I bought a license and, naturally, made the proverbial bee line over here to check on a few things.
What’s the state of an iOS version of Bike? Good to see it’s on the list, but (sigh) it has been there for a while.
Does Bike export to Obsidian? Short answer: no. I could live with that if there was an outline of outlines, not unlike an