7 ms·

Show HN: Nulis – Open Source Tree Editor for Writers

231 points by rayalez 9y ago

fsloth 9y ago
Would someone use this? I think a text editor is a pretty good tree editor as it is but then again, as a programmer I see everything as parse trees anyway :)
- SenpaiSilver 9y ago
  My take on this is that it's not aimed at coding but more like a way to map ideas.
ckluis 9y ago
This would be more useful if like project gutenberg (wordpress editor redesign) each card/block could be "structured data" (image, text, table, etc) - it would be pretty neat tool to use for a Knowledge base.
- rayalez 9y ago
  Well, each card is written in markdown/html, so all of that can be used.
- mcguire 9y ago
  "project gutenberg (wordpress editor redesign)" That is a spectacularly poor choice of name. https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page https://wordpress.github.io/gutenberg/ https://wordpress.github.io/gutenberg/
- gglitch 9y ago
  That in turn reminds me of Tiddlywiki, which I kind of love and use for all kinds of one-offs: http://tiddlywiki.com/ http://tiddlywiki.com/
xori 9y ago
I think the original app that inspired it was gingko[1] but it's nice that we can see the source of this one[2] [1] - https://gingkoapp.com https://gingkoapp.com [2] - https://github.com/raymestalez/nulis https://github.com/raymestalez/nulis
Multicomp 9y ago
This visually reminds me of some of the Federated Wiki concepts Ward C has been working on for awhile [1] [1] - http://sandbox.fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors http://sandbox.fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors
- _pmf_ 9y ago
  Also ConnectedText, which is the closest to Tinderbox that Windows users have. Scrivener, maybe.
nslindtner 9y ago
Love the idea. Reminds me of Workflowy (which has focus on task list in trees). Check it out: https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/
- rayalez 9y ago
  Thanks! I love workflowy as well, although personally I use the org-mode. Think of Nulis as workflowy/org-mode with a second dimension =)
  - czechdeveloper 9y ago
    As workflowy fan, I've tried to love org-mode, but failed. I've since moved to Dynalist.io.
gcoda 9y ago
Thank you. I use gingko, it is perfect but not self hosted. And tiddlyWiki with graph map extensions got too much extra stuff I do not need. Not sure how I feel about mongo as backend but, if this app got same export features as gingko I am sold.
- rayalez 9y ago
  Because Nulis is written in React, frontend and backend are pretty much separate. Mongo/Node just create an api and send/receive trees formatted as one big json object. Backend is very simple, and should be easy to replace with anything else. Also, you can just use file>save/open feature, which saves a tree as a json file, purely from the frontend. The desktop version of the app can work without the backend at all(server used just for cloud sync, all trees are saved as files).
  - mrec 9y ago
    There's no mention of a "desktop version" in the About page - where should I be looking for that?
    - rayalez 9y ago
      Linux: https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-linux-x64.zip https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-linux-x64.zip Mac: https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-darwin-x64.zip https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-darwin-x64.zip Windows: https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-win32-x64.zip https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-win32-x64.zip Note that Desktop is in a very early version, Mac/Windows are not tested at all. I'll keep updating it and making it more stable as I continue the development.
fimdomeio 9y ago
This is kind of the same idea behind Xanadu[1] right? I fail to see the benefits of this multidimensional navigation through text. Getting lost seems way to easy in this kind of interfaces. [1] - http://xanadu.com/ http://xanadu.com/
- setr 9y ago
  As I understand it, xanadu's goal is to interstitch documents, in a similar manner (I just realized) to git blame; documents are composed of original text, and pieces of other documents, recursively. So you can traverse the history not just of the document, but the blocks of text as they get referenced and pointed to by newer documents. I can't remember though if those blocks were meant to be updated as the original does, or if they're treated immutably. This on the other hand has a much simpler goal: organizing your documents into a tree. Afaict, it can be treated/navigated like a file system, except that theres no distinction between file and directory.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  > I fail to see the benefits of this multidimensional navigation through text. You just wrote a comment containing a hyperlink. If I click that link, I go to another page that has text I can read. I can come back here. I can reach that page from other pages too. That means that you just made a node in a graph, and have it an edge to another node in that graph. Your comment is about as ironic as it gets.
vincnetas 9y ago
Fun fact. Nulis means zero (0) in Lithuanian. I wonder what other product names unintentionally hit some word in some exotic language. One from top of my head was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Laputa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Laputa (we know what "la puta" means in Spanish)
- slantyyz 9y ago
  There are many of these for car names: Chevy Nova (no va), and Mazda Miata sounding phonetically similar to mierda in Spanish.
- tinyrick2 9y ago
  "nulis" also means "write" in Indonesian
  - rudilee 9y ago
    The correct form is 'menulis', 'nulis' is more like the informal daily use form
