I’m bumping into two issues that feed into each other. My recommendation in the subject would fix things IMO, but here’s what’s going on…
One of the issues is that outline and text editing modes look nearly identical if an entire item is selected:
(The distance from the text to the edge of the highlight is slightly different.)
Sometimes, pressing ⎋ puts the cursor in the text, so the mode change is obvious, but sometimes it selects the whole line and the highlight box just moves a little bit. I haven’t been able to figure out how Bike decides which of those to do.
The second issue is that I can’t find a reliable sequence of hotkeys for editing the current item.
If I’m in text editing mode, then ← or → work to put me at a predictable part of the text. But if I’m in outline mode, that collapses or expands stuff, messing up my view.
⌘:leftwards_arrow_with_hook:, ⌫ has a similar downside. If I’m in text editing mode, then it puts the cursor at the end, but in outline mode, it puts me at the next item, still in outline mode. (I was actually using for a bit before I realized this was actually deleting the selected text whenever I was in text editing mode without realizing it.)
Neither of these would be problems if I could always tell which mode I was in.
So yeah. If pressing ⎋ always inserted the cursor at the end of the line, then ⎋ could be the only hotkey I need, and it would work like the last outliner I used (Logseq). If I were already in text editing mode without realizing it, I’d just have to tap ⎋ a second time.
This is all good feedback, thanks. Couple of things are work here:
First I like that in current design text selection is maintained if you hit escape twice. (for example select a word and then hit escape twice) That means that I don’t really want to change things so that cursor is always placed in specific location when exiting outline mode.
Second I think eventually this could be solved with more commands in outline mode. For example maybe VI style i to exit outline mode and move selection to start… but I want to avoid adding any such commands right now until I have a better idea of what I want outline mode to become.
One hack right now is that if you are in outline mode Command-Left/Right will still move your caret to start/end of line. Then if you exit outline mode cursor will be in that location. This isn’t really by design and might change in future… but maybe useful now.
I think for now I can more easily address the problem by just making outline mode more obvious and distinct from text mode. In earlier beta’s I used a different color. Maybe I will try that again, or maybe I will try drawing a darker borer around outline mode rects.
Maintaining the selection is a nice feature, so I’d be sad to see it go too. All I want is a hotkey that’s predictable even when my memory of the last selection fails—doesn’t have to be that one.
I’m not seeing the behavior you’ve described for ⌘← and ⌘→ though. On my computer, nothing happens when I press those in outline mode (1.2 build 58).
Nothing visual happens… but the cursor is moving. If you then exit outline mode you’ll see the cursor in predictable location… but it’s a two step process.
In the next release I’m going to change things so that ⌘← and ⌘→ both move caret and exit outline mode. This behavior might change again in the future once I’ve thought more about outline mode keys, but I think making this easier now is worth that future possible change.
Good, but not entirely predictable, unfortunately. In an item that wraps onto two lines, ⌘← takes you to the start of the line the cursor was on, which might not be the first line.
It occurred to me to try ⌥↑, but that’s mapped to something else in outline mode already.
Can you give that a try and see if it works for you? I also might change this particular combination once I add more shortcuts to Outline mode, but if I do that will replace with something similar.
for a bit before I realized this was actually deleting the selected text whenever I was in text editing mode without realizing it.)
In an item that wraps onto two lines, ⌘← takes you to the start of the line the cursor was on, which might not be the first line.