17 ms·

Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner

513 points by jessegrosjean 4y ago

Bike’s most original feature is the “fluid” text editing. Lots of text editors have animated some interactions (cursor movement, insert newline, etc), but I think Bike is the first designed from the ground up to support fluid editing. Give it a try, it feels different. (movie on home page if you don't have Mac) Other Features: • In text mode Bike works like a normal text editor. In outline mode rows are constrained to outline hierarchy. • .bike file format is HTML subset, so files are easy to parse and manipulate. Bike also supports .opml and .txt. • Scriptable via AppleScript. Javascript plugin API also expected in future, though no timing on that. • Architecture needed to support fluid editing also makes Bike faster/more scalable than most (all?) outliners and many text editors. I test performance using the Moby Dick Workout[^1]. Implementation Notes: • View is built using CALayers[^2]. • Animations are performed by Core animation and Motion[^3] lib. • View performance is determined by visible text, not document size. Model representation is interesting in that it’s just a flat list of rows. Each row has a `level` property, outline structure is determined dynamically. View implementation requires that each row has a unique ID. I’m using OrderedDictionary from Swift Collections[^4] to store rows. This is Bike’s performance bottleneck for large outlines. Eventually I may change to augmented b+tree and then should be able to work with gigabytes worth of outline. That will be fun, but not sure it’s actually needed. Already probably fast enough for 99% of use cases as is. Hope you find Bike interesting. I’m happy to answer any questions. [^1]: https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/ https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/ [^2]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/quartzcore/calayer https://developer.apple.com/documentation/quartzcore/calayer [^3]: https://github.com/b3ll/Motion https://github.com/b3ll/Motion [^4]: https://github.com/apple/swift-collections https://github.com/apple/swift-collections