    - jogundas 9y ago
      'Mėnulis' means 'the Moon' in Lithuanian. No getting away from our language :)
- ggambetta 9y ago
  The canonical example is the Mitsubishi Pajero, later renamed Montero in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries.
  - TremendousJudge 9y ago
    for those that don't speak Spanish, it literally means 'wanker'
    - dmix 9y ago
kaushalmodi 9y ago
As a plain-text editor fan, I use Org mode in Emacs for Tree-based documentation and blogging.
Lonte 9y ago
Fun fact nulis means writing in indonesian
- rayalez 9y ago
  Actually I came up with the name by using google translate. I've put in related words like writing/ideas/thinking/etc, and then scrolled through translations until I've stumbled upon a cool sounding one =)
discreteevent 9y ago
Like the look of this a lot. I'm a fan of mind maps for getting work done. I might suggest that unless you think that a large portion of your audience are vim users then you might use ijkl instead of hjkl. For a non-vim user ijkl is completely natural but hjkl will be annoying.
- dmix 9y ago
  You prefer they use something that 'feels' natural to you over a very commonly used pattern? Left/Up/Down/Right on the same middle row is more intuitive than putting Up on a higher row IMO. On my thinkpad "i" is not centered above "k" (the way Up/Down arrow keys are aligned), it's offset over both "j" and "k", so when not looking at my keys while typing this will likely cause more errors.
  - Retr0spectrum 9y ago
    AFAICT it's only common in for developer-oriented tools that want to be familiar to vi users. The average writer has probably never seen hjkl navigation before, and it is much harder to get used to than a slightly off-center "i" key.
    - dmix 9y ago
      Why not use the same pattern as games then? W A/S/D I've personally never seen I/JKL before and over the years I've come to believe Vim made the right choice by use HJKL on the 'home row', so I might be biased. I can put my four fingers on all 4 keys at once with HJKL, but I can't with I/JKL. This is a standard starting position (just shifted over one key left): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/QWERTY-home-keys-position.svg/2000px-QWERTY-home-keys-position.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/QW...
    - mcguire 9y ago
      Then there's other keyboard layouts. (Dvorak reporting in!) :-)
  - slazaro 9y ago
aargh_aargh 9y ago
Looks nice. Just take note of the AGPL license.
pizza 9y ago
fyi, i wrote something fairly intricate in tree format and the account creation process deleted it without confirmation after logging me in
fifnir 9y ago
Hey there's a little typo in "How it works": "beraking down your large writing goals"
alfonsodev 9y ago
I like the idea, this could be useful for education, I see it as mindmap for taking notes.
stevesimmons 9y ago
It is a shame more people aren't aware of Leo (http://leoeditor.com/ http://leoeditor.com/). Leo is a hierarchical editor with a tree view of nodes, which can be in Markdown, ReST, code, and create compound docs a la literate programming from nodes, etc. The killer feature imo is nodes can be cloned to multiple places in the tree. So you could have, for example, group notes by project in one master last, plus another sub-tree for clones from the master list of your own current projects. Leo's web site may look clunky and old-fashioned. But don't let that put you off! -- EDIT -- For what it's worth, I do oscillate between Leo and Emacs org-mode. I'd probably stay 100% with org-mode if there were a way to clone nodes. Does anyone know if this is possible?
- sharpercoder 9y ago
  With all respect, leo looks like it is an editor from the 90's with its windows 95-looks. For me, that's mostly a sign that the developers do not adhere to modern development standards. As such, why would I invest time in using a dying product/project?
  - tetrep 9y ago
    By that same logic, Vim and Emacs are even more dead than Leo, which they most certainly are not.
    - fish_fan 9y ago
      Ehh, they actually are very well refined interfaces. True they are text oriented, but that ages well I think. I'm not trying to imply Leo doesn't have polish, just that native UIs age poorly compared to, say, readline/curses interfaces. The expectations are completely different, and UIs have changed a lot in 20+ years.
  - LambdaComplex 9y ago
    It took me maybe 30 seconds of clicking to get to this: https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/graphs/contributors https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/graphs/contributors Doesn't look very dead to me.
Tenobrus 9y ago
Best and most general option that I know of is Org mode (Emacs). But regardless, I'm glad more people are picking up on the power of hierarchical text editing (and interfaces more friendly to non-programmers are a reasonably good thing). But if you really want to go all the way, and get arbitrary directed graphs of text content, check out org-brain.
breck 9y ago
Looks cool. A suggestion: I'd recommend using Tree Notation (https://github.com/breck7/treeprogram https://github.com/breck7/treeprogram) for your storage format, instead of JSON. (disclaimer: author of TN) I can actually help you build your own language on top of TN using some new tools, if interested, which might be very useful to you. Email is in profile.
- stingraycharles 9y ago
  It would be nice if you provided a disclaimer that you are the author of that library. It looks interesting, but what problem would it solve ?
  - breck 9y ago
