Bike 1.4 Preview (70) “Rich Text”

[dddo]

Hi,

I want:

[for Rich Text]

• “Paste and Match Style” (and “Paste without Style”) for Rich Text editing.
• “Rich Text Mode” and “Plane Text Mode” like Text Edit by Apple.

[General UI]

• “enter/exit outline editing mode” menu item (with Escape key shortcut hint).
  (Including for future keyboard shortcut customization etc.)

Thanks.

[jessegrosjean]

@dddo

• “Paste and Match Style” (and “Paste without Style”) for Rich Text editing.

I think this less important for Bike’s rich text implementation than it is for an app like TextEdit.

In TextEdit formatting is completely arbitrary/free. Any range of text can have any font/color/etc. When you copy text from another application onto the pasteboard and then paste into TextEdit any copied font will also be pasted into TextEdit.

Bike is quite different. Bike is “semantic” rich text. You format ranges of text with meaning “code”, “highlight”. Not with specific fonts and colors. Bike’s font’s and colors are determined by an internal stylesheet. You can never paste specific font/color formatting from another application into Bike. I think this removes the major use case of Paste and Match Style from Bike.

Paste and Match Style could be useful in Bike to strip all semantic style (for example if you copy some formatted text in Bike and then paste back into the document). Maybe I will add that. But for now my preference is that you use Format > Clear Formatting when you want to remove formatting.

@dddo

• “Rich Text Mode” and “Plane Text Mode” like Text Edit by Apple.

This is somewhat possible now. Save your document using Plain Text file format and once you do that then you’ll be warned anytime you try to apply rich text formatting.

At this point I’m not sure that I want to surface this plain text/rich text distinction more. Right now Bike is really designed as a rich text editor, I see plain text as a secondary use case. I want to support people opening/editing plain text files with Bike, but I don’t think I (at least not yet) want to direct people to use plain text through a visible menu item.

@dddo

• “enter/exit outline editing mode” menu item (with Escape key shortcut hint).
  (Including for future keyboard shortcut customization etc.)

Good idea, just added.

[jessegrosjean]

@yurivish

Prompted by the new B/I indicators on the cursor, one thought is that it would be nice if it were possible to disable cursor blinking

I think I can do that. I’ve added to my list.

@yurivish

And a tiny side note, but I wonder if you have considered allowing users to “paste” a link onto existing text, eg. if I have a URL in my clipboard, highlight some text in Bike, then press Cmd+V.

I have, I even started adding it, just didn’t have time to finish. I’m not sure if I’ll add to next release or not, but I do expect I’ll add eventually.

@yurivish

Edit: One more thought – I was one of the folks who previously asked about whether embedding images inside a notebook would be possible. At the time, dragging an image into a Bike document would freeze Bike, as it tried to paste the contents of the image into the document as text. But what if dragging an image into a Bike document would instead create a link to that file, with the link text as the filename?

I think drag and drop an image should no longer crash, and should insert a link right now. The link is a syntax highlighted sort (so link displays in editor), but you can easily (once I fix bug in release 70) click link button to rename as you like so you don’t see full URL.

Generally I think use case of dragging links to images should work in rich text release, but you’ll find bugs in current preview.

[yurivish]

@jessegrosjean

Generally I think use case of dragging links to images should work in rich text release

Just tried it and it works as you say! This is great. Thank you.

[complexpoint]

@jessegrosjean

drag and drop an image

Not sure if this is by design, but I’m finding that drag and drop from the file system does create blued text and a follow link button, but there appears to be no associated <a> link with href attribute (i.e. just a link-formatted <p>)

 <li id="yj">
     <p>file:///Users/houthakker/Desktop/bl2.json</p>
 </li>

[jessegrosjean]

@complexpoint

Not sure if this is by design, but I’m finding that drag and drop from the file system does create blued text and a follow link button, but there appears to be no associated <a> link with href attribute (i.e. just a link-formatted <p> )

No, not by design. This is due to link bug. Syntax highlighted links display blue, but you can’t interact with them at the moment.

[norseman]

In outline, I see these blue dots between each word and line ending on each selected line. Don’t mind the color green for selected line, but is it possible for it to follow system color?