soapdog 4y ago
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.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  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 HEADING (innovation I know). Again that maps really well to HTML, not as well to OPML. Plus I just like the fact that .bike files are HTML. Makes me confident that they will live and be readable far into the future.
  - d3nj4l 4y ago
    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.
    - jessegrosjean 4y ago
      I haven't looked too much into it. If someone really wanted it and was motivated to help write I would (might, contact me first) support, but generally the existing formats are what I will focus on.
  - psydvl 4y ago
    Why not to use markdown formatting? For example, Dynalist use this idea for their files And node itself is heading, while when they need paragraph with heading they create _note="" attribute into <outline> element
    - jessegrosjean 4y ago
      Markdown is great and I build another app, FoldingText, around it. But for my own use I over time realized that was a mistake. All the parsing and formatting adds complexity. I think rich text (which to be clear Bike does not yet have, though I will add soon) is a simpler way to work from user perspective. Just issue commands instead of remember and see formatting rules. It's cleaner and simpler for my uses.
sh1mmer 4y ago
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.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  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.
  - pvg 4y ago
    In OmniOutliner, the collapse row shortcut will collapse the parent which takes care of the specialized extra keybind. What seems odd is OmniOutliner and Bike's outline/collapse row keys are reversed with cmd-0 and cmd-9 doing collapsing and expanding in one and expanding and collapsing in the other.
elcapitan 4y ago
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)
- Exuma 4y ago
  If you don't see how that's fluid and why it's valuable then that feature isn't for you. But it's certainly unquestionably fluid unlike a lot of other trash apps.
  - samatman 4y ago
    Not recognizing what the word is supposed to mean in this context doesn't imply any of those things.
    - Exuma 4y ago
      It most certainly does, lol. There's a lot of programmers who have literally zero design aesthetic. I bet 99% of the people who don't understand what "fluid" means in this context fall into that category. Anyone with even a remote sense of aesthetics and design will immediately recognize the fluidness of the navigation/animation/flow
  - mikeg8 4y ago
    What a great non answer
- dchest 4y ago
  I made a tiny screencast showing the big difference: https://imgur.com/a/u1QTns6 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.
  - ask_b123 4y ago
    I'd recommend using KeyCastr to show the keystrokes while recording.
skrtskrt 4y ago
Just when I have mostly moved on to Linux - it looks incredible and I wish the project luck, I would love to use this on Linux one day
- scioto 4y ago
  I'll echo that sentiment. After my 2015 MBP dies or is no longer supported, I'll finish my move to Linux. Biggest motivation is the need to run Linux VMs in x86 without having the hypervisor translate M1. Tried org-mode, couldn't get into it. Workflowy does it for me for the time being, since it's browser-based.
yes_but_no 4y ago
When apps use text based single file as data source are they flushing the whole file when user makes an update? If I add or move a line does Bike rewrites the whole file and updates the in-mem sorted-dict op mentioned?
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  For saving to disk yes, but not on every keystroke. An autosave is scheduled and then the save is performed after some period of time. The underlying scheduling and behavior is provided by macOS framework code. If you add a line then rows after it in the array get shifted.
mrmonkeyman 4y ago
telesilla 4y ago
If this supported multi-user synchronous editing Google-docs style I'd be thrilled.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Sorry that's not likely. I'm a single developer, not ready to run a server. More likely (though still have many more basic features on roadmap) is automatic merging support when a Bike file is stored on something like Dropbox. In fact that would be a pretty great service (for someone else to develop). "Dropbox", but for strutted data (xml, json, whatever) that knows how to merge trees and make use if unique ids. Maybe it wouldn't work, each merge situation needs a special case solution. But for Bike files at least I think it might work pretty well.
  - nehalem 4y ago
    Did you have a look at [y-js](https://github.com/yjs/yjs https://github.com/yjs/yjs)? They claim to be suitable for p2p collaborative editing and they have bindings for other languages as well.
    - jessegrosjean 4y ago
      Early in Bike's development I did try a few solutions, but I want Bike to work on somewhat big files. See (https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/ https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/). Anytime I loaded such a file into a sync solution everything blew up.
      - Void_ 4y ago
        YJS is one of the more performant ones. Wonder how it would do with your example file.
    - jamil7 4y ago
      Which other languages?
  - 4y ago
phlyingpenguin 4y ago
First, I use and love TaskPaper so I'm interested in what you've got going on. But on its surface, I don't see the differentiation between the two products right now other than Bike having slicker rendering and TaskPaper having more utility. It seems like TaskPaper is a competent outliner that supports focus and other features just fine. Can you comment to what the goals are that separate them?
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  I've written about Bike's relationship to TaskPaper here: https://support.hogbaysoftware.com/t/how-does-bike-relate-to-taskpaper/4689 https://support.hogbaysoftware.com/t/how-does-bike-relate-to... I think core summary is: 1. Wanted to control own text editor. Building off NSTextView was limiting 2. Wanted to use structured document format. Plain text was limiting
  - phlyingpenguin 4y ago
    Interesting, thanks. It does sound like there's a lot to build on there so I'll be interested in seeing where it goes. Some of my best "productivity" memories are with the "free" copy of OmniOutliner that came on my first Macs, and I think you have the bones to bring that to the 2020s.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Workflowy and Logseq already provide these features. Am I missing something?
- vvillena 4y ago
  As the post title says, it's a macOS native app, focusing on fluidity.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
    Mac native I get. But what is "fluidity"? The other two are just as "fluid".
    - jessegrosjean 4y ago
      "fluidity" is a made up marketing term (by me) to mean animation. But I think this animation is important. Bike is a "tool for thought". I think the way that it "feels/animation" is important. Bike's build built from the ground up to support this. Check out the movie or better yet try the download. Typing feels a bit smoother, text slides into place. And yes it can be turned off. And no it doesn't slow you down, animations are canceled if you type again before they finish.
      - criddell 4y ago
        > text slides into place I don't have a Mac to try this on, but slides into place sounds like what Microsoft does in Outlook and I ended up turning it off. Maybe it's not the same thing though. In Outlook (and some other Office programs) as you type the text seems to appear a little more slowly and the cursor glides to the right. To me, it always felt laggy and so I turned it off.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  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 is a plus and minus. But if you are on a Mac Bike will generally us a lot less resources then those apps and integrate better with the rest of the system. 3. Local files in open formats. Logseq has this of Course, but I think there's something pretty nice about having your outline just be simple HTML. Easy to parse, easy to work with, should be able to view and make sense of as long as web's around. 4. Faster. Bike is designed to work on somewhat big outlines. Moby Dick has been my test file. It opens instantly. I've just pasted that into Logseq and my computer is working hard a few minutes later. Not sure how workflowy does because it puts me over quotas. Bike has a pretty unique foundation compared to other outliner apps. It's also missing a lot of higher level features that I plan to build out over time.
WillAdams 4y ago
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 would show as a single node, but have a toggle at the top to select which file extension one is viewing, w/ an option for "all" which expands them so that one can see all of them.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  > 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 directories? I've long wanted to try something like that. It would be very fun, but I don't expect Bike will do this.
  - WillAdams 4y ago
    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.
smoldesu 4y ago
Why would I buy this over Obsidian or Logseq, both of which are free and support more platforms?
- jitl 4y ago
  If you want a super-fast, Mac-native quality app.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    It's super-fast, and Mac native, but quite basic.
    - criddell 4y ago
      For many of us, that's a positive.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        Could be, for not for $37. There are other, equally basic for $0 or $10.
        Leftium 4y ago
        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.
        jen20 4y ago
        None equally integrated into the macOS system for that price though. Omnioutliner (the typical go-to native Mac outliner) is more than double.
- criddell 4y ago
  If you need to run it on something other than a Mac, you wouldn't.
- 4y ago
kacy 4y ago
Very cool and congrats on what you’ve built! This is something I’ve been looking for. Any plans to do iCloud syncing and maybe a mobile app?
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  I think basic iCloud syncing between Macs should already work, just as part of the fact that Bike saves your outlines to some Mac OS file (not database). I know I need to do iOS support, as long as I stay financially viable I will do iOS support. But I still need to work on a few more basics in the macOS app first. Bike will also read/write .opml files. You should be able to share with iOS outliner that way I think.
  - jrslv 4y ago
    Very well done. An iOS app would be great, since people often do outlining/thinking in the nature.
m1keil 4y ago
Are there any limits to the unlicensed mode? Is it a shareware or more in line with Sublime Text style?
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  There are some editor preferences that need a license and AppleScript support requires a license. Going forward I expect most new features will also require a license. For example I hope to add rich text support next and that will require a license. (same license will unlock all new features)
ryanianian 4y ago
This is great. It feels very fast, focused, native, and lightweight like all of HogBay's offerings. Is there any way to change the font? As a developer, non-monospace fonts feel foreign for composing text.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Thanks, sorry not yet font option. I expect to add TaskPaper like stylesheets in the medium future, then there will be many style options.
  - billrobertson42 4y ago
    A simple font selector would be nice. I have some seriously impaired vision w/o correction and monospaced fonts really help when I have to look at a screen that way. That and ability to zoom in/out or increase/decrease font size.
    - jessegrosjean 4y ago
      Note that Bike does support changing font size already. I'm getting a lot of request for also adding changing the underlying font. Will likely add that sooner then later now since lots of people seem to need.
      - billrobertson42 4y ago
        Awesome!
dchest 4y ago
Finally! So many outliners think of each node as a separate text field and add node movements on top. This one gets it. Great work, Jesse!
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Thanks, that's also a pretty key aspect of Bike. Maybe more important than "fluid animation", but I expect hyping up the fluid animation will get more clicks and people can discover the unconstrained text editor after using it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
t235a 4y ago
For those want similar on windows, try https://innovationdilation.com/ https://innovationdilation.com/
dcchambers 4y ago
Wow - this so closely aligns with how I already think and organize my thoughts with notes. Definitely going to give it a try. Beautiful and fun demo video too.
giancarlostoro 4y ago
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.
- Leftium 4y ago
  Relatively recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040235
  - giancarlostoro 4y ago
    Thank you! I love that they do very small changes that have positive impact. It really makes the most sense for Show HN.
- Etheryte 4y ago
  I believe this changed a few months ago or so, and it's only available for Show HN submissions afaik. It's a small change but definitely a great improvement over the old way where you'd post a link and then add a comment.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
brailsafe 4y ago
I like that you described some of the underlying APIs you used and picked something to try and do well, and it seems like you did. I also like macOS native software. I do struggle to understand the value proposition though. I've been using Bear for outlining, admittedly smallish lists. It's macOS native, supports things like pasting in images, video, markdown, checkboxes, etc.. and is supported by a tiny subscription fee or free. I've never run into performance problems. Some people just want to work on massive outlines with either text or links and nothing else, move those list items around frequently, and to those people $30 might be cheap. As a product it seems tricky to me, but I'd love to hear from anyone who's the perfect customer, and how this hits the mark for you. As in, what the hell do you plan day-to-day? Also I quite like the icon, and the nature of it being incredibly simple. In a sense, it reminds me of the first version of IA Writer.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  I think Bike is more "tool for thought" than it is tool for notes. It's more like a text editor with some magic features, then it is like a directory of text files. So value proposition... It's a unique surface for your ideas. The way that it "feels" is important and different than any other app. If that helps you think then Bike might be fore you. In another comment I said Fluid = Animation... and it does, but there's another aspect of fluid with Bike. If you try most any outliner there are pretty rigid tools. A little hard to explain, but they don't feel "fluid" like a text editor. There are limits and constraints. Bike is different in that it has all the capabilities of an outliner, but it also has all the freedom of a text editor. You can select over multiple lines, cursor moves like a text editor. Not sure that I've explained that last bit well... but try a good outliner like Workflowy. Then try Bike, beyond the animations (they can be turned off in preferences) Bikes core editing commands feel different.
sfaruque 4y ago
Any chance you’ll be releasing this on SetApp too (like TaskPaper)?
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  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.