    Good point. Added disclaimer. > what problem would it solve ? First, it would support current functionality, so you wouldn't lose anything. So everything that it adds is a net gain. Second and biggest benefit, I believe it would allow them to add features more easily because they'd easily be able to build a simple and well structured Nulis DSL in Tree Notation that removes a lot of the incidental complexity of their current code. Third, it would make their "nls" files human readable and writeable. No more quotes or brackets, et cetera. With a few tweaks to their current implementation, folks could then drop in more file structures that can then be visualized and edited in nls.
komali2 9y ago
Curious why the readme is only available in image format, also, was there a mistake? It says Ctrl + l is to create a node to the left, but then it says "for example, use ctrl +l to create a new card to the right."
- yardshop 9y ago
  Ctrl+L would move to the right, and Ctrl+Shift+L would create a new node to the right. So above that where it says "L - left" is incorrect. There's also a typo "beraking" that hasn't been fixed after several mentions.
adriano_f 9y ago
I'm the creator of the app that inspired this one, http://gingkoapp.com http://gingkoapp.com They say imitation is the best form of flattery, but I'm surprised Ray that you didn't credit Gingko at all. It's practically identical. Thoughts? --- Edit: My bad... it's not on the website, but I see Gingko mentioned and linked in the Readme. Thanks Ray.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
  > Nulis is an open source tree editor for writers, inspired by Gingko. To learn how it works, visit https://nulis.io/about https://nulis.io/about and try it out. He does say "inspired by", though not sure if that was the credit you are expecting.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nxsynonym 9y ago
    I think that's plenty of recognition. Most people wouldn't even bother out of fear of losing potential users to the "original". Unfortunately, being the first or most common product in a space has the side effect of attracting copies, spin offs, or other imitations.
- ajford 9y ago
  It's in like the first sentence of the Readme. > Nulis is an open source tree editor for writers, inspired by Gingko. I will say that it's not mentioned anywhere on nulis.io however.
  - adriano_f 9y ago
    Ok, glad it's mentioned somewhere. Couldn't find any mention first time I checked it out.
    - fish_fan 9y ago
      I think it's absolutely acceptable to ask for more references if you feel it's insufficient.
vitomd 9y ago
It´s a interesting approach. I like to organize my ideas on a different kind of trees. I created Sorter for personal use https://github.com/vitogit/sorter https://github.com/vitogit/sorter Seems like https://fictionhub.io/post/story-writing-process/ https://fictionhub.io/post/story-writing-process/ is not parsing the markdown correctly. There are a couple of ###
peternicky 9y ago
I love Gingko...I will try this new variation later but does anyone have any notes on how these two apps differ?
savolai 9y ago
Just tried both Gingko and this. The concept is fascinating! (I've been using Checkvist for years now.) I find this much easier to learn to use, as I don't have to toggle between edit mode and non-edit mode. (Modality can be tricky: https://medium.com/interaction-reimagined/dangers-of-modal-user-interfaces-316828de8161 https://medium.com/interaction-reimagined/dangers-of-modal-u... - shameless plug :) ) I don't like markdown either though, the extra markup interferes with my thinking. Though there is no UI modality, I feel it adds a cognitive modality where I need to switch between thinking about the actual content, and the translation from text semantics to markdown syntax. But I suppose I could stick to plaintext with these apps. A subtle rich text editing possibility would be appreciated too though. Edit: Scandinavian keyboards require pressing shift to get /. So accessing the search bar doesn't seem to work at all. Oh! There is an edit/preview mode, it's just global. I think I like it.
kqr2 9y ago
Also see Treesheets: http://strlen.com/treesheets/ http://strlen.com/treesheets/
brosky117 9y ago
I used https://germ.io https://germ.io for a looong time. It's a really good implementation of this idea. (No affiliation)
- napsterbr 9y ago
  I could be interested, but this landing page is really awful at conveying useful information about the product.
kevin_b_er 9y ago
I'm not sure what good the Affero GPL license is good for in this case. The resulting software cannot be distributed under it: It depends on React as a critical and integral component to its functionality. I cannot distribute the resulting software under AGPL, because it contains known patents I lack the right to distribute under the terms of the AGPL license.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ece 9y ago
https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner
se7entime 9y ago
Fun fact: nulis/menulis in Bahasa Indonesia is 'writing' Author replied:I think this is where I got the idea for the name from =) Was looking for something that sounds awesome and relevant, and somehow stumbled upon this word. https://mastodon.social/@rayalez/6864752 https://mastodon.social/@rayalez/6864752
marttt 9y ago
See also: Microviche plugin for vim: https://github.com/q335r49/microviche https://github.com/q335r49/microviche It allows one to "pan and zoom through text", there's also a screencast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YNiPUTGO28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YNiPUTGO28 I'm not a Vim user anymore, but this is definitely the most interesting (also, peculiar) approach to a non-coder's writing tool I've come across over many years of text editor geekery. I tried to hack together something similar for Plan9's Acme and Sam, but unfortunately those efforts led nowhere.

