Bike Search to find content?

[kcmannem]

There was an old macOS app called Notational Velocity. It shares some of the same values like keyboard being a first class interaction. https://notational.net

One of the great things about the app was that you never had to think about “should I make a new file/note for this or have a written about this before”. If you wanted to open a note you had to search for it and if it existed, you could append to the existing one and if you didn’t you could write a brand new note.

There was only 1 flow to start writing which made it fast and avoided a deviation from your current thought.

searching for notes is not a separate action; rather, it is the primary interface.

https://notational.net/screenshots.html

[karlnyhus]

Doesn’t this approach only work if you are willing to limit yourself to the files in one folder or let the app manage all of the file storage?

[kcmannem]

@karlnyhus yeah it would. Would this be an anti pattern for bike. I’d love to build this through extensions if it was possible to inject the search ui in.

[jessegrosjean]

If I can meet these scripting goals then I think this might be possible:

Bike Scripting Goals

Edit: These goals are still valid, but I did add more scripting support to Bike for the 1.0 release than I initially expected. Bike 1.0 has a pretty good AppleScript dictionary for “external” scripting. I still plan to add “internal” JavaScript based scripting at some later time, will probably refer to it as “plugins” instead of scripting to distinguish from current AppleScript support. Bike Scripting Goals Bike doesn’t have much scripting support yet, and it likely won’t until after the 1.0 r…

But reaching those goals is still somewhere over the horizon.

[Francisco]

I’m also a Notational Velocity user, or rather NVAlt user, and came here looking for the same - to replace NV with Bike.

I suppose it didn’t have to be an anti-pattern, if it had the ability to open directories in addition to single files. It would suit people who want to open only single files like now, but also people that would like to use bike for note repositories. The starting point would still be the file system. When you would open a directory, it could operate like NValt and allow your to instantly search all the files in that directory. You could still retain the ability to open single files, or different directories in different windows, similar to the way code editors usually operate.