aosaigh 4y ago
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/ https://www.mindnode.com/
- Void_ 4y ago
  It would be interesting to see MindNode approach applied to PKM-style backlinks like in Reflect [1]. So not only visualize connections between pages, but also the outline inside each page. [1] https://reflect.app https://reflect.app
  - innocentoldguy 4y ago
    How does Reflect compare to Noteplan 3? They both look similar.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Nice think about Mindnode and Bike is copy/paste between the two works quite well.
- selykg 4y ago
  Bonus is that Mindnode has a built in outliner view as well. I use Mindnode for this type of thing 99% of the time.
  - iaresee 4y ago
    Another long time MindNode user here. I know the nested lists and map views are essentially two visualizations of the same structured data but my brain just finds the maps less thought-constraining. I end up with more creative paths in map view when I use it to plan. Horses for courses I guess. Bike looks neat though.
    - 4y ago
soci 4y ago
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?
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Sorry I don't. So much still to do on Bike, I think my time is better spent building up the app feature set.
  - Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
    Please do at least put the minimum required version on the homepage (maybe in small text below the "Download" button or something).
    - jessegrosjean 4y ago
      A bit late, but added, I always forget that bit.
      - Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
        Thanks! Good luck with the app.
- tensordance 4y ago
  OutlineEdit 3 supports macOS 10.14: https://outlineedit.com/home.html https://outlineedit.com/home.html
Jcowell 4y ago
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)
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  It is available here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bike-outliner/id1588292384?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bike-outliner/id1588292384?mt=... Mac App Store version is subscription based. I know many people don't like that, that's why my direct download version is not subscription based... but for Mac App Store upgrades are a pain/impossible. So subscription.
  - Jcowell 4y ago
    This is excellent . When I searched for it on the App Store via “bike” I was unable to find it. I’ll subscribe if it means you can maybe buy App Store ads for keywords like bike for better visibility.
    - jessegrosjean 4y ago
      Yeah, Bike's not a very good name for searches, but it's a good name for what the app intends to be.
  - _zzaw 4y ago
    Yeah, I wouldn’t have considered this for a second if it was subscription-only. The pay-once-and-pay-for-upgrades model is very fair; I’d impulse-buy something for $30 once, but I don’t impulse-buy recurring payments. This is a very cool idea. Might make note-taking a lot easier. I’m looking forward to trying it out.
jitl 4y ago
Congratulations on the release! It’s cool to see more outliners with multi-item text selection. The “fluid” animations look really delightful — I’m jealous! I know you’ve shared some details about the animation implementation, but I’m curious about how much system stuff you take advantage of. Is your view accessible through VoiceOver? What parts of the Cocoa text system do you use (or, what do you use instead for layout and shaping)? (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/TextFonts/Conceptual/CocoaTextArchitecture/TextSystemArchitecture/ArchitectureOverview.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009459-CH7-CJBJHGAG https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Te...) I think you started working on this around the time I was working on multi-block text selection in Notion. I remember seeing a preview tweet in a Andy Matuschak thread and thinking “great minds!”. When I started working on it, I was so surprised that no outliner I tested had multi-item text selection! It’s a unique fusion. I’m curious about how you handled deletions across different indent levels… Do you know of any other outliners with it besides Bike and Notion?
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Thanks! Bike's editor is pretty much: OutlinerLayer RowLayers LineFragmentLayers I use CoreText to line break and render into each LineFragmentLayer. A whole new level of performance is possible if I knew more metal/opengl, but right now rendering text on CPU and sending as line fragments to CoreAnimation. > Do you know of any other outliners with it besides Bike and Notion? It's hard to define "outliner". This has been a main feature of TaskPaper for a long time... but TaskPaper is maybe a bit more "text editor" than outliner. Also tools like orgmode and probably lots more are pretty much outliners and also have all text editor features. But yeah, for tools that feel more like an outliner it's not a common feature. In particular Bike even allows you too over indent and movies lines around without moving children. I think that's pretty unique, and goes together with multiline selection in Bike's case.
  - burntcaramel 4y ago
    I imagine then you would had to reimplement behaviour for text selection from scratch? Impressive stuff!
amphitheatre 4y ago
Can someone combine this concept with a task management/todo app? That would be perfect.
- Void_ 4y ago
  TaskPaper turns each item into a todo that you can check off.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  That's the plan among other things. Get a license ;)
  - GaylordTuring 4y ago
    I use Taskpaper everyday, both for To-do:s and to take notes. I’ll gladly switch to Bike the day it can do most of the thing Taskpaper can do. I’ll eagerly follow the development of it.
- jdvh 4y ago
  We're working on an outline app with task management/planning functionality. With end-to-end encryption and multiuser/teams support (you can see other users type like Google Docs). Early beta signup at https://thymer.com https://thymer.com
  - rplnt 4y ago
    > We're working on Just quickly clicking around makes it look like you are not working on it. It's explained, but it would be better to change some things around so it doesn't look completely dead. E.g. > You can follow our daily progress / We share our progress daily and share everything, from code to finances. > This is today's entry (Apr 28 '22). It also gives false hope one could see the product in two weeks (which was a week ago).
Exuma 4y ago
I like it
andrew_ 4y ago
Call me a curmudgeon, but I just use an editor and markdown for the same fluid outlining. I guess this is more marketed towards people who don't also fluidly use a markup/markdown syntax.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  This nice think outliners can do that editors generally can't do is Focus In / Out. Maybe not important for your thought process, but for me I really like being about to start new on a fresh "page", while still being in the same document.
  - rplnt 4y ago
    Code editors can do it. It should be possible to define a syntax that would work well with this (no keywords, unquoted strings, : and TAB to define scopes).
  - andrew_ 4y ago
    Highlight + Tab does the trick for me. Both Atom and VSCode support collapsing Markdown. Just sayin.
twohaibei 4y ago
I've been using workflowy.com - looks VERY similar.
- lf-non 4y ago
  Workflowy is a truly category-defining solution that inspired an entire generation of similar products. I wanted a (preferably open-source) alternative which I could use with self-managed storage/sync without sharing any data and found Logseq to be pretty good.
  - alephnan 4y ago
    You mean like Org-mode?
    - lf-non 4y ago
      Umm ... I have always associated org mode with powerusers because of the implicit learning curve of emacs. Tools like workflowy/logseq are dead simple because anyone who has ever used a bullet list can instantly get productive. I know that logseq also supports org files, but I am not well versed enough with org to comment how well it stacks up against emacs.
camgunz 4y ago
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.
- jxy 4y ago
  How much memory and battery do all the animation use?
  - stevenbedrick 4y ago
    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.
    - armadsen 4y ago
      Indeed. As far as I know, Core Animation was originally created as part of work on the first version of iOS (née iPhoneOS), where the target device, the original iPhone, was pretty severely memory and CPU constrained.
      - xattt 4y ago
        Here’s part of the ArsTechnica article on Leopard that discussed CoreAnimation: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5/8/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5/8/ Of note: > [The] advent of Core Animation probably means that we'll have to endure some amount of gratuitously animated software created by "overly enthusiastic" developers. But the same was true during the introduction of styled text and color graphics. Mac developers learn quickly, and Mac users are good at rewarding restraint and punishing excess.
        armadsen 4y ago
        Right, it was introduced publicly as an API in Mac OS X Leopard, but my understanding has always been that it was actually conceived as part of iPhoneOS, then ported to Mac as well. The iPhone shipped a few months before Leopard, though of course UIKit wasn’t made public until the next year when the iPhone SDK was first released. There’s a similar story around SwiftUI. It was initially created by the Apple Watch team at Apple, then extended to all the other OSes (all this was long before it was made public).
markroseman 4y ago
Speaking as a daily TaskPaper user, this looks great! I totally get why you're doing the things you're doing with this, implementation-wise, and what you're able to achieve because of it. Having said that, you know very well what a tough sell it is the more general purpose a tool is, and this is very general purpose. I hope having it out there spurs some ideas around how the novel features of this infrastructure can be the basis for some more concrete and easier to market solutions.
jb1991 4y ago
Regarding the website: having a video embedded with zero control to mute or change it's audio volume is really insensitive UX. The annoying background music is not even necessary to actually get meaning from the video.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Sorry about that. I'm a one guy does many things. Maybe I missed on video sound, but it's tricky trying to make a text editor look interesting. I thought the music helped.
  - ask_b123 4y ago
    The music does sound interesting, but I also wanted to mute it. But at least there are some images later in the page.
  - humanistbot 4y ago
    I hated the music and closed my browser the second I couldn't find a mute button.
    - GaylordTuring 4y ago
      Sorry, I might have misunderstood you, but can’t you just mute the audio of your device altogether? Or do you want to continue to listen to music in the background or something?
      - jb1991 4y ago
        It’s not uncommon to respond to bad UX by simply leaving. I do that all the time.
  - throwaway675309 4y ago
    I would've vastly preferred you narrating over the video instead of generic sounding Kickstarter music, I immediately muted it.
CiPHPerCoder 4y ago
BIKE also stands for Bit-flipping Key Encapsulation https://bikesuite.org https://bikesuite.org
- dymk 4y ago
  It's also a two-wheeled vehicle powered by legs
kall 4y ago
This is an impressively well stripped down app. It's all I ever wanted from OmniOutliner (remember when it shipped with OS X?). Unfortunately, I've been drawn in by the linking functionality in Roam/Logseq and cannot go back to a simple outliner, though this makes me want to. I don't think I'm a fan of the animated cursor while typing. It somehow makes the typing feel slower, like it takes some physical effort for the cursor to push forward.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  It can feel that way for some people. Seems different per user, there's a preference to change the speed in settings. Also yet need to remember that you don't need to wait for it, sometimes you might just get mesmerized by it and then it feels slow, but if you just type it will keep up with you. It's only ever the "last" animation that fully completes if you are typing fast.
  - marcuskaz 4y ago
    I'll have to try it again, I didn't realize there was a setting for it. I uninstalled it because the typing felt really slow and awkward. My two cents, default disable so it feels faster, it sounded like speed and smoothness was one of the many selling points.
- lf-non 4y ago
  Yes, I am in the same boat. I started using Logseq when I switched to linux as my primary workstation and could no longer use OmniOutliner. I used to focus a lot on structuring and organizing things properly before. But after I started using linking, tags, ref embeds etc. more I found that I was more productive by just quickly dumping specific things into poorly organized isolated notes, and adding headers, cross-linking/organizing/merging them much later if they survive. I later learnt (to my surprise) that people had written whole books about similar methodologies (zettelkasten etc.) but yet to sit down and explore any of them.
- zaphod4prez 4y ago
  Another plug for linking... I loved Taskpaper and would be very interested in adopting Bike, but I need those sweet links/backlinks
jibbers 4y ago
This looks awesome! Reminds me of FoldingText. Edit: I'm not able to force-click on words to look them up (but right click > Look Up "x" still works). This would also be helpful on URLs, too.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Thanks, added to my bug list.
earthboundkid 4y ago
I used to write everything in TaskPaper. I guess I stopped when the iPhone came out? It was so nice back in the day.
nsxwolf 4y ago
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.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  I made WriteRoom which coined "Distraction free writing". Good fullscreen mode for Bike is on my list for sure.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    I bought WriteRoom :) It gave me a lifelong appreciation for "distraction free" computing.
nopcode 4y ago
I would consider dropping notion for this if there was a good Windows cousin.
jamesgreenleaf 4y ago
This seems very similar to Workflowy, which is meant as a compliment. Scriptability is a huge feature here, and something that WF users have been asking about for a long time. If you could offer this on multiple devices & OSes, and provide a sync feature, then I'd be very interested in switching.
user3939382 4y ago
This is cool! I currently use this app for this purpose and like it a lot https://www.foldingtext.com/ https://www.foldingtext.com/
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  Fun Fact: Jesse (OP) wrote the original version of that. see: https://www.foldingtext.com/blog/team/foldingtext_next.html https://www.foldingtext.com/blog/team/foldingtext_next.html
mpwoz 4y ago
Surprised nobody has mentioned org-mode yet. It does everything shown in the video: collapse/expand nodes, focus on subtrees, ability to highlight across rows/nodes, etc. That said, the fluid animations in Bike look great, and the video was very slick! Nice work.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  Well, you just did. OrgMode relies on emacs, which is not exactly in the same class of software that this is. This is "one thing well" stuff. Emacs and OrgMode are pretty much the other side of the continuum.
  - amcpu 4y ago