231 points by rayalez 9y ago

Would someone use this? I think a text editor is a pretty good tree editor as it is but then again, as a programmer I see everything as parse trees anyway :)

SenpaiSilver 9y ago
My take on this is that it's not aimed at coding but more like a way to map ideas.

ckluis 9y ago

This would be more useful if like project gutenberg (wordpress editor redesign) each card/block could be "structured data" (image, text, table, etc) - it would be pretty neat tool to use for a Knowledge base.

rayalez 9y ago
Well, each card is written in markdown/html, so all of that can be used.
mcguire 9y ago
"project gutenberg (wordpress editor redesign)" That is a spectacularly poor choice of name. https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page https://wordpress.github.io/gutenberg/ https://wordpress.github.io/gutenberg/
gglitch 9y ago
That in turn reminds me of Tiddlywiki, which I kind of love and use for all kinds of one-offs: http://tiddlywiki.com/ http://tiddlywiki.com/

xori 9y ago

I think the original app that inspired it was gingko[1] but it's nice that we can see the source of this one[2] [1] - https://gingkoapp.com https://gingkoapp.com [2] - https://github.com/raymestalez/nulis https://github.com/raymestalez/nulis

Multicomp 9y ago

This visually reminds me of some of the Federated Wiki concepts Ward C has been working on for awhile [1] [1] - http://sandbox.fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors http://sandbox.fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors

_pmf_ 9y ago
Also ConnectedText, which is the closest to Tinderbox that Windows users have. Scrivener, maybe.

nslindtner 9y ago

Love the idea. Reminds me of Workflowy (which has focus on task list in trees). Check it out: https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/

rayalez 9y ago
Thanks! I love workflowy as well, although personally I use the org-mode. Think of Nulis as workflowy/org-mode with a second dimension =)
- czechdeveloper 9y ago
  As workflowy fan, I've tried to love org-mode, but failed. I've since moved to Dynalist.io.

gcoda 9y ago

Thank you. I use gingko, it is perfect but not self hosted. And tiddlyWiki with graph map extensions got too much extra stuff I do not need. Not sure how I feel about mongo as backend but, if this app got same export features as gingko I am sold.

