LibraryView 2.1

I’ve just updated the LibraryView test app.

If you don’t yet know what LibraryView is please see this initial post.

Download LibraryView 2.1 test app.

Here’s what’s new in LibraryView 2.1

  • File > Open now works to open Folders as libraries
  • Fixed many bugs that showed up for user accounts where iCloud is disabled
  • Added “New File” to library view context menu. Inserts file into correct location.
  • Added “Open in New Window” to library view context menu.
  • Added “View By” options to library view context menu. (show/hide file extensions and sorting options)
  • Use Finder style localized sorting method when sorting items by name.
  • Return in library view to begin Rename of selected item
  • Spacebar in library view to Show info panel for selected item
  • Show Info panel now includes quick look preview
  • Move to Trash context menu item closes trashed document and replaced with untitled file.

Todo

  • Open in New Window should work for documents even if they are already open in a window.
  • Figure out what to do when user opens document outside of library. Probably don’t want to show iCloud library… do even want option to show it in that case?
  • Performance, what happens when you drop 5000 files onto library view. Way to improve?
  • Review and fix bugs described here
  • Open in External Editor option
  • Support opening aliased file in editor if possible (sandbox might break)
  • Better synchronization with TabBar
    • New Tab should open using current library view (not always iCloud)
    • Maybe when library view is resized, collapsed all other library views in same tab group should also be changed to match?
  • Eventually
    • Search
    • Quick Open
  • I’ll update this post adding items here in response to feedback

Thanks @jessegrosjean - impressed how quickly this is coming together. Here are some issues here from testing new features:

“Open in New Window” works for folders but not documents. Not sure if this is intended.

View menu offers option to “Show Library” when it’s already visible. Clicking this hides the library.

Added “View By” options to library view context menu

Perhaps move this to the View menu as well? Or somewhere else. It seems too basic a piece of UI to hide in a context menu.

Spacebar in library view to Show info panel for selected item

Cool…but I think command-I should do this, too, since it’s pretty standard across Mac apps.

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I look forward to see this implemented. I played with the “New File” option and was a little bit frustrated to see that it defaulted to “*.txt” instead of creating a TaskPaper document. Is that something that will be implemented later?

Again, thanks and keep up the good work.

Yes, remember this demo library view is just being tested in a simple text editor app where “txt” is the default file extension. When the library view is used from within in TaskPaper it would use “taskpaper” file extension, in FoldingText it would use “ft”.

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This is probably irrelevant given what was said above about txt vs taskpaper, but are you considering the possibility of allowing filtering / only opening by file type? I keep a bunch of taskpaper files in a directory with a whole lot more plain txt files, so this would be useful for me. Not sure if the relative usefulness to others would be worth the effort to do so though. When this is implemented as part of taskpaper the find and filter capabilities there would likely be sufficient for me.

Yes certainly eventually, though possibly not in the initial release (whenever that may be, still haven’t started integrating this with TaskPaper, which will be a fairly big project in itself).

nice work jesse; looking forward to search

UPDATE: Also, it would be good to show the last modified date in the left hand pane, maybe greyed some.

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Any news?

I’m actually just integrating this (pretty much same exactly library view as demoed here) with the new text editor work that I’ve also been doing. Lots of moving parts (text editor, and library view), it’s still quite a while (some number of months) before I’ve got a product. But the library view code is now in my main project instead of just a separate demo project.

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This looks amazing. The perfect balance between control/transparency and ease of use.

Any more news about this? Would love to see this both in TaskPaper and FoldingText. :slight_smile:

This is in WriteRoom 4, which I’m working on now. But which is (as always!) going a bit slower then I hoped.

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