Opal1.3

Name: Opal
Rating: 4.9 (5 reviews)

19 February 2020

Outline processor for note organization, successor to Acta.

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Overview

Opal is an outliner. It lets you organize just about anything - ideas, reports, lists, notes, projects, graphics - as an outline. It stands out for its uncluttered, fluid interface. But Opal includes features not found in other organizers:

Shrink a topic to a single line
Alphabetic and numeric sorting
Magnify on-screen text
Word count
Focus on part of the outline
Multiple selection
Link to other documents
Just create notes - no need to name them
Open Acta outlines
Spotlight search
Topic filtering via toolbar Search field
Smart checkboxes automatically track completion
Open or save OPML outlines
'Smart quotes'
Complete, self-contained documentation
Japanese localization

What's new in Opal

Version 1.3:

Note: Now requires OS X 10.14 or later

64-bit app
Compatible with macOS 10.14 or later

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13 Reviews of Opal

I was thrilled to see a 64-bit version of Opal, which I had used a lot in its 32-bit form. Then I downloaded the new version, only to find that I can't use it because Apple won't let me install OS 10.14 on my pair of 2011 iMacs. Stuck in the middle again!

(0)

just a remark: Opal it's not free. It's 32$

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Zx81

04 February 2016

Version: 1.2.5

Still working fine on 10.11.3.

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I use this app almost every day. It's a great tool for doing "brain dumps" for software design, basically I use it as a mind mapping tool without all the graphical clutter. It's also great for taking notes in meetings.

(2)

I've been using Opal 1.2.2 for the last few days. I find this program very comfortable to use - it is easy to make it fit my needs and the way I work. For instance, I can easily enlarge the size of the text on my screen without changing font size. I can give alternating lines a different colour of my choice to easily differentiate and enclose lines of text. It is obvious that the creators of Opal have put a lot of thought and experience into making this program. They seem to know what a user like myself needs. I had occasion to contact the programers - on a Sunday! - and was quite astonished to have almost immediate responses that were both succinct and helpful. The help section is excellent. One thing that puzzled me, though, was that the part about preferences says that you can set a preference to allow you to give any menu item whatever keyboard combination you want. I couldn't find this in the preferences but would love to have it in the future. Or maybe someone could tell me how to do this in case I have just missed something. Another thing I would like to see would be a highlighter feature with a button on the toolbar - such as in Scrivener or DevonThink, among others. There is a workaround possible in Opal by using copy and past style, but this isn't quite as convenient as a dedicated highlighter. Personally, I am very grateful for Opal and look forward to using it for some intensive and constructive outlining - as I used to do with ACTA.

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Whatever this 1.2 download is, it's corrupted. It downloads a .bz2 compressed file, and if you extract that you get a .bz2.cpgz file. If you extract that, you get a .bz2 file again. The only way I can get it to extract is to use BetterZip and extra the package, as the default BOMArchiveHelper app won't do it. So you get an Opal 1.2 DMG file, which when double clicked notes "no mountable file systems." FAIL. This isn't an issue with MacUpdate per se, as the downloads from the developer site (and their mirror) exhibit similar behavior. Perhaps they should try a better packaging mechanism next time. I've used .bz2 archives before and they've worked (LaunchBar is compressed this way), though frankly straight .dmg files are nicer, and they can compress as well. Maybe not *quite* as well as .bz2, but 2.6 MB versus 5 MB for a download these days is pretty trivial.

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Basic outlining par excellence.

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Except now it's called Opal. The classic early Macintosh outliner ACTA has been brought up to date without adding the bloat found in other outliners, but still adding a great new search feature and multiple topic selection, a very handy feature. The property of selecting a topic with a single click and opening it with a double click (carried over from ACTA) is a particularly big winner - I can't stand outliners that open a topic with a single click - what, do these people never reorganize their outlines?! It opens all my old ACTA outlines and runs as a Universal App providing a great bridge to the latest Macs. Kudos to David Dunham and A-Sharp - Web Heroes in my book! Jim PS: I was a beta tester, but I have no financial interest in the product.

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Can't mount the 1.0.2 disk image under 10.4.8 using either the OS or Toast to mount it.

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This is a "free preview." In other words once it is out of beta it will no longer be free. The price - "We don't know yet"

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Opal, an OS X update to Acta, has some nice additional features and works as expected. Import of OPML permits translation of a number of other formats to Opal. It doesn't have the extensive feature set of OmniOutliner or TAO, but then, some of us taking notes just want something simple and easy that works fast. Opal does this.

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Thanks! I lived on Acta for a long, long time. It's nice to see it come back and have a way to open up some of those old files.

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I used (and loved) Acta for years on pre-OSX Macs and still have many dozens of outlines in Acta format. Thanks, A Sharp, for creating an OSX version of that wonderful app!

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Opal1.3

Overview

What's new in Opal

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13 Reviews of Opal

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