    I’ve been having good success with _basic_ outlining functionality of Org Mode in VS Code using the “VS Code Org Mode” extension. No need for emacs for this use case. The built-in VS Code folding works really well and then combining with GitLab which has rendering support for Org Mode when committing/pushing commits. Plus, since everything I’m doing is already in Org Mode syntax, I can move to other editors later if desired. It’s a good solution for my needs, at least.
  - 8fingerlouie 4y ago
    There's a fairly complete, and rather functional plugin for Sublime Text : https://github.com/ihdavids/orgextended https://github.com/ihdavids/orgextended
- 8fingerlouie 4y ago
  I've been through more than a dozen "outliners", "todo apps", and "document databases", and i always end up with a mix of org-mode and Markdown. It may be my requirements, but i'd rather have my data available on "whatever" platform i'm working on, than having a specialized tool on one platform. My job frequently has me switching between different desktop operating systems and mobile, so for me a simple clear text approach works the best, and org-mode and Markdown has that nailed down. So for now my tools are limited to Sublime Text on the desktop (with the OrgExtended plugin), Obsidian for my markdown notes (though sublime/vs code would work just as well), and BeOrg/PlainOrg on the iOS side of things, with simple file synchronization to keep files synchronized across platforms. Ironically, TaskPaper was the tool that got me started on the cleartext approach (also written by the author of Bike).
aareet 4y ago
This is great! It has a lot of features I value about Workflowy, but I've always wished Workflowy had a native app
reaperducer 4y ago
Happy to see this available as both a standalone download, and through the App Store. I'm a big supporter of indie software, but I've had some recent bad experiences that make me gravitate toward the App Store again. One of them is just a plain old boring MP3 Tag Editor. When I migrated to an M1 MacBook, it no longer worked. I contacted the author, and it took him a couple of months to respond. Once he did, he said I used it on too many computers, so I can't use it anymore. I used it: 1. The computer I purchased the software on, which I no longer have and was recycled. 2. The computer that replaced the first computer, which I no longer use and gave to my wife, who does not use the software. 3. The computer I replaced computer #2 with, which I used temporarily until I got my current computer. The old computer is now a headless media server in the closet. The author says there's no way to override his copy protection, or to give me a new license key. "I don't have technical options to resolve such an issue." Great. So I switched to another (more expensive) MP3 tag editor. But this one I bought through the App Store, so I know it will continue working, even if I upgrade my machine.
billbrown 4y ago
I have been in the market for an outliner that outputs to open formats so I am absolutely your audience. (My current top contender is OutlineEdit, and I was days away taking the plunge so thank you!) Two things I would love to see in any outliner: 1) Support Harvard and other outline format. I grew up outlining in Harvard and this bullet list stuff is maddening. The developer told me that OutlineEdit will not support it, period, so it's not a deal-breaker. 2) Horizontal outlining. Sometimes it's nice to have a hierarchy that expands and folds to the side. There was a Mac app called Tree 2 that did this but it is long unsupported. Daily TaskPaper guy, so this is a great development.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Unlikely to be built directly into Bike editor. I have thoughts (no plans yet) about plugin API that can use web view as output layer. The idea being that an outliner can be used for many things. For example you can create a calendar where the hierarchy is year/month/day. Neat, but not really a perfect solution for a calendar. So the idea with plugin API + Web View is that you could use that outliner calendar data to generate a nicer view. This keeps the outliner simple and uniform, but also gives you data specific view. I think that same solution might work for Tree style view, or Harvard bullet list view. It would be sorta like a markdown app, content on one side (the outliner), generated polished result on the other. No promises, but that's how I think I would implement those features in Bike.
- geoelectric 4y ago
  I would love a good replacement for Tree. I've never found another app that does what it does.
- spccdt 4y ago
  Regarding horizontal outlining and Tree replacement, it’s not native to macOS, but there’s a web app called Ginkgo.
diimdeep 4y ago
- lelandfe 4y ago
  $30 for an outliner and 1 year of support does feel steep. I dig that it has AppleScript support, rare (and great!) to see a new app supporting that.
- vintagedave 4y ago
  It's funny how our expectations have changed. I am keen to like this app simply because of who it's from, Hog Bay, who made one of the first Mac apps that really inspired me to how different Mac software could be back in the 2005-ish era. That was WriteRoom, and I used it on my second-gen Intel running Tiger and Snow Leopard. In 2007 it was $25: https://web.archive.org/web/20070202002238/https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070202002238/https://www.hogba... (and crikey wasn't design beautiful back then? Look at that snapshot of web design history.) That same $25 would, calculated by inflation, cost $35 now. Which is the price of this app, Bike.
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    Thanks for history link, just spent 15 minutes looking through my own website :)
    - vintagedave 4y ago
      It was a blast from the past! I really enjoy looking at sites from that era - I'm thinking of setting up a proxy through the Internet Archive (several tutorials online) to use with my lampshade iMac running Snow Leopard. UI, UX, websites, software -- it was a good time and we've lost a lot.
- BeautifulWorld 4y ago
  Won't run on my MacPro laptop because it's pre 11. Boo!
darren 4y ago
Nice! Do you have any plans on adding a "library" sidebar (like IA Writer) to allow quick jumping between multiple files?
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  I think yes, but no plans are really set in stone at this point. I agree a navigation bar would help navigation in big outlines.
cjlm 4y ago
I'm a big fan of Workflowy [0] but I've been keeping an eye on a Bike-like outliner called Zavala [1] – written with Swift and already has an iOS app. [0] https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/ [1] https://zavala.vincode.io/ https://zavala.vincode.io/
- mpolichette 4y ago
  I've been using Workflowy for years now. I really love it. They been working lots of interesting features in but stick to the basics that everything starts as a list. You would be surprised what is possible w/ just a list!
bsg75 4y ago
Running the last gen Mac Mini Server which Apple decided to not support past Catalina. As a fan of TaskPaper, this appears to be the point where Apple obsolesce hits me because macOS 11 is needed for Bike and some other new apps I have tried this month. With 16GB RAM, and the HDDs replaced with SSDs it is a perfectly capable desktop. I would upgrade macOS if I could, but it may be time to move it to Fedora. That won't solve the root issue with Mac apps - Intel architectures don't evolve so fast as a machine with this performance capacity becoming unsupported.
- mjturner 4y ago
  I have a Mini of the same generation and it runs Monterey very well via OpenCore Legacy Patcher - https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/. Worth considering if you haven't looked at it before.
  - bsg75 4y ago
    I did not know this existed. Definitely giving it a shot.
- tensordance 4y ago
  OutlineEdit 3 supports macOS 10.14 and newer, including Catalina: https://outlineedit.com/home.html https://outlineedit.com/home.html
dietsprite 4y ago
Great job with this. Going to try it out now. Slightly off-topic: What is the name of the song in the video? I want to play it on loop as I work
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Couldn't remember. Just found it: https://audiojungle.net/item/the-snaps-claps-stomps-pack/36314604 https://audiojungle.net/item/the-snaps-claps-stomps-pack/363...
  - dietsprite 4y ago
    Great - thank you
seanw444 4y ago
Well done on the smooth animations. Looks very satisfying to use.
klohto 4y ago
FYI, I submitted PR to add Bike into Brew casks - https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/123908 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/123908
OJFord 4y ago
> An outliner (or outline processor) is a specialized type of text editor (word processor) used to create and edit outlines, which are text files which have a tree structure, for organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner I'm not criticising use of the term, it seems familiar to (also used by) several commenters here, I just hadn't come across it. Guessed 'bulleted notes app' from the submission, which is close enough I suppose.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
pisipisipisi 4y ago
I wish someone re-created Varatek B-liner ... https://www.mind-mapping.org/index.php?title=B-liner_2002 https://www.mind-mapping.org/index.php?title=B-liner_2002
- jrk 4y ago
  It's not exactly the same, but a similar left-to-right tree outliner, specifically optimized for writing, is https://gingkoapp.com https://gingkoapp.com
  - pisipisipisi 4y ago
    Thanks! This looks like an awesome text editor and has the very understandable navigation I miss from b-liner!
alephnan 4y ago
What are your thoughts on this data structure? https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-r...
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  I've read that article a number of times, it's of course a great data structure, though I haven't ever used it myself. I think I like b+tree/rope better though for indexing lists of things efficiently. I did a lot work using b+tree in a bigger project that I could never quite finish. Finally gave up a year ago and grabbed leftover code to make Bike. Bike is using a pretty dumb data structure, but good enough for now. Hope one day to add back the more performant b+tree stuff.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sergiotapia 4y ago
Lovely but unfortunately Mac only.
zhaihuailou 4y ago
First class job！
spython 4y ago
I really like FoldingText that was also your development. Sadly, it's been discontinued. Looking forward to see if Bike feels as great as FoldingText.
- nnwright 4y ago
  FoldingText was an absolute work of art, best outliner I've ever used. It's one of those pieces of software I keep using, long after it has been discontinued, holding my breath with each OS release to see if this is the one that breaks it. That will literally be the only thing that keeps me from using it. I sincerely hope Bike adopts a lot of the same features!
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    Thanks I'm glad you liked it. Please note that I sold FoldingText to https://doubledogsoftware.com https://doubledogsoftware.com and it's still being worked on. I don't know full set of plans, but when I sold last summer (right before dedicating fully to Bike) the goal was to get the code into a modern state that would keep working for years to come.
cercatrova 4y ago
> What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds. Steve Jobs I like that the product references this quote for the logo as well as the fact that's it's on macOS.
joshspankit 4y ago
Let me know when I can have the same item under N nodes. Not a copy, but a leaf with multiple parents.
dotancohen 4y ago
Looks terrific! You seem to have implemented the some common org-mode functionality, such as editing outline structure by moving elements and headings. Does Bike do anything that org-mode does not? Bike certainly _looks_ nicer than org-mode!
xanaxagoras 4y ago
I can't believe this guy is writing software that runs on my computer and selling it for money. Feels like the good old days.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Keep those good old days going. Get a license :)
  - xanaxagoras 4y ago
    I'm thinking about it! I downloaded and played with it and I'm going to try to use it over the next couple of weeks.
- lemming 4y ago
  I also do this! There are a few grumpy old people around doing this for a living.
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    Aside: looks like the domain for the url in your profile expired and it now goes to some ad harvesting site.
    - lemming 4y ago
      Thanks, that's not my site - I've removed the link to it.
hilyen 4y ago
The "movie" example music had me laughing at the similarity to Bob's Burger Patty Cake scene. https://youtu.be/GfCkzqJZAR0?t=145 https://youtu.be/GfCkzqJZAR0?t=145
coldtea 4y ago
>Text editing should work as you expect. This is a nice feature of Bike. Often outliner apps constrain text editing in various ways. Bike doesn't do that. So, how do you add a "soft linebreak" - so that I get a line break in a single node (so that I can have e.g. 3 paragraphs on a node). The things I've tried (enter, shift-enter, etc) all create a new node below - and the manual doesn't give any clue.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Sorry, just not supported right now.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Thanks. If possible, making an item as markable (as in done) would also be nice (perhaps that touches on TaskPaper and co.
    - s__s 4y ago
      It sounds like you might prefer TaskPaper (same dev different app)
tanduv 4y ago
Solid app! Please consider adding the behavior of VSCode where pressing Cmd+X cuts the line... that would immensely improve the workflow!
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Maybe, though I will probably just stick to macOS standard keys for now. And maybe that is ... I don't know. Anyway generally when I want to cut line I will exit into outline mode and cut.
readbeard 4y ago
Cool! I would like to be able to use j and k to navigate up and down when in item selection mode, a la vim (to avoid moving hand to arrow keys).
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  I plan to do more with single key shortcuts in outline mode, just haven't had time to really think it through. Want to make sure I have a plan before I just start adding them.
idk1 4y ago
Looks great, one thing that is not usable is the video player, it only has a play pause, I wanted to seek around to watch bits again, you need a video player with good usability if your app has good usability (which it looks like it does!). That video player might be the first click or interaction a user is having with your brand, it should live a positive imprint on them, not a feeling of fustration. I wanted to watch more of your app being used in the video, go back a bit and see it again, and I couldn't jump around the video. Hope this is constructive, I don't mean to be negative, the app looks fantastic!
ymolodtsov 4y ago
My only suggestion would be to add some padding to the text field, at least as an option.
tensordance 4y ago
OutlineEdit 3 is a great choice for a modern, native Mac outliner: https://outlineedit.com/home.html https://outlineedit.com/home.html I am the developer and always looking for feedback on the app. So let me know any thoughts!
- tensordance 4y ago
  And for those who care: It also supports every macOS version back to and including 10.14 (Mojave)
willfiveash 4y ago
I've been using OmniOutliner for a long time, mostly to take notes in an organized fashion and I'm pretty happy with its functionality, however one thing it doesn't provide is split editing windows on the same outline. This is something I've used with Vim and found it to be very handy when editing code because I frequently needed to look at code at one spot in a file while modifying/creating code in another place in that same file. Anyone know if there is a macOS outliner that can do this?

