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As an example, Dropbox Paper supports a number of keyboard-text[1] to formatting capabilities. - The markdown goodies (bold, italics, line break, headings, quo
by angleofrepose 7y ago
As an example, Dropbox Paper supports a number of keyboard-text[1] to formatting capabilities.
- The markdown goodies (bold, italics, line break, headings, quotes, etc)
- Dropbox Paper specific items like +LinkToDocument, @Person, #tag
- Digital Paper functionality like stylized tables /note red, creates a red box and puts your cursor inside it
- literally just two commandline tools /date, /time
These are all much more convenient than clicking GUI buttons to get these formatting options yet incredibly limited. There are on the order of tens of these capabilities in any similar application. Notion, Slack, TiddlyWiki, etc.
I can think up hundreds of keyboard-text -> computer-things. Sure they are basic and understood processes, but unless they are built by a developer for a walled garden application you can't really have them. In general, this is one of the reasons I primarily use vim/emacs and linux, so I can build my own interface for my computer. But I'm interested in bringing that textgrid customization into a canvas application that supports more media types than text. vim + repl + powerpoint. Keyboard driven, mouse driven, stylus driven and as powerful as a computer can be.
- I can highlight 3 paragraphs and type /column to make a three column layout.
- I can type /tabs to create tabs in my document ala tiddlywiki tabs.
- I can link statusbar like information into a document with /uptime and document how much time this document has been open.
I would like these capabilities in a shared document system to be able to work collaboratively on a higher level than text, and with more programmatic options than the tens that these applications provide.
I think I can't express this well and I'm really at the beginning of thinking about it, thanks for taking the time to read it. Maybe there's nothing here and this is just a manifestation of my frustration of using a computer.
[1]: things I can type on my ~80 or ~100 key keyboard.
- j88439h84 7y agoMaybe OneNote would be a place to look.
- angleofrepose 7y agoI used OneNote every day for a month. It's a toy application not meant to be used seriously. It has no navigational tools beyond its hierarchy of files and search. Import a 78 page pdf to read and annotate? You can't set bookmarks or even jump to the bottom. Searching the text of pdfs just failed in 3/3 tests I tried going through my old notes to find a document.
- j88439h84 7y agoOk good to know
- cwalv 7y agoYou can use hyperlinks as a navigational tool as well. You can get a link to any paragraph on any page and paste anywhere else. You can also use tags and "tag summary pages."
- angleofrepose 7y agoI'll have to look more into this, thanks for the tip. I have found it incredibly difficult to figure out how OneNote was intended to be used. The in-app tutorials are basic in the extreme (describing only the visible UI) and I couldn't seem to google-fu it well. There are endless YouTube videos and reddit fluff posts but even the technical looking channels just have a 10 min video where the main content consists of a stylized "Science is cool" header with some vectors or bio notes. As I said I used it in my full class load for a month then entirely gave up on it. Too many papers and too many large documents of notes, I have much more reusability and ease of access and searching my pile of md documents next to a pile of PDFs (I write `zathura path/to/paper`) at the top of each section in my markdown doc that I edit in vim, then when I want it open I put my cursor on it and hit `gx`. This beat out any OneNote workflow I could figure out in a month of daily use.