Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#41

Post by sfaruque » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:48 PM UTC

Any chance you’ll be releasing this on SetApp too (like TaskPaper)?

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#42

Post by WillAdams » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

jessegrosjean wrote: post #26

WillAdams wrote: post #8

Nice! Do you think you could add support for pandoc to export to other formats and import things? Another option --- possible to set it up so that each node is a text file (or other file format, see pandoc above) and they are grouped using file directories? The nifty Tombo notepad worked thus, and I found it really nice for keeping notes --- for bonus points, multiple files in a directory which have the same name wou…

> Do you think you could add support for pandoc to export to other formats and import things? Maybe, but not likely soon. Bike does already provide read/write support for .bike (html subset), .opml, and .txt. I think best route is to work from those file formats. > Another option --- possible to set it up so that each node is a text file (or other file format, see pandoc above) and they are grouped using file directo…

Well, you could just work up a pandoc file to get to/from the .bike format, then you'd get it all by supporting pandoc.

If you do the Tombo.exe type thing, please let me know --- I'd be delighted to have something like that on MacOS.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#43

Post by aosaigh » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

This looks cool. I just started using MindNode yesterday [0] which is a similar tool (although it takes a very different approach - it's more visual). I wasn't sure of the effectiveness of these sort of tools as I usually just use text files + Notability sketches but I have to say they are very useful in helping to structure thoughts better. I'm interested to try this.

[0] https://www.mindnode.com/

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#44

Post by jessegrosjean » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

sfaruque wrote: post #41

Any chance you’ll be releasing this on SetApp too (like TaskPaper)?

Maybe, I'll have to see how it goes. My main goal is to sell enough copies so I can keep working on it. Last few years I've had to spend a bunch of time contracting. Hoping this will get me back to full time independent.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#45

Post by WillAdams » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

jessegrosjean wrote: post #17

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #6

Workflowy and Logseq already provide these features. Am I missing something?

They both provide many great features, but Bike provides some unique features too. I think they are pretty well listed on Bike's home page (features), but I'll add some notes here: 1. "Fluid" (smoothly animated) editing. You could argue it's not important, but this is something new and unique to Bike. Bike is a "tool for thought". I think how the app feels is an important aspect. 2. macOS native app, of course this i…

The one user interface element I'd suggest is adding the ability to promote/demote nodes w/ the right-click menu when interacting w/ nodes (you could show the keyboard shortcut then to make it discoverable) --- also an option to delete (maybe only if empty?)

Also, when dragging-dropping, I found it way too easy to make empty nodes which was disconcerting.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#46

Post by soci » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

I've been refraining myself to upgrade to MacOSX 11 in order to not mess with my dev environment. Are you planning to release it for MaxOSX 10.14 or lower?

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#47

Post by coldtea » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #28

coldtea wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's super-fast, and Mac native, but quite basic.

For many of us, that's a positive.

Could be, for not for $37.

There are other, equally basic for $0 or $10.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#48

Post by d3nj4l » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

jessegrosjean wrote: post #36

soapdog wrote: post #32

This is a great outliner. I'm quite impressed by how fluid it is. Great work! quick question: why you chose to go with HTML instead of making OPML the default file format? I'm not judging, I'm just curious.

I want more structure in the file format. OPML is perfect for plain text outliners. But if you want to support rich text then you need to encode the HTML as plain text. This means it's all of the sudden harder to process with web tools like xpath. Also (not sure this will happen, but I plan to try) I expect to add different node types. For example right now every node is a paragraph. In future might have ... A HEADIN…

Have you considered using the org format? I'm not saying it'll be good (I've not seen an implementation outside emacs that really gets it) but org-mode has been the best outliner I've personally used.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#49

Post by Jcowell » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

Is this available on the App Store ? (Not a super big deal if not. Just like to manage all my subscriptions/purchases in one place. So makes updating easier along with the privacy report that makes recommending to friends easier)

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#50

Post by jessegrosjean » Tue, May 17, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

soci wrote: post #46

I've been refraining myself to upgrade to MacOSX 11 in order to not mess with my dev environment. Are you planning to release it for MaxOSX 10.14 or lower?

Sorry I don't. So much still to do on Bike, I think my time is better spent building up the app feature set.