Creating an outline generally means, in my experience, putting together ordered lists or check box item (called “tasks” in Bike).
Yet, to do this you must go through menus and multiple clicks. CMD-E or CMD-K doesn’t pop up any quick formatting option to change the regular rows to one of these list types.
It seems to me this is missing required functionality. I get you need bold or underline/strikethrough, or a different font, but organizing the structure and type of the outline is paramount. But to do this requires a buried search through menus and there is no keyboard shortcut for them.
Bike just makes me work to hard to do a most basic thing - organize and structure the outline (heck, I don’t really need bold or a different font).
The easiest way to use row types is through Bike’s new “smart row types” feature. In a new row, type one of the following markdown inspired shortcuts–followed by a space.
For an unordered list, simply type - or *. For a task, type
Checklists certainly feature in some uses of outlines – less so in others (like shaping thoughts and drafting texts). For many users, to decorate every row with a checkbox would be to introduce redundant noise and distraction. Bike starts vanilla, and facilitates automated specialisation.
As @CME points outs, where bullets and checkboxes are what you need, you can specialise a row with a prefix like -, * or [], which Bike will automatically digest.
Bike will also continue the same type on every further tap of the enter key, until you change the current row type again, so after your first [], for example, you will automatically get a series of checkboxes as you add new following rows.
Thanks for writing. As others have posted Bike offers “smart row types” which should make your task really easy I hope. I also wanted to mention that you can also use Command-E to set row types from keyboard:
Command-E to show the formatting popup
Once showing… Down Arrow to popup the types list
Type or arrow keys to select type in that list
Enter to choose type. Enter again to close popup
Generally I think smart row types is better… or assign a custom keyboard shortcut to a row type in format menu, but it is possible through the formatting popup too!
Thanks for the suggestions. I was trying to assign my own keyboard shortcut, but it wouldn’t do it for some reason. I’ll dig deeper into that.
I was hoping there was a CMD-E formatting option. I did do that prior to posting as I thought it should be there but didn’t find it. I probably just overlooked it and will follow jessegrosjean’s post about it.
