Outlinely gets a (minor) update

Posted by Smithers
Jun 21, 2018 at 08:12 PM

Hugh wrote:

>Not just to show that I read most long posts and have a literal
>inclination - but what’s a “non-Marxist” formatting option? Or if you
>prefer, what’s a Marxist formatting option? Just interested. (BTW,
>welcome.)

Hey Hugh,

Glad to be here.

Lol. I got a tad carried away there.

Firstly, I should have clarified: i’ve got nothing against Carl or marxism.

What I meant by Marxist formatting options is: limiting my ability to do something for the sake of… Limiting my ability to do something. (Marxist may not be the right word here. At the time though, it sounded best.)

Now.

I totally get their mantra. Tyrannically enforcing a “simplicity at costs” coda is something I really respect. It’s the entire reason ulysses itself is a great app.

Everyone can’t get what they want. I get it: you can’t give the user the ability to do everything.

But…

When you do indeed decide to give the user the ability to DO something through some kind of feature…

That “thing” you’re about to let the user do better not be a half arsed attempt at letting the user do it. It should cover all the bases, be thoroughly thought out, and let the user do what he wants to do!

Again, IF! — as the app developer— you’ve decided to let the user do it.

Hazaa!

For example: the notes pane on the far right. What. The. Hell is going on in there?

In Ulysses, within the far right notes pane, it’s as if civilization is falling down all around me. It’s absolute insanity.

When you write something in that section and decide to make it bold does it become bold? Does the font-weight become thicker?

It does not. “NOT’ i say. It turns yellow(on iOS) and blue(on desktop), as does underlining and italicizing.

That’s right folks! Within the notes pane, bold, italics, and underlines are all just blue and yellow. It’s like another universe over there— the Magical-Ulysses-Land where bold, underlines, and italics now all mean the same thing, and are yellow and blue. How is anyone supposed to know what the heck is going on in there? It’s madness! Pure pandemonium!

I need a field guid just to navigate it.

And I… I have no field guide. Not do i. Want s field guide.

Now code blocks on the other hand… They love code blocks. In the notes pane when I make a code block, it displays as a pretty code block—just like it does in the main editor… but smaller.

Cool! They still make it blue, but… well, ok! I can live with that. I don’t know why they like blue and yellow but, at least it looks like a code block.

Blue code blocks… A-ok in my book.

But, don’t ya see: they’re a’ pick’n and a’ choose’n here.

They like code blocks more than they do bold, underlines, and italics. They’re redistributing assets, wealth, and development time on a more “important” feature.

In-con-sistencies!

I’m sure they’ve got a reason for trying to change the world’s definition of bold, italics, and underlining to blue and yellow. I bet it’s good. Seriously. Markus and Max are pretty smart dudes and put a hell of a lot of thought into every single decision they make.

But…

I don’t know what happened or who they talked to to make them feel this way but… it’s pretty obvious: they don’t like bold, italic, and underlined formatting.

Every time I open it up it’s like I’m being blasted by a decree from the Premier, “Comrades, be advised, you have entered the blue and yellow zone. For the good of mankind, from this moment forth, within this section all bold, underlined, and italicized text shall be blue or yellow and in no way shape or form appear as it does within the primary editor!”

Am I alone here?

Sorry Hugh, I kinda went on a bit there.

P.s. the In-line image previews are also a mess. For some reason they don’t like these either. On iOS I don’t get to see them at the same scale as I do on desktop. They’re always smaller on iOS. You can only increase the number of preview lines to a 6 whereas on desktop it’s a 12 (I think)

Again, i’m Sure there’s a reason for it. Knowing them, it’s probably a really amazing one. However it makes no sense in my logic center. If I get inline images, I want to see the images. Not part. Not some. But full size. It’s an image after all.

Still a gorgeous app though.

I’m just complaining.