentations are too wide, the way that
formating is handled is appauling: you can (by now) suppress
formatting (as nobody would want to look at the heading-sized letters
while doing outlining), but then you can't colour og otherwise
highlight some of the text, which you WANT to be able to do when
outlining.

Well, if you look at some of the dedicated outliners, such as "Java
Online Editor", you'll get a hint at what I miss. I've never used
Mcintosh, but it seems that they've had great outliners for the last
10-15 years.

What MS should understand is, that an outliner is a thinking tool, a
tool to develop concepts, and hence you need to be able to operate
with concepts at a higher level, encapsulating each concept, you work
with. Word takes much more a text-approach. They could even make it a
stand-alone product, which integrates with Word, it could also have
mind-mapping facilities etc.

Regards,
peter.