outline rendering?

[Thomas L Roche <tlroche@us.ibm.com>]

Is there a way to do "outline rendering"? What I mean:

I'd like to be able to hack away in outline mode, producing something
like

<mythical source buffer>
* foo

** ancient

*** Harappa

*** Machu Picchu

** modern

* bar

** Africa

*** Mali

** Asia

** Australia
</mythical source buffer>

then press magic {keychord, M-x command}, and see something like

<mythical display buffer>
1 foo

1.1 ancient

1.1.1 Harappa

1.1.2 Machu Picchu

1.2 modern

2 bar

2.1 Africa

2.1.1 Mali

2.2 Asia

2.3 Australia
</mythical display buffer>

Is there such (or similar) magic?

Note that it would be OK to have ordering happen in the same buffer,
as long as it was undoable: i.e. I wanna be able to move stuff around
without having to edit numbers directly.