rayalez 9y ago
Because Nulis is written in React, frontend and backend are pretty much separate. Mongo/Node just create an api and send/receive trees formatted as one big json object. Backend is very simple, and should be easy to replace with anything else. Also, you can just use file>save/open feature, which saves a tree as a json file, purely from the frontend. The desktop version of the app can work without the backend at all(server used just for cloud sync, all trees are saved as files).
- mrec 9y ago
  There's no mention of a "desktop version" in the About page - where should I be looking for that?
  - rayalez 9y ago
    Linux: https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-linux-x64.zip https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-linux-x64.zip Mac: https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-darwin-x64.zip https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-darwin-x64.zip Windows: https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-win32-x64.zip https://nulis.io/downloads/Nulis-win32-x64.zip Note that Desktop is in a very early version, Mac/Windows are not tested at all. I'll keep updating it and making it more stable as I continue the development.

fimdomeio 9y ago

This is kind of the same idea behind Xanadu[1] right? I fail to see the benefits of this multidimensional navigation through text. Getting lost seems way to easy in this kind of interfaces. [1] - http://xanadu.com/ http://xanadu.com/

setr 9y ago
As I understand it, xanadu's goal is to interstitch documents, in a similar manner (I just realized) to git blame; documents are composed of original text, and pieces of other documents, recursively. So you can traverse the history not just of the document, but the blocks of text as they get referenced and pointed to by newer documents. I can't remember though if those blocks were meant to be updated as the original does, or if they're treated immutably. This on the other hand has a much simpler goal: organizing your documents into a tree. Afaict, it can be treated/navigated like a file system, except that theres no distinction between file and directory.
thomastjeffery 9y ago
> I fail to see the benefits of this multidimensional navigation through text. You just wrote a comment containing a hyperlink. If I click that link, I go to another page that has text I can read. I can come back here. I can reach that page from other pages too. That means that you just made a node in a graph, and have it an edge to another node in that graph. Your comment is about as ironic as it gets.

vincnetas 9y ago

Fun fact. Nulis means zero (0) in Lithuanian. I wonder what other product names unintentionally hit some word in some exotic language. One from top of my head was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Laputa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Laputa (we know what "la puta" means in Spanish)

slantyyz 9y ago
There are many of these for car names: Chevy Nova (no va), and Mazda Miata sounding phonetically similar to mierda in Spanish.
tinyrick2 9y ago
"nulis" also means "write" in Indonesian
- rudilee 9y ago
  The correct form is 'menulis', 'nulis' is more like the informal daily use form
  - jogundas 9y ago
    'Mėnulis' means 'the Moon' in Lithuanian. No getting away from our language :)
ggambetta 9y ago
The canonical example is the Mitsubishi Pajero, later renamed Montero in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries.
- TremendousJudge 9y ago
  for those that don't speak Spanish, it literally means 'wanker'
  - dmix 9y ago

kaushalmodi 9y ago

As a plain-text editor fan, I use Org mode in Emacs for Tree-based documentation and blogging.

Lonte 9y ago

Fun fact nulis means writing in indonesian

rayalez 9y ago
Actually I came up with the name by using google translate. I've put in related words like writing/ideas/thinking/etc, and then scrolled through translations until I've stumbled upon a cool sounding one =)

discreteevent 9y ago

Like the look of this a lot. I'm a fan of mind maps for getting work done. I might suggest that unless you think that a large portion of your audience are vim users then you might use ijkl instead of hjkl. For a non-vim user ijkl is completely natural but hjkl will be annoying.