513 points by jessegrosjean 4y ago

soapdog 4y ago

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.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
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 HEADING (innovation I know). Again that maps really well to HTML, not as well to OPML. Plus I just like the fact that .bike files are HTML. Makes me confident that they will live and be readable far into the future.
- d3nj4l 4y ago
  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.
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    I haven't looked too much into it. If someone really wanted it and was motivated to help write I would (might, contact me first) support, but generally the existing formats are what I will focus on.
- psydvl 4y ago
  Why not to use markdown formatting? For example, Dynalist use this idea for their files And node itself is heading, while when they need paragraph with heading they create _note="" attribute into <outline> element
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    Markdown is great and I build another app, FoldingText, around it. But for my own use I over time realized that was a mistake. All the parsing and formatting adds complexity. I think rich text (which to be clear Bike does not yet have, though I will add soon) is a simpler way to work from user perspective. Just issue commands instead of remember and see formatting rules. It's cleaner and simpler for my uses.

sh1mmer 4y ago

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.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
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.
- pvg 4y ago
  In OmniOutliner, the collapse row shortcut will collapse the parent which takes care of the specialized extra keybind. What seems odd is OmniOutliner and Bike's outline/collapse row keys are reversed with cmd-0 and cmd-9 doing collapsing and expanding in one and expanding and collapsing in the other.

elcapitan 4y ago

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)

Exuma 4y ago
If you don't see how that's fluid and why it's valuable then that feature isn't for you. But it's certainly unquestionably fluid unlike a lot of other trash apps.
- samatman 4y ago
  Not recognizing what the word is supposed to mean in this context doesn't imply any of those things.
  - Exuma 4y ago
    It most certainly does, lol. There's a lot of programmers who have literally zero design aesthetic. I bet 99% of the people who don't understand what "fluid" means in this context fall into that category. Anyone with even a remote sense of aesthetics and design will immediately recognize the fluidness of the navigation/animation/flow
- mikeg8 4y ago
  What a great non answer
dchest 4y ago
I made a tiny screencast showing the big difference: https://imgur.com/a/u1QTns6 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.
- ask_b123 4y ago
  I'd recommend using KeyCastr to show the keystrokes while recording.

skrtskrt 4y ago

Just when I have mostly moved on to Linux - it looks incredible and I wish the project luck, I would love to use this on Linux one day

scioto 4y ago
I'll echo that sentiment. After my 2015 MBP dies or is no longer supported, I'll finish my move to Linux. Biggest motivation is the need to run Linux VMs in x86 without having the hypervisor translate M1. Tried org-mode, couldn't get into it. Workflowy does it for me for the time being, since it's browser-based.

yes_but_no 4y ago

When apps use text based single file as data source are they flushing the whole file when user makes an update? If I add or move a line does Bike rewrites the whole file and updates the in-mem sorted-dict op mentioned?

jessegrosjean 4y ago
For saving to disk yes, but not on every keystroke. An autosave is scheduled and then the save is performed after some period of time. The underlying scheduling and behavior is provided by macOS framework code. If you add a line then rows after it in the array get shifted.

mrmonkeyman 4y ago

telesilla 4y ago

If this supported multi-user synchronous editing Google-docs style I'd be thrilled.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Sorry that's not likely. I'm a single developer, not ready to run a server. More likely (though still have many more basic features on roadmap) is automatic merging support when a Bike file is stored on something like Dropbox. In fact that would be a pretty great service (for someone else to develop). "Dropbox", but for strutted data (xml, json, whatever) that knows how to merge trees and make use if unique ids. Maybe it wouldn't work, each merge situation needs a special case solution. But for Bike files at least I think it might work pretty well.
- nehalem 4y ago
  Did you have a look at [y-js](https://github.com/yjs/yjs https://github.com/yjs/yjs)? They claim to be suitable for p2p collaborative editing and they have bindings for other languages as well.
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    Early in Bike's development I did try a few solutions, but I want Bike to work on somewhat big files. See (https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/ https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/moby-dick-workout/). Anytime I loaded such a file into a sync solution everything blew up.
    - Void_ 4y ago
      YJS is one of the more performant ones. Wonder how it would do with your example file.
  - jamil7 4y ago
    Which other languages?
- 4y ago

phlyingpenguin 4y ago

First, I use and love TaskPaper so I'm interested in what you've got going on. But on its surface, I don't see the differentiation between the two products right now other than Bike having slicker rendering and TaskPaper having more utility. It seems like TaskPaper is a competent outliner that supports focus and other features just fine. Can you comment to what the goals are that separate them?

jessegrosjean 4y ago
I've written about Bike's relationship to TaskPaper here: https://support.hogbaysoftware.com/t/how-does-bike-relate-to-taskpaper/4689 https://support.hogbaysoftware.com/t/how-does-bike-relate-to... I think core summary is: 1. Wanted to control own text editor. Building off NSTextView was limiting 2. Wanted to use structured document format. Plain text was limiting
- phlyingpenguin 4y ago
  Interesting, thanks. It does sound like there's a lot to build on there so I'll be interested in seeing where it goes. Some of my best "productivity" memories are with the "free" copy of OmniOutliner that came on my first Macs, and I think you have the bones to bring that to the 2020s.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

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

vvillena 4y ago
As the post title says, it's a macOS native app, focusing on fluidity.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  Mac native I get. But what is "fluidity"? The other two are just as "fluid".
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    "fluidity" is a made up marketing term (by me) to mean animation. But I think this animation is important. Bike is a "tool for thought". I think the way that it "feels/animation" is important. Bike's build built from the ground up to support this. Check out the movie or better yet try the download. Typing feels a bit smoother, text slides into place. And yes it can be turned off. And no it doesn't slow you down, animations are canceled if you type again before they finish.
    - criddell 4y ago
      > text slides into place I don't have a Mac to try this on, but slides into place sounds like what Microsoft does in Outlook and I ended up turning it off. Maybe it's not the same thing though. In Outlook (and some other Office programs) as you type the text seems to appear a little more slowly and the cursor glides to the right. To me, it always felt laggy and so I turned it off.
jessegrosjean 4y ago
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 is a plus and minus. But if you are on a Mac Bike will generally us a lot less resources then those apps and integrate better with the rest of the system. 3. Local files in open formats. Logseq has this of Course, but I think there's something pretty nice about having your outline just be simple HTML. Easy to parse, easy to work with, should be able to view and make sense of as long as web's around. 4. Faster. Bike is designed to work on somewhat big outlines. Moby Dick has been my test file. It opens instantly. I've just pasted that into Logseq and my computer is working hard a few minutes later. Not sure how workflowy does because it puts me over quotas. Bike has a pretty unique foundation compared to other outliner apps. It's also missing a lot of higher level features that I plan to build out over time.

WillAdams 4y ago

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 would show as a single node, but have a toggle at the top to select which file extension one is viewing, w/ an option for "all" which expands them so that one can see all of them.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
> 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 directories? I've long wanted to try something like that. It would be very fun, but I don't expect Bike will do this.
- WillAdams 4y ago
  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.

smoldesu 4y ago

Why would I buy this over Obsidian or Logseq, both of which are free and support more platforms?

jitl 4y ago
If you want a super-fast, Mac-native quality app.
- coldtea 4y ago
  It's super-fast, and Mac native, but quite basic.
  - criddell 4y ago
    For many of us, that's a positive.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Could be, for not for $37. There are other, equally basic for $0 or $10.
      - Leftium 4y ago
        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.
      - jen20 4y ago
        None equally integrated into the macOS system for that price though. Omnioutliner (the typical go-to native Mac outliner) is more than double.
criddell 4y ago
If you need to run it on something other than a Mac, you wouldn't.
4y ago

kacy 4y ago

Very cool and congrats on what you’ve built! This is something I’ve been looking for. Any plans to do iCloud syncing and maybe a mobile app?

jessegrosjean 4y ago
I think basic iCloud syncing between Macs should already work, just as part of the fact that Bike saves your outlines to some Mac OS file (not database). I know I need to do iOS support, as long as I stay financially viable I will do iOS support. But I still need to work on a few more basics in the macOS app first. Bike will also read/write .opml files. You should be able to share with iOS outliner that way I think.
- jrslv 4y ago
  Very well done. An iOS app would be great, since people often do outlining/thinking in the nature.

m1keil 4y ago

Are there any limits to the unlicensed mode? Is it a shareware or more in line with Sublime Text style?

jessegrosjean 4y ago
There are some editor preferences that need a license and AppleScript support requires a license. Going forward I expect most new features will also require a license. For example I hope to add rich text support next and that will require a license. (same license will unlock all new features)

ryanianian 4y ago

This is great. It feels very fast, focused, native, and lightweight like all of HogBay's offerings. Is there any way to change the font? As a developer, non-monospace fonts feel foreign for composing text.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Thanks, sorry not yet font option. I expect to add TaskPaper like stylesheets in the medium future, then there will be many style options.
- billrobertson42 4y ago
  A simple font selector would be nice. I have some seriously impaired vision w/o correction and monospaced fonts really help when I have to look at a screen that way. That and ability to zoom in/out or increase/decrease font size.
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    Note that Bike does support changing font size already. I'm getting a lot of request for also adding changing the underlying font. Will likely add that sooner then later now since lots of people seem to need.
    - billrobertson42 4y ago
      Awesome!

dchest 4y ago

Finally! So many outliners think of each node as a separate text field and add node movements on top. This one gets it. Great work, Jesse!

