Ah, call me Mr Changeable, but after an increasingly frustrating time spent in efforts to turn Bear and Outlinely into full-scale task managers, I've gone back to TaskPaper again.

The latest version 3 is, of course, a very powerful outliner.

But better still, it allows you to build and save searches in its left-hand navigation bar (which also acts as a top-level outline).

The function is not immediately obvious, because it's not described in the user guide. But if you right-click on "Searches" in the navbar, a little context menu springs up, allowing you to create new ones. The syntax for these *is* detailed in the user guide, fortunately, and you can put all kinds of powerful searches together very easily.

Combine this with the various highlights, formatting options and so on available in the .less style files, and you can build your very own task management app that keeps a close eye on stuff you're doing, about to do or have scheduled for any number of days ahead, lighting stuff up as it becomes immediately relevant (my @today and @urgent tags both colour to-do items red, for example, whereas my @waiting tag colours them grey).

Sadly, TaskPaper is not available on iOS, and the various clones have not seen any further development since 2015. But fear not: Editorial has excellent support for much TaskPaper functionality, although it's not the perfect answer - I use it via Dropbox. Let's hope Jean-Pierre eventually gets round to producing an iOS app!

So far, with my modifications to the various files included, TaskPaper is turning out to be much more powerful than I realised it was. And much more suitable for managing tasks than the excellent but less specialised Bear and Outlinely. I'm henceforth reserving them for the almost equally honourable post of joint Notetaker in Chief.

Cheers,
Bill

Bill, if you stopped changing your mind about software you would lose your CRIMPing license!

I agree, TaskPaper 3 is pretty good. BTW, I think the developer is "Jesse". He also announced today he was going to create v4 of WriteRoom, his "distraction free writing" app -- not sure why the world needs another of those, but it's a sign of continued life at HogBay Software, which has had a reputation for abandoning products in the past.

I use Editorial on iOS and like it alot. But there is or was an iOS app: Taskmator. (I liked the Editorial version better, although it's been awhile since I've looked at Taskmator.)

You're right, Paul - you've quite cheered me up! CRIMPing lives!

Oh yeah, Jesse. Whoops.

Mind you, TaskPaper is vastly improved over its earlier incarnations. I'm actually very impressed by how easy it is to track down specific tasks. I've tried all kinds of outlining solutions; the closest equivalent is probably Todoist, but TaskPaper is much easier to use for rapid input, and is actually much easier to quickly reconfigure (your "projects" appear as the folding outline in the left-hand navigation bar, and you can create/delete them very easily, as well as drag them around to reposition them). The archiving function is very convenient now that it automatically assigns the host project to each completed task. And the handling of dates and other variables is seriously impressive - it's now possible to put together highly sophisticated filters that can be used either spontaneously, in searches, or saved into the "Searches" section on the navbar, or you can simply click on tags to find all related entries (shown in their hierarchies - such a simple concept, but something many, many other apps don't do, or don't do well. Outlinely, I'm looking at you...).

TaskPaper's stability is also much, much better. If you complete a task and archive it, all subtasks and notes are automatically moved with it (this was somewhat dodgy in earlier iterations). You can add and edit tasks even when you're looking at a filtered list, which makes high-speed task management much much easier.

The contrast between this text-based approach and the database approach of other task management apps (I think of something like OmniFocus, for example, with all its tiny little fields and buttons) is very dramatic, especially in terms of sheer speed and convenience. No, TaskPaper can't really be shared (or not without creating lots of conflicting files!), but as a task and even project management app it's extremely powerful.

Now all it really needs is support for basic Markdown, and maybe a simple date sorting function for filters, and it would be pretty much perfect!

@jaslar: you're thinking of the very good TaskMator, but alas, the latter hasn't been updated since 2015, so hasn't kept pace with more recent TaskPaper developments such as folding. Editorial does fold, and also allows you to assign colours to tags, which means it's the closest thing to the desktop TaskPaper currently available. But it doesn't handle tags very well; you'd have to write your own workflow to build any complex search functions. There I do draw the line! Well, for the time being, until some impulsive bout of CRIMPing suddenly overcomes me.

Paul Korm wrote:

He also announced today he was going to create v4 of
WriteRoom, his "distraction free writing" app -- not sure why the world
needs another of those...

Agreed, especially when many of us already have a distraction-free writing environment
waiting to be used… at least on Mac and Linux. Blog post from August:

http://farmanor.blogspot.com/2016/08/tech-tuesday-distraction-free-for-free.html

Doze 7 doesn't have EDLIN, it seems. Pity. But you can use the clone shipped with FreeDOS.

Should mention that Editorial now supports split screen mode on modern iPads, which makes working with Editorial's TaskPaper mode very useful side-by-side with another app or document.

Speaking of distraction free writing apps, there's a new one for Mac called `Tabula. This one has a new wrinkle that I haven't seen before. It interprets the lines on your page and applies styles automatically.

Write A Line All Caps

And it interprets it as a heading. Put such a line at the top of the page and it makes it the title. Likewise, add a hyphen at the start of the line and it interprets the line as a list item. In a lot of ways, this is how TaskPaper works, I suppose. But `Tabula has a variety of export formats -- although I don't think there is a way to customize the exports and is really intended for writing and not for task management. There is an iOS version. I don't think they sync necessarily, but you can store the files in iCloud and open on either type of device.

This isn't an endorsement, by any means -- I've only just played with it for a few minutes. I just thought it was a curious new plain-text "distraction free" app came out recently, and that it has this sorta unique feature.

The website is:

http://tabula.cpimhoff.com

Steve Z.


Larry Kollar wrote:

Paul Korm wrote:

>He also announced today he was going to create v4 of
>WriteRoom, his "distraction free writing" app -- not sure why the world
>needs another of those...

Agreed, especially when many of us already have a distraction-free
writing environment
waiting to be used… at least on Mac and Linux. Blog post from
August:

http://farmanor.blogspot.com/2016/08/tech-tuesday-distraction-free-for-free.html

Doze 7 doesn't have EDLIN, it seems. Pity. But you can use the clone
shipped with FreeDOS.

Thanks for the hint on Tabula.

It's a good thing it's 50% off now on the app store -- makes it a cheap CRIMP. I think for writing simple documents that need a quick format before exporting to PDF it's a good deal. Though, by not supporting tables, quotes, and other markdown features, it's rather limited. I think I would pass up the iOS version -- one Tabula is enough.

I was using TaskPaper/Editorial extensively prior to moving to DevonThink and it really has improved significantly. There was a lot of power being created in the app. I just hope Jesse sticks with it this time and keeps it active.