Creating Outlines

In addition to the Kotl/Create menu item, you can create and experiment with outline files simply by finding a file, {C-x C-f}, with a .kotl suffix. .kot will also work for users impaired by operating systems with 3-character suffix limitations.

When a new koutline is created, an invisible root cell is added. Its permanent and relative ids are both 0, and it is considered to be at level 0 in the outline. All visible cells in the outline are at level 1 or deeper, and thus are descendants of this root cell. Some koutliner commands prompt for cell numbers as arguments. An argument of 0 makes commands operate upon the entire outline.

An initial level 1 cell is also created to make it easy to start entering text in the outline. A koutline always has at least one visible cell in it.

See Autonumbering, which explains how cells are labeled according to their respective levels in the outline and how these labels are updated as the structure of the outline changes.