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Thanks, that's also a pretty key aspect of Bike. Maybe more important than "fluid animation", but I expect hyping up the fluid animation will get more clicks and people can discover the unconstrained text editor after using it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

t235a 4y ago

For those want similar on windows, try https://innovationdilation.com/ https://innovationdilation.com/

dcchambers 4y ago

Wow - this so closely aligns with how I already think and organize my thoughts with notes. Definitely going to give it a try. Beautiful and fun demo video too.

giancarlostoro 4y ago

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.

Leftium 4y ago
Relatively recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040235 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040235
- giancarlostoro 4y ago
  Thank you! I love that they do very small changes that have positive impact. It really makes the most sense for Show HN.
Etheryte 4y ago
I believe this changed a few months ago or so, and it's only available for Show HN submissions afaik. It's a small change but definitely a great improvement over the old way where you'd post a link and then add a comment.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

brailsafe 4y ago

I like that you described some of the underlying APIs you used and picked something to try and do well, and it seems like you did. I also like macOS native software. I do struggle to understand the value proposition though. I've been using Bear for outlining, admittedly smallish lists. It's macOS native, supports things like pasting in images, video, markdown, checkboxes, etc.. and is supported by a tiny subscription fee or free. I've never run into performance problems. Some people just want to work on massive outlines with either text or links and nothing else, move those list items around frequently, and to those people $30 might be cheap. As a product it seems tricky to me, but I'd love to hear from anyone who's the perfect customer, and how this hits the mark for you. As in, what the hell do you plan day-to-day? Also I quite like the icon, and the nature of it being incredibly simple. In a sense, it reminds me of the first version of IA Writer.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
I think Bike is more "tool for thought" than it is tool for notes. It's more like a text editor with some magic features, then it is like a directory of text files. So value proposition... It's a unique surface for your ideas. The way that it "feels" is important and different than any other app. If that helps you think then Bike might be fore you. In another comment I said Fluid = Animation... and it does, but there's another aspect of fluid with Bike. If you try most any outliner there are pretty rigid tools. A little hard to explain, but they don't feel "fluid" like a text editor. There are limits and constraints. Bike is different in that it has all the capabilities of an outliner, but it also has all the freedom of a text editor. You can select over multiple lines, cursor moves like a text editor. Not sure that I've explained that last bit well... but try a good outliner like Workflowy. Then try Bike, beyond the animations (they can be turned off in preferences) Bikes core editing commands feel different.

sfaruque 4y ago

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

jessegrosjean 4y ago
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.

aosaigh 4y ago

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/ https://www.mindnode.com/

Void_ 4y ago
It would be interesting to see MindNode approach applied to PKM-style backlinks like in Reflect [1]. So not only visualize connections between pages, but also the outline inside each page. [1] https://reflect.app https://reflect.app
- innocentoldguy 4y ago
  How does Reflect compare to Noteplan 3? They both look similar.
jessegrosjean 4y ago
Nice think about Mindnode and Bike is copy/paste between the two works quite well.
selykg 4y ago
Bonus is that Mindnode has a built in outliner view as well. I use Mindnode for this type of thing 99% of the time.
- iaresee 4y ago
  Another long time MindNode user here. I know the nested lists and map views are essentially two visualizations of the same structured data but my brain just finds the maps less thought-constraining. I end up with more creative paths in map view when I use it to plan. Horses for courses I guess. Bike looks neat though.
  - 4y ago

soci 4y ago

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?

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Sorry I don't. So much still to do on Bike, I think my time is better spent building up the app feature set.
- Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
  Please do at least put the minimum required version on the homepage (maybe in small text below the "Download" button or something).
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    A bit late, but added, I always forget that bit.
    - Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
      Thanks! Good luck with the app.
tensordance 4y ago
OutlineEdit 3 supports macOS 10.14: https://outlineedit.com/home.html https://outlineedit.com/home.html

Jcowell 4y ago

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)

jessegrosjean 4y ago
It is available here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bike-outliner/id1588292384?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bike-outliner/id1588292384?mt=... Mac App Store version is subscription based. I know many people don't like that, that's why my direct download version is not subscription based... but for Mac App Store upgrades are a pain/impossible. So subscription.
- Jcowell 4y ago
  This is excellent . When I searched for it on the App Store via “bike” I was unable to find it. I’ll subscribe if it means you can maybe buy App Store ads for keywords like bike for better visibility.
  - jessegrosjean 4y ago
    Yeah, Bike's not a very good name for searches, but it's a good name for what the app intends to be.
- _zzaw 4y ago
  Yeah, I wouldn’t have considered this for a second if it was subscription-only. The pay-once-and-pay-for-upgrades model is very fair; I’d impulse-buy something for $30 once, but I don’t impulse-buy recurring payments. This is a very cool idea. Might make note-taking a lot easier. I’m looking forward to trying it out.

jitl 4y ago

Congratulations on the release! It’s cool to see more outliners with multi-item text selection. The “fluid” animations look really delightful — I’m jealous! I know you’ve shared some details about the animation implementation, but I’m curious about how much system stuff you take advantage of. Is your view accessible through VoiceOver? What parts of the Cocoa text system do you use (or, what do you use instead for layout and shaping)? (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/TextFonts/Conceptual/CocoaTextArchitecture/TextSystemArchitecture/ArchitectureOverview.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009459-CH7-CJBJHGAG https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Te...) I think you started working on this around the time I was working on multi-block text selection in Notion. I remember seeing a preview tweet in a Andy Matuschak thread and thinking “great minds!”. When I started working on it, I was so surprised that no outliner I tested had multi-item text selection! It’s a unique fusion. I’m curious about how you handled deletions across different indent levels… Do you know of any other outliners with it besides Bike and Notion?

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Thanks! Bike's editor is pretty much: OutlinerLayer RowLayers LineFragmentLayers I use CoreText to line break and render into each LineFragmentLayer. A whole new level of performance is possible if I knew more metal/opengl, but right now rendering text on CPU and sending as line fragments to CoreAnimation. > Do you know of any other outliners with it besides Bike and Notion? It's hard to define "outliner". This has been a main feature of TaskPaper for a long time... but TaskPaper is maybe a bit more "text editor" than outliner. Also tools like orgmode and probably lots more are pretty much outliners and also have all text editor features. But yeah, for tools that feel more like an outliner it's not a common feature. In particular Bike even allows you too over indent and movies lines around without moving children. I think that's pretty unique, and goes together with multiline selection in Bike's case.
- burntcaramel 4y ago
  I imagine then you would had to reimplement behaviour for text selection from scratch? Impressive stuff!

amphitheatre 4y ago

Can someone combine this concept with a task management/todo app? That would be perfect.

Void_ 4y ago
TaskPaper turns each item into a todo that you can check off.
jessegrosjean 4y ago
That's the plan among other things. Get a license ;)
- GaylordTuring 4y ago
  I use Taskpaper everyday, both for To-do:s and to take notes. I’ll gladly switch to Bike the day it can do most of the thing Taskpaper can do. I’ll eagerly follow the development of it.
jdvh 4y ago
We're working on an outline app with task management/planning functionality. With end-to-end encryption and multiuser/teams support (you can see other users type like Google Docs). Early beta signup at https://thymer.com https://thymer.com
- rplnt 4y ago
  > We're working on Just quickly clicking around makes it look like you are not working on it. It's explained, but it would be better to change some things around so it doesn't look completely dead. E.g. > You can follow our daily progress / We share our progress daily and share everything, from code to finances. > This is today's entry (Apr 28 '22). It also gives false hope one could see the product in two weeks (which was a week ago).

