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New app, Bike
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 21, 2022 at 05:16 PM
Okay, having just had a quick play with OutlineEdit, I’d say the main difference between the two is that OutlineEdit is a true outliner – i.e., that’s all it does. And it does it very well.
Bike, on the other hand, is a writing and note-taking tool, not just an outliner. By that I mean, you don’t have to outline every paragraph (turn it into a bullet point); you can put as much white space into your outline as you like, and you can have multiple paragraphs at any level in the hierarchy. This makes it an exceptionally flexible writer’s tool.
It also allows you to link rows, which is a neat trick (within files, but also between files, which is an even neater trick; and even between files which you then move around – which is definitely the neatest trick of all).
OutlineEdit has categories and checkboxes (although it takes the OmniOutliner approach to checkboxes, i.e. it’s all or nothing, unlike e.g. Obsidian, where you can decide which rows have checkboxes and which don’t). Bike doesn’t have either of these things (yet).
OutlineEdit also has themes, for those who like these things (I’m all in favour of an elegant UI, but not particularly bothered by themes as such, although I have been known to fiddle with the ones in NotePlan).
OutlineEdit also has templates, which is a potentially useful feature. And supports graphics, which Bike doesn’t do as yet (although you can drag and drop links to files, including graphical files, into Bike). OutlineEdit’s support for graphics is very elegant, with full drag-and-drop importing.
They both allow you to create extensive outlines in any number of files, which is a pleasant change from being constrained to an Obsidian Vault (that’s both a con and a pro in Obsidian, incidentally, in the sense that you can extensively customise each Vault depending on what you want to do in it). Again, Bike’s slight advantage here is that you can link to individual rows in multiple external files and call them up with a single click. But maybe such a thing is on OutlineEdit’s roadmap too.
For me, they’re not directly comparable, because the underlying philosophy is different. OutlineEdit fits squarely into the Dynalist/Workflowy/Zavala category of apps. Bike is more akin to Obsidian or UpNote. They’ve both got “strengths” and “weaknesses” – but which is which will depend on what you want to use them for!
That’s a quick resume for you!
Posted by Amontillado
Dec 21, 2022 at 05:46 PM
I bought Bike as an outliner. I wish it had tag filtering, but I also like what MadaboutDana observed. Bike is more like an enhanced text editor that will support outlines.
Regarding tag filtering, by the time I’m reaching for that I’m probably looking for something like Devonthink or Obsidian to work with.
It would be nice. Not quite as critical as it seems, but nice.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 21, 2022 at 10:42 PM
I agree – it’s not critical, but it would speed up certain kinds of action, especially in very large documents.
However, I’ve been experimenting and having some success with “microtags”, by which I mean tags like :: or || or >>
Very quick to enter, very easy to search. If you don’t need complex tag schemes (and if you’re using a sophisticated outliner with a good search function, I’d argue you don’t), microtags work well!
Amontillado wrote:
>Regarding tag filtering, by the time I’m reaching for that I’m probably
>looking for something like Devonthink or Obsidian to work with.
>
>It would be nice. Not quite as critical as it seems, but nice.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 22, 2022 at 04:20 PM
Congratulations, Jesse, on being awarded a “Best App Runner-Up” award by MacStories. Very warm words were said about Bike (link here: https://www.macstories.net/stories/macstories-selects-2022-recognizing-the-best-apps-of-the-year/)
Worth mentioning here, following my earlier comparison, that both Bike and OutlineEdit are very efficient apps. In this age of oversized, Electron-based apps, it’s really nice to find highly functional apps with a minimal footprint. The same applies to Zavala, actually, as well as Notebooks and anything/everything programmed by the wonderful developer of Growly Notes.
A suggestion for you, Jesse, following my irritating experiences in e.g. Obsidian and various other folding outliners:
It would be very useful if one could put a top-level divider (nice, elegant slim line) below a folded section, and if the folding from the “parent” of that section went down as far as the divider, but left the latter visible. Let me explain:
Most (all?) outliners currently fold dividers into the text immediately above them. If you’re a pedantic b*st*rd like me, this means you get a whole column of folded headings which can be difficult to group or differentiate. If, on the other hand, one could insert a top-level divider which would be left untouched by the folding, you could use such dividers to group sections together, or simply differentiate them more clearly.
I don’t know if I’ve explained that very well, but would be happy to give it another go!
Posted by Dormouse
Dec 24, 2022 at 01:21 AM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>
>Most (all?) outliners currently fold dividers into the text immediately
>above them. If you’re a pedantic b*st*rd like me, this means you get a
>whole column of folded headings which can be difficult to group or
>differentiate. If, on the other hand, one could insert a top-level
>divider which would be left untouched by the folding, you could use such
>dividers to group sections together, or simply differentiate them more
>clearly.
Aren’t there two issues here?
One is the prevalence of markdown folding to headers, with nothing more. It’s sufficient for most people. That’s the case with Obsidian which isn’t an outliner.
Two is simply a decision by outliner apps.
Workflowy and Dynalist will both fold to the higher bullet, but also have the option to always show the first line of any note. That option could be for more lines, but having a definable marker would presumably come with a performance cost.
WriteMonkey 3 takes a third way. I don’t remember a fold marker as such, but its folding is infinitely responsive manually. A property of its json format, I assume.