[blp]

• I’m seeing the question marks next to links as well
• the edit link button for p tags with unformatted links is odd
  • no link displays in the popup when clicking the would-be link icon
  • “open” link on link-formatted p tags points to http://localhost

Not being able to just click and navigate to text links in rows is frustrating. Rolling back to 1.4(69).

[jessegrosjean]

@blp

• I’m seeing the question marks next to links as well
• the edit link button for p tags with unformatted links is odd
• no link displays in the popup when clicking the would-be link icon
• “open” link on link-formatted p tags points to http://localhost

Thanks for trying preview and reporting these issues. Both should be fixed in next preview.

[jessegrosjean]

@norseman

In outline, I see these blue dots between each word and line ending on each selected line. Don’t mind the color green for selected line, but is it possible for it to follow system color?

Are you talking about following system color for the blue or green?

I’m also not sure if I will continue to show the “invisible” (blue dots for spaces, and paragraph endings) in outline mode. I like showing them for selected text in text mode, outline mode they seem redundant (for paragraph endings) and to much for spaces.

[norseman]

Yes, the color green that marks the selected line in outline. My thought was that this could follow the systems highlight color on the users Mac.

Personally I find the dots and the blue paragraph endings a bit distracting when in outline mode to organise the document.

[mitchellm]

Yes, I agree re: dots and paragraph endings. Definitely distracting.

Green (for me) is a fine color but following the systems highlight color (at least as an option) would probably be a better fit for many folks.

[dddo]

Thanks for the clear explanation.
I agree to your design.

[jessegrosjean]

@norseman

Yes, the color green that marks the selected line in outline. My thought was that this could follow the systems highlight color on the users Mac.

I don’t think I will do this right now. The text caret and text selection should already match system selected colors. I want “outline mode” block cursor to look different, so that it’s more obvious that you are in outline mode and don’t just have a line of text selected in text mode.

Eventually I expect to add some sort of stylesheet configuration that will allow you to change this color. But for now I will just hard code it to green.

@norseman

Personally I find the dots and the blue paragraph endings a bit distracting when in outline mode to organise the document.

I’m getting ride of those for next release.

[jessegrosjean]

@dddo

Thanks for the clear explanation.
I agree to your design.

But do I? That’s always the question. I’ve changed my mind and added “Paste and Match Style” anyway I most everything I said above hold, Paste and Match style IS less important in Bike then it is in many rich text editors… but it might still be useful in some cases, and it’s also still expected (since you were looking for it!), so I’ve added it.

[dddo]

@jessegrosjean

But do I? That’s always the question. I’ve changed my mind and added “Paste and Match Style” anyway I most everything I said above hold, Paste and Match style IS less important in Bike then it is in many rich text editors… but it might still be useful in some cases, and it’s also still expected (since you were looking for it!), so I’ve added it.

Thanks

[complexpoint]

@jessegrosjean

Rich text caret affinity

Ah … I think the part I had missed was that we can toggle left ⇄ right affinity with left and right cursor keys …

It’s very good

More precision and speed, and reduces mouse-work.

Expand disclosure triangle to view animation

Run button at lower right:

[jessegrosjean]

@complexpoint

I wonder if (70) is looking for a font that I lack on macOS 11.6.8, or is that the end-of-link glyph that we are expecting to see ?

This problem should be fixed in release 71

[jessegrosjean]

@yurivish

And a tiny side note, but I wonder if you have considered allowing users to “paste” a link onto existing text, eg. if I have a URL in my clipboard, highlight some text in Bike, then press Cmd+V.

I’ve added this to release 71

[jessegrosjean]

@dddo

[for Rich Text]

• “Paste and Match Style” (and “Paste without Style”) for Rich Text editing.
• “enter/exit outline editing mode” menu item (with Escape key shortcut hint).
  (Including for future keyboard shortcut customization etc.)

@blp

• the edit link button for p tags with unformatted links is odd
  • no link displays in the popup when clicking the would-be link icon
  • “open” link on link-formatted p tags points to http://localhost

@mitchellm

Yes, I agree re: dots and paragraph endings. Definitely distracting.

I need to remember to reply to all of these at once next time (as discourse forum just politely reminded me) … I think these are also addressed in release 71