Exuma 4y ago

I like it

andrew_ 4y ago

Call me a curmudgeon, but I just use an editor and markdown for the same fluid outlining. I guess this is more marketed towards people who don't also fluidly use a markup/markdown syntax.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
This nice think outliners can do that editors generally can't do is Focus In / Out. Maybe not important for your thought process, but for me I really like being about to start new on a fresh "page", while still being in the same document.
- rplnt 4y ago
  Code editors can do it. It should be possible to define a syntax that would work well with this (no keywords, unquoted strings, : and TAB to define scopes).
- andrew_ 4y ago
  Highlight + Tab does the trick for me. Both Atom and VSCode support collapsing Markdown. Just sayin.

twohaibei 4y ago

I've been using workflowy.com - looks VERY similar.

lf-non 4y ago
Workflowy is a truly category-defining solution that inspired an entire generation of similar products. I wanted a (preferably open-source) alternative which I could use with self-managed storage/sync without sharing any data and found Logseq to be pretty good.
- alephnan 4y ago
  You mean like Org-mode?
  - lf-non 4y ago
    Umm ... I have always associated org mode with powerusers because of the implicit learning curve of emacs. Tools like workflowy/logseq are dead simple because anyone who has ever used a bullet list can instantly get productive. I know that logseq also supports org files, but I am not well versed enough with org to comment how well it stacks up against emacs.

camgunz 4y ago

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.

jxy 4y ago
How much memory and battery do all the animation use?
- stevenbedrick 4y ago
  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.
  - armadsen 4y ago
    Indeed. As far as I know, Core Animation was originally created as part of work on the first version of iOS (née iPhoneOS), where the target device, the original iPhone, was pretty severely memory and CPU constrained.
    - xattt 4y ago
      Here’s part of the ArsTechnica article on Leopard that discussed CoreAnimation: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5/8/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5/8/ Of note: > [The] advent of Core Animation probably means that we'll have to endure some amount of gratuitously animated software created by "overly enthusiastic" developers. But the same was true during the introduction of styled text and color graphics. Mac developers learn quickly, and Mac users are good at rewarding restraint and punishing excess.
      - armadsen 4y ago
        Right, it was introduced publicly as an API in Mac OS X Leopard, but my understanding has always been that it was actually conceived as part of iPhoneOS, then ported to Mac as well. The iPhone shipped a few months before Leopard, though of course UIKit wasn’t made public until the next year when the iPhone SDK was first released. There’s a similar story around SwiftUI. It was initially created by the Apple Watch team at Apple, then extended to all the other OSes (all this was long before it was made public).

markroseman 4y ago

Speaking as a daily TaskPaper user, this looks great! I totally get why you're doing the things you're doing with this, implementation-wise, and what you're able to achieve because of it. Having said that, you know very well what a tough sell it is the more general purpose a tool is, and this is very general purpose. I hope having it out there spurs some ideas around how the novel features of this infrastructure can be the basis for some more concrete and easier to market solutions.

jb1991 4y ago

Regarding the website: having a video embedded with zero control to mute or change it's audio volume is really insensitive UX. The annoying background music is not even necessary to actually get meaning from the video.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Sorry about that. I'm a one guy does many things. Maybe I missed on video sound, but it's tricky trying to make a text editor look interesting. I thought the music helped.
- ask_b123 4y ago
  The music does sound interesting, but I also wanted to mute it. But at least there are some images later in the page.
- humanistbot 4y ago
  I hated the music and closed my browser the second I couldn't find a mute button.
  - GaylordTuring 4y ago
    Sorry, I might have misunderstood you, but can’t you just mute the audio of your device altogether? Or do you want to continue to listen to music in the background or something?
    - jb1991 4y ago
      It’s not uncommon to respond to bad UX by simply leaving. I do that all the time.
- throwaway675309 4y ago
  I would've vastly preferred you narrating over the video instead of generic sounding Kickstarter music, I immediately muted it.

CiPHPerCoder 4y ago

BIKE also stands for Bit-flipping Key Encapsulation https://bikesuite.org https://bikesuite.org

dymk 4y ago
It's also a two-wheeled vehicle powered by legs

kall 4y ago

This is an impressively well stripped down app. It's all I ever wanted from OmniOutliner (remember when it shipped with OS X?). Unfortunately, I've been drawn in by the linking functionality in Roam/Logseq and cannot go back to a simple outliner, though this makes me want to. I don't think I'm a fan of the animated cursor while typing. It somehow makes the typing feel slower, like it takes some physical effort for the cursor to push forward.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
It can feel that way for some people. Seems different per user, there's a preference to change the speed in settings. Also yet need to remember that you don't need to wait for it, sometimes you might just get mesmerized by it and then it feels slow, but if you just type it will keep up with you. It's only ever the "last" animation that fully completes if you are typing fast.
- marcuskaz 4y ago
  I'll have to try it again, I didn't realize there was a setting for it. I uninstalled it because the typing felt really slow and awkward. My two cents, default disable so it feels faster, it sounded like speed and smoothness was one of the many selling points.
lf-non 4y ago
Yes, I am in the same boat. I started using Logseq when I switched to linux as my primary workstation and could no longer use OmniOutliner. I used to focus a lot on structuring and organizing things properly before. But after I started using linking, tags, ref embeds etc. more I found that I was more productive by just quickly dumping specific things into poorly organized isolated notes, and adding headers, cross-linking/organizing/merging them much later if they survive. I later learnt (to my surprise) that people had written whole books about similar methodologies (zettelkasten etc.) but yet to sit down and explore any of them.
zaphod4prez 4y ago
Another plug for linking... I loved Taskpaper and would be very interested in adopting Bike, but I need those sweet links/backlinks

jibbers 4y ago

This looks awesome! Reminds me of FoldingText. Edit: I'm not able to force-click on words to look them up (but right click > Look Up "x" still works). This would also be helpful on URLs, too.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Thanks, added to my bug list.

earthboundkid 4y ago

I used to write everything in TaskPaper. I guess I stopped when the iPhone came out? It was so nice back in the day.

nsxwolf 4y ago

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.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
I made WriteRoom which coined "Distraction free writing". Good fullscreen mode for Bike is on my list for sure.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  I bought WriteRoom :) It gave me a lifelong appreciation for "distraction free" computing.

nopcode 4y ago

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

jamesgreenleaf 4y ago

This seems very similar to Workflowy, which is meant as a compliment. Scriptability is a huge feature here, and something that WF users have been asking about for a long time. If you could offer this on multiple devices & OSes, and provide a sync feature, then I'd be very interested in switching.

user3939382 4y ago

This is cool! I currently use this app for this purpose and like it a lot https://www.foldingtext.com/ https://www.foldingtext.com/

ubermonkey 4y ago
Fun Fact: Jesse (OP) wrote the original version of that. see: https://www.foldingtext.com/blog/team/foldingtext_next.html https://www.foldingtext.com/blog/team/foldingtext_next.html

mpwoz 4y ago

Surprised nobody has mentioned org-mode yet. It does everything shown in the video: collapse/expand nodes, focus on subtrees, ability to highlight across rows/nodes, etc. That said, the fluid animations in Bike look great, and the video was very slick! Nice work.

ubermonkey 4y ago
Well, you just did. OrgMode relies on emacs, which is not exactly in the same class of software that this is. This is "one thing well" stuff. Emacs and OrgMode are pretty much the other side of the continuum.
- amcpu 4y ago
  I’ve been having good success with _basic_ outlining functionality of Org Mode in VS Code using the “VS Code Org Mode” extension. No need for emacs for this use case. The built-in VS Code folding works really well and then combining with GitLab which has rendering support for Org Mode when committing/pushing commits. Plus, since everything I’m doing is already in Org Mode syntax, I can move to other editors later if desired. It’s a good solution for my needs, at least.
- 8fingerlouie 4y ago
  There's a fairly complete, and rather functional plugin for Sublime Text : https://github.com/ihdavids/orgextended https://github.com/ihdavids/orgextended
8fingerlouie 4y ago
I've been through more than a dozen "outliners", "todo apps", and "document databases", and i always end up with a mix of org-mode and Markdown. It may be my requirements, but i'd rather have my data available on "whatever" platform i'm working on, than having a specialized tool on one platform. My job frequently has me switching between different desktop operating systems and mobile, so for me a simple clear text approach works the best, and org-mode and Markdown has that nailed down. So for now my tools are limited to Sublime Text on the desktop (with the OrgExtended plugin), Obsidian for my markdown notes (though sublime/vs code would work just as well), and BeOrg/PlainOrg on the iOS side of things, with simple file synchronization to keep files synchronized across platforms. Ironically, TaskPaper was the tool that got me started on the cleartext approach (also written by the author of Bike).

aareet 4y ago

This is great! It has a lot of features I value about Workflowy, but I've always wished Workflowy had a native app

reaperducer 4y ago

Happy to see this available as both a standalone download, and through the App Store. I'm a big supporter of indie software, but I've had some recent bad experiences that make me gravitate toward the App Store again. One of them is just a plain old boring MP3 Tag Editor. When I migrated to an M1 MacBook, it no longer worked. I contacted the author, and it took him a couple of months to respond. Once he did, he said I used it on too many computers, so I can't use it anymore. I used it: 1. The computer I purchased the software on, which I no longer have and was recycled. 2. The computer that replaced the first computer, which I no longer use and gave to my wife, who does not use the software. 3. The computer I replaced computer #2 with, which I used temporarily until I got my current computer. The old computer is now a headless media server in the closet. The author says there's no way to override his copy protection, or to give me a new license key. "I don't have technical options to resolve such an issue." Great. So I switched to another (more expensive) MP3 tag editor. But this one I bought through the App Store, so I know it will continue working, even if I upgrade my machine.

billbrown 4y ago

I have been in the market for an outliner that outputs to open formats so I am absolutely your audience. (My current top contender is OutlineEdit, and I was days away taking the plunge so thank you!) Two things I would love to see in any outliner: 1) Support Harvard and other outline format. I grew up outlining in Harvard and this bullet list stuff is maddening. The developer told me that OutlineEdit will not support it, period, so it's not a deal-breaker. 2) Horizontal outlining. Sometimes it's nice to have a hierarchy that expands and folds to the side. There was a Mac app called Tree 2 that did this but it is long unsupported. Daily TaskPaper guy, so this is a great development.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Unlikely to be built directly into Bike editor. I have thoughts (no plans yet) about plugin API that can use web view as output layer. The idea being that an outliner can be used for many things. For example you can create a calendar where the hierarchy is year/month/day. Neat, but not really a perfect solution for a calendar. So the idea with plugin API + Web View is that you could use that outliner calendar data to generate a nicer view. This keeps the outliner simple and uniform, but also gives you data specific view. I think that same solution might work for Tree style view, or Harvard bullet list view. It would be sorta like a markdown app, content on one side (the outliner), generated polished result on the other. No promises, but that's how I think I would implement those features in Bike.
geoelectric 4y ago
I would love a good replacement for Tree. I've never found another app that does what it does.
spccdt 4y ago
Regarding horizontal outlining and Tree replacement, it’s not native to macOS, but there’s a web app called Ginkgo.