dmix 9y ago
You prefer they use something that 'feels' natural to you over a very commonly used pattern? Left/Up/Down/Right on the same middle row is more intuitive than putting Up on a higher row IMO. On my thinkpad "i" is not centered above "k" (the way Up/Down arrow keys are aligned), it's offset over both "j" and "k", so when not looking at my keys while typing this will likely cause more errors.
- Retr0spectrum 9y ago
  AFAICT it's only common in for developer-oriented tools that want to be familiar to vi users. The average writer has probably never seen hjkl navigation before, and it is much harder to get used to than a slightly off-center "i" key.
  - dmix 9y ago
    Why not use the same pattern as games then? W A/S/D I've personally never seen I/JKL before and over the years I've come to believe Vim made the right choice by use HJKL on the 'home row', so I might be biased. I can put my four fingers on all 4 keys at once with HJKL, but I can't with I/JKL. This is a standard starting position (just shifted over one key left): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/QWERTY-home-keys-position.svg/2000px-QWERTY-home-keys-position.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/QW...
  - mcguire 9y ago
    Then there's other keyboard layouts. (Dvorak reporting in!) :-)
- slazaro 9y ago

aargh_aargh 9y ago

Looks nice. Just take note of the AGPL license.

pizza 9y ago

fyi, i wrote something fairly intricate in tree format and the account creation process deleted it without confirmation after logging me in

fifnir 9y ago

Hey there's a little typo in "How it works": "beraking down your large writing goals"

alfonsodev 9y ago

I like the idea, this could be useful for education, I see it as mindmap for taking notes.

stevesimmons 9y ago

It is a shame more people aren't aware of Leo (http://leoeditor.com/ http://leoeditor.com/). Leo is a hierarchical editor with a tree view of nodes, which can be in Markdown, ReST, code, and create compound docs a la literate programming from nodes, etc. The killer feature imo is nodes can be cloned to multiple places in the tree. So you could have, for example, group notes by project in one master last, plus another sub-tree for clones from the master list of your own current projects. Leo's web site may look clunky and old-fashioned. But don't let that put you off! -- EDIT -- For what it's worth, I do oscillate between Leo and Emacs org-mode. I'd probably stay 100% with org-mode if there were a way to clone nodes. Does anyone know if this is possible?

sharpercoder 9y ago
With all respect, leo looks like it is an editor from the 90's with its windows 95-looks. For me, that's mostly a sign that the developers do not adhere to modern development standards. As such, why would I invest time in using a dying product/project?
- tetrep 9y ago
  By that same logic, Vim and Emacs are even more dead than Leo, which they most certainly are not.
  - fish_fan 9y ago
    Ehh, they actually are very well refined interfaces. True they are text oriented, but that ages well I think. I'm not trying to imply Leo doesn't have polish, just that native UIs age poorly compared to, say, readline/curses interfaces. The expectations are completely different, and UIs have changed a lot in 20+ years.
- LambdaComplex 9y ago
  It took me maybe 30 seconds of clicking to get to this: https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/graphs/contributors https://github.com/leo-editor/leo-editor/graphs/contributors Doesn't look very dead to me.

Tenobrus 9y ago

Best and most general option that I know of is Org mode (Emacs). But regardless, I'm glad more people are picking up on the power of hierarchical text editing (and interfaces more friendly to non-programmers are a reasonably good thing). But if you really want to go all the way, and get arbitrary directed graphs of text content, check out org-brain.

breck 9y ago

Looks cool. A suggestion: I'd recommend using Tree Notation (https://github.com/breck7/treeprogram https://github.com/breck7/treeprogram) for your storage format, instead of JSON. (disclaimer: author of TN) I can actually help you build your own language on top of TN using some new tools, if interested, which might be very useful to you. Email is in profile.

stingraycharles 9y ago
It would be nice if you provided a disclaimer that you are the author of that library. It looks interesting, but what problem would it solve ?
- breck 9y ago
  Good point. Added disclaimer. > what problem would it solve ? First, it would support current functionality, so you wouldn't lose anything. So everything that it adds is a net gain. Second and biggest benefit, I believe it would allow them to add features more easily because they'd easily be able to build a simple and well structured Nulis DSL in Tree Notation that removes a lot of the incidental complexity of their current code. Third, it would make their "nls" files human readable and writeable. No more quotes or brackets, et cetera. With a few tweaks to their current implementation, folks could then drop in more file structures that can then be visualized and edited in nls.

komali2 9y ago

Curious why the readme is only available in image format, also, was there a mistake? It says Ctrl + l is to create a node to the left, but then it says "for example, use ctrl +l to create a new card to the right."

yardshop 9y ago
Ctrl+L would move to the right, and Ctrl+Shift+L would create a new node to the right. So above that where it says "L - left" is incorrect. There's also a typo "beraking" that hasn't been fixed after several mentions.

adriano_f 9y ago

I'm the creator of the app that inspired this one, http://gingkoapp.com http://gingkoapp.com They say imitation is the best form of flattery, but I'm surprised Ray that you didn't credit Gingko at all. It's practically identical. Thoughts? --- Edit: My bad... it's not on the website, but I see Gingko mentioned and linked in the Readme. Thanks Ray.

SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
> Nulis is an open source tree editor for writers, inspired by Gingko. To learn how it works, visit https://nulis.io/about https://nulis.io/about and try it out. He does say "inspired by", though not sure if that was the credit you are expecting.
- deleted 9y ago
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- nxsynonym 9y ago
  I think that's plenty of recognition. Most people wouldn't even bother out of fear of losing potential users to the "original". Unfortunately, being the first or most common product in a space has the side effect of attracting copies, spin offs, or other imitations.
ajford 9y ago
It's in like the first sentence of the Readme. > Nulis is an open source tree editor for writers, inspired by Gingko. I will say that it's not mentioned anywhere on nulis.io however.
- adriano_f 9y ago
  Ok, glad it's mentioned somewhere. Couldn't find any mention first time I checked it out.
  - fish_fan 9y ago
    I think it's absolutely acceptable to ask for more references if you feel it's insufficient.

vitomd 9y ago

It´s a interesting approach. I like to organize my ideas on a different kind of trees. I created Sorter for personal use https://github.com/vitogit/sorter https://github.com/vitogit/sorter Seems like https://fictionhub.io/post/story-writing-process/ https://fictionhub.io/post/story-writing-process/ is not parsing the markdown correctly. There are a couple of ###

peternicky 9y ago

I love Gingko...I will try this new variation later but does anyone have any notes on how these two apps differ?

savolai 9y ago

Just tried both Gingko and this. The concept is fascinating! (I've been using Checkvist for years now.) I find this much easier to learn to use, as I don't have to toggle between edit mode and non-edit mode. (Modality can be tricky: https://medium.com/interaction-reimagined/dangers-of-modal-user-interfaces-316828de8161 https://medium.com/interaction-reimagined/dangers-of-modal-u... - shameless plug :) ) I don't like markdown either though, the extra markup interferes with my thinking. Though there is no UI modality, I feel it adds a cognitive modality where I need to switch between thinking about the actual content, and the translation from text semantics to markdown syntax. But I suppose I could stick to plaintext with these apps. A subtle rich text editing possibility would be appreciated too though. Edit: Scandinavian keyboards require pressing shift to get /. So accessing the search bar doesn't seem to work at all. Oh! There is an edit/preview mode, it's just global. I think I like it.

kqr2 9y ago

Also see Treesheets: http://strlen.com/treesheets/ http://strlen.com/treesheets/

brosky117 9y ago

I used https://germ.io https://germ.io for a looong time. It's a really good implementation of this idea. (No affiliation)

napsterbr 9y ago
I could be interested, but this landing page is really awful at conveying useful information about the product.

kevin_b_er 9y ago

I'm not sure what good the Affero GPL license is good for in this case. The resulting software cannot be distributed under it: It depends on React as a critical and integral component to its functionality. I cannot distribute the resulting software under AGPL, because it contains known patents I lack the right to distribute under the terms of the AGPL license.

deleted 9y ago

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ece 9y ago

https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner https://github.com/vimoutliner/vimoutliner

se7entime 9y ago

Fun fact: nulis/menulis in Bahasa Indonesia is 'writing' Author replied:I think this is where I got the idea for the name from =) Was looking for something that sounds awesome and relevant, and somehow stumbled upon this word. https://mastodon.social/@rayalez/6864752 https://mastodon.social/@rayalez/6864752

marttt 9y ago

See also: Microviche plugin for vim: https://github.com/q335r49/microviche https://github.com/q335r49/microviche It allows one to "pan and zoom through text", there's also a screencast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YNiPUTGO28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YNiPUTGO28 I'm not a Vim user anymore, but this is definitely the most interesting (also, peculiar) approach to a non-coder's writing tool I've come across over many years of text editor geekery. I tried to hack together something similar for Plan9's Acme and Sam, but unfortunately those efforts led nowhere.