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

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#101

Post by elcapitan » Tue, May 17, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

dchest wrote: post #79

elcapitan wrote: post #57

I watched the movie on the linked website, but I really don't get what "fluid" editing is supposed to be and what problem it solves? (I've been using OmniOutliner for years and never missed something like described there)

I made a tiny screencast showing the big difference: https://imgur.com/a/u1QTns6 OmniOutliner feels like it has a separate text field for each node. Bike feels like a text editor when you're editing a document with nodes, which to me is more natural.

Thanks! So this is more about seemless navigation than about the actual editing, I guess. I've always used OmniOutliner as a sort of "Excel with Tree" (multicolumn outline), so having separate cells is kind of an obvious default or even main feature for me. I can see now how purely longform-text cases might profit from this version.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#102

Post by nsxwolf » Tue, May 17, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

A killer feature for me that might sound silly, would be a "distraction free" mode - which would just require being able to center the content in the window in fullscreen mode.

I have an ultrawide, and if I could work in this app full screen and centered with just a click or two, it would be pretty great.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#103

Post by jessegrosjean » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #102

A killer feature for me that might sound silly, would be a "distraction free" mode - which would just require being able to center the content in the window in fullscreen mode. I have an ultrawide, and if I could work in this app full screen and centered with just a click or two, it would be pretty great.

I made WriteRoom which coined "Distraction free writing". Good fullscreen mode for Bike is on my list for sure.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#104

Post by nopcode » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

I would consider dropping notion for this if there was a good Windows cousin.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#105

Post by stevenbedrick » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

jxy wrote: post #90

camgunz wrote: post #74

In particular I love these features: - "respects your computer's memory and battery" - "uses open file formats" - "is scriptable" Feels like we should also think about these kinds of things when we think about "organic" software. Kudos to the developer for these.

How much memory and battery do all the animation use?

Probably very little if it is built on top of CoreAnimation, since that set of OS APIs is extremely heavily optimized specifically to enable animation-rich UIs that are light in terms of CPU and battery use.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#106

Post by Leftium » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:08 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #47

criddell wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many of us, that's a positive.

Could be, for not for $37. There are other, equally basic for $0 or $10.

Bike is usable forever (opening, editing, saving) without paying anything.

You only need to pay if you want to change some of the settings or use applescripts.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#107

Post by jessegrosjean » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

jxy wrote: post #90

camgunz wrote: post #74

In particular I love these features: - "respects your computer's memory and battery" - "uses open file formats" - "is scriptable" Feels like we should also think about these kinds of things when we think about "organic" software. Kudos to the developer for these.

How much memory and battery do all the animation use?

I think the architecture needed to support them means the total package is less than most apps. For example consider scrolling:

In Bike it's fast enough that when you scroll it just updates what you can see on the screen. This means you only pay memory for visible text. For most macOS apps scrolling performance is achieved by pre-rendering before and after the visible scroll area. So you pay for that cache and you also pay for the background processing required by pre-rendering.

Also consider simple things like window resize. In Bike that only effects visible text. If you open a large document in TextEdit you will see that resize is quite slow and processor and memory intensive. (you can test with https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/). And then after that resize there's lots of background processing to refill a bunch of layout caches I guess. On the other hand resize is instant and only does work for visible text in Bike.

I don't think the animations are expensive, but it's hard to test because that work happens in Mac OS window server and I'm not an expert there. If they really are a problem and you are on battery then you can turn off animations in preferences.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#108

Post by giancarlostoro » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

Leftium wrote: post #63

giancarlostoro wrote: post #37

Off topic and meta to HN: I had no idea you could do both a URL and a text submission, is this a recent change? I think this format is fantastic for Show HN threads.

Relatively recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040235

Thank you! I love that they do very small changes that have positive impact. It really makes the most sense for Show HN.

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#109

Post by Doctor_Fegg » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:12 PM UTC

jessegrosjean wrote: post #50

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.

Please do at least put the minimum required version on the homepage (maybe in small text below the "Download" button or something).

Re: Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

#110

Post by jessegrosjean » Tue, May 17, 2022, 3:14 PM UTC

sh1mmer wrote: post #95

This looks great. One small suggestion would be to add a "collapse parent" keyboard shortcut since this is something I imagine using a lot after scanning one or more items in a list. Perhaps Shift-Command-0 might be a good fit for that.

I don't think I want to add to many specialized shortcuts, but if you ask in the hogbaysoftware support forums I'm happy to write an AppleScript to do this, and then that can be assigned a keyboard shortcut.

Also generally for collapsing items I use outline mode: Press escape key, and then you can just use left/right arrows to expand collapse items. Maybe not what you are after, but that's how I find I'm always collapsing/expanding things in Bike.