diimdeep 4y ago

lelandfe 4y ago
$30 for an outliner and 1 year of support does feel steep. I dig that it has AppleScript support, rare (and great!) to see a new app supporting that.
vintagedave 4y ago
It's funny how our expectations have changed. I am keen to like this app simply because of who it's from, Hog Bay, who made one of the first Mac apps that really inspired me to how different Mac software could be back in the 2005-ish era. That was WriteRoom, and I used it on my second-gen Intel running Tiger and Snow Leopard. In 2007 it was $25: https://web.archive.org/web/20070202002238/https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070202002238/https://www.hogba... (and crikey wasn't design beautiful back then? Look at that snapshot of web design history.) That same $25 would, calculated by inflation, cost $35 now. Which is the price of this app, Bike.
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Thanks for history link, just spent 15 minutes looking through my own website :)
  - vintagedave 4y ago
    It was a blast from the past! I really enjoy looking at sites from that era - I'm thinking of setting up a proxy through the Internet Archive (several tutorials online) to use with my lampshade iMac running Snow Leopard. UI, UX, websites, software -- it was a good time and we've lost a lot.
BeautifulWorld 4y ago
Won't run on my MacPro laptop because it's pre 11. Boo!

darren 4y ago

Nice! Do you have any plans on adding a "library" sidebar (like IA Writer) to allow quick jumping between multiple files?

jessegrosjean 4y ago
I think yes, but no plans are really set in stone at this point. I agree a navigation bar would help navigation in big outlines.

cjlm 4y ago

I'm a big fan of Workflowy [0] but I've been keeping an eye on a Bike-like outliner called Zavala [1] – written with Swift and already has an iOS app. [0] https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/ [1] https://zavala.vincode.io/ https://zavala.vincode.io/

mpolichette 4y ago
I've been using Workflowy for years now. I really love it. They been working lots of interesting features in but stick to the basics that everything starts as a list. You would be surprised what is possible w/ just a list!

bsg75 4y ago

Running the last gen Mac Mini Server which Apple decided to not support past Catalina. As a fan of TaskPaper, this appears to be the point where Apple obsolesce hits me because macOS 11 is needed for Bike and some other new apps I have tried this month. With 16GB RAM, and the HDDs replaced with SSDs it is a perfectly capable desktop. I would upgrade macOS if I could, but it may be time to move it to Fedora. That won't solve the root issue with Mac apps - Intel architectures don't evolve so fast as a machine with this performance capacity becoming unsupported.

mjturner 4y ago
I have a Mini of the same generation and it runs Monterey very well via OpenCore Legacy Patcher - https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/. Worth considering if you haven't looked at it before.
- bsg75 4y ago
  I did not know this existed. Definitely giving it a shot.
tensordance 4y ago
OutlineEdit 3 supports macOS 10.14 and newer, including Catalina: https://outlineedit.com/home.html https://outlineedit.com/home.html

dietsprite 4y ago

Great job with this. Going to try it out now. Slightly off-topic: What is the name of the song in the video? I want to play it on loop as I work

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Couldn't remember. Just found it: https://audiojungle.net/item/the-snaps-claps-stomps-pack/36314604 https://audiojungle.net/item/the-snaps-claps-stomps-pack/363...
- dietsprite 4y ago
  Great - thank you

seanw444 4y ago

Well done on the smooth animations. Looks very satisfying to use.

klohto 4y ago

FYI, I submitted PR to add Bike into Brew casks - https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/123908 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/123908

OJFord 4y ago

> An outliner (or outline processor) is a specialized type of text editor (word processor) used to create and edit outlines, which are text files which have a tree structure, for organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliner I'm not criticising use of the term, it seems familiar to (also used by) several commenters here, I just hadn't come across it. Guessed 'bulleted notes app' from the submission, which is close enough I suppose.

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pisipisipisi 4y ago

I wish someone re-created Varatek B-liner ... https://www.mind-mapping.org/index.php?title=B-liner_2002 https://www.mind-mapping.org/index.php?title=B-liner_2002

jrk 4y ago
It's not exactly the same, but a similar left-to-right tree outliner, specifically optimized for writing, is https://gingkoapp.com https://gingkoapp.com
- pisipisipisi 4y ago
  Thanks! This looks like an awesome text editor and has the very understandable navigation I miss from b-liner!

alephnan 4y ago

What are your thoughts on this data structure? https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-reimplementation https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2018/03/23/text-buffer-r...

jessegrosjean 4y ago
I've read that article a number of times, it's of course a great data structure, though I haven't ever used it myself. I think I like b+tree/rope better though for indexing lists of things efficiently. I did a lot work using b+tree in a bigger project that I could never quite finish. Finally gave up a year ago and grabbed leftover code to make Bike. Bike is using a pretty dumb data structure, but good enough for now. Hope one day to add back the more performant b+tree stuff.

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sergiotapia 4y ago

Lovely but unfortunately Mac only.

zhaihuailou 4y ago

First class job！

spython 4y ago

I really like FoldingText that was also your development. Sadly, it's been discontinued. Looking forward to see if Bike feels as great as FoldingText.

nnwright 4y ago
FoldingText was an absolute work of art, best outliner I've ever used. It's one of those pieces of software I keep using, long after it has been discontinued, holding my breath with each OS release to see if this is the one that breaks it. That will literally be the only thing that keeps me from using it. I sincerely hope Bike adopts a lot of the same features!
- jessegrosjean 4y ago
  Thanks I'm glad you liked it. Please note that I sold FoldingText to https://doubledogsoftware.com https://doubledogsoftware.com and it's still being worked on. I don't know full set of plans, but when I sold last summer (right before dedicating fully to Bike) the goal was to get the code into a modern state that would keep working for years to come.

cercatrova 4y ago

> What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds. Steve Jobs I like that the product references this quote for the logo as well as the fact that's it's on macOS.

joshspankit 4y ago

Let me know when I can have the same item under N nodes. Not a copy, but a leaf with multiple parents.

dotancohen 4y ago

Looks terrific! You seem to have implemented the some common org-mode functionality, such as editing outline structure by moving elements and headings. Does Bike do anything that org-mode does not? Bike certainly _looks_ nicer than org-mode!

xanaxagoras 4y ago

I can't believe this guy is writing software that runs on my computer and selling it for money. Feels like the good old days.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Keep those good old days going. Get a license :)
- xanaxagoras 4y ago
  I'm thinking about it! I downloaded and played with it and I'm going to try to use it over the next couple of weeks.
lemming 4y ago
I also do this! There are a few grumpy old people around doing this for a living.
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Aside: looks like the domain for the url in your profile expired and it now goes to some ad harvesting site.
  - lemming 4y ago
    Thanks, that's not my site - I've removed the link to it.

hilyen 4y ago

The "movie" example music had me laughing at the similarity to Bob's Burger Patty Cake scene. https://youtu.be/GfCkzqJZAR0?t=145 https://youtu.be/GfCkzqJZAR0?t=145

coldtea 4y ago

>Text editing should work as you expect. This is a nice feature of Bike. Often outliner apps constrain text editing in various ways. Bike doesn't do that. So, how do you add a "soft linebreak" - so that I get a line break in a single node (so that I can have e.g. 3 paragraphs on a node). The things I've tried (enter, shift-enter, etc) all create a new node below - and the manual doesn't give any clue.

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Sorry, just not supported right now.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Thanks. If possible, making an item as markable (as in done) would also be nice (perhaps that touches on TaskPaper and co.
  - s__s 4y ago
    It sounds like you might prefer TaskPaper (same dev different app)

tanduv 4y ago

Solid app! Please consider adding the behavior of VSCode where pressing Cmd+X cuts the line... that would immensely improve the workflow!

jessegrosjean 4y ago
Maybe, though I will probably just stick to macOS standard keys for now. And maybe that is ... I don't know. Anyway generally when I want to cut line I will exit into outline mode and cut.

readbeard 4y ago

Cool! I would like to be able to use j and k to navigate up and down when in item selection mode, a la vim (to avoid moving hand to arrow keys).

jessegrosjean 4y ago
I plan to do more with single key shortcuts in outline mode, just haven't had time to really think it through. Want to make sure I have a plan before I just start adding them.

idk1 4y ago

Looks great, one thing that is not usable is the video player, it only has a play pause, I wanted to seek around to watch bits again, you need a video player with good usability if your app has good usability (which it looks like it does!). That video player might be the first click or interaction a user is having with your brand, it should live a positive imprint on them, not a feeling of fustration. I wanted to watch more of your app being used in the video, go back a bit and see it again, and I couldn't jump around the video. Hope this is constructive, I don't mean to be negative, the app looks fantastic!

ymolodtsov 4y ago

My only suggestion would be to add some padding to the text field, at least as an option.

tensordance 4y ago

OutlineEdit 3 is a great choice for a modern, native Mac outliner: https://outlineedit.com/home.html https://outlineedit.com/home.html I am the developer and always looking for feedback on the app. So let me know any thoughts!

tensordance 4y ago
And for those who care: It also supports every macOS version back to and including 10.14 (Mojave)

willfiveash 4y ago

I've been using OmniOutliner for a long time, mostly to take notes in an organized fashion and I'm pretty happy with its functionality, however one thing it doesn't provide is split editing windows on the same outline. This is something I've used with Vim and found it to be very handy when editing code because I frequently needed to look at code at one spot in a file while modifying/creating code in another place in that same file. Anyone know if there is a macOS outliner that can do this?