Re: existing work on TODO items

[Richard M. Stallman]

     - allout diverges enough from outline-mode code, both internally
       and in external behavior, that i think some changes to outline.el
       would be required to retain desired allout behaviors.  those
       changes could quite possibly be extensive.

It might be worth making substantial change to outline.el if
(1) the resulting code is clean, and
(2) the result would enable allout.el to be based on outline.el.

     - curious about potential performance issues, i transformed an
       allout outline which i work with most frequently (my 1.2 MB
       daily activities log - which i'm often editing, every day) to
       outline-mode format (changed the headers prefix), and i
       noticed some severe performance problems which are absent
       in allout-mode.

That is a different and unrelated question.  For allout.el to be
based on outline.el does not necessarily mean that allout.el would
insist that outlines have the format that works with outline.el.

What I have in mind is that allout.el would keep all its functionality
including the range of formats that it handles.  The change would only
be internal.

Such an internal change would be an improvement if the code is clearer
(while still doing the same job).

    altogether, i would prefer to continue directing my effort towards
    evaluating and, if it looks promising, developing a widget-based
    outliner, rather than spending any time consolidating the allout and
    outline.el code base.

I am not quite sure what a widget-based outliner would look like,
so I don't have an opinion.