Get organized with Vault 3 and OutWiker

Text editors and note-taking applications are good for writing, but they are not so good at keeping tabs on stuff. For this, you need an outliner, an application designed specifically for organizing pieces of data as a hierarchical tree. An outliner can be particularly useful for structuring your ideas, images, research notes, and pretty much everything in between. Several excellent outliners are available to choose from, including Vault  3 and OutWiker.

Vault 3

Vault  3 [1], which is written in Java, is available on other platforms besides Linux – a boon for users working in mixed environments. Vault  3 requires no installation, but it does require a Java Runtime Environment (JRE). On Ubuntu, you can use the OpenJDK JRE, which can be installed using the sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre command. Grab the latest release of Vault  3 from the project's web site and unpack the downloaded archive to your home directory. In the resulting directory, locate the vault_linux_gtk.jar file and make it executable using the chmod +x vault_linux_gtk.jar command. Double-click on the file to launch the application.

Vault  3 features a conventional outliner interface with the main window split into two panes: The left pane is used to manage the hierarchical tree, and the right pane acts as a working area for editing the currently selected entry. The main toolbar at the top provides quick access to all frequently used tools. Before you start using Vault  3, you should configure its basic settings. To do this, choose Options | Settings and switch to the Startup File section. Here, you can specify the file you want the application to open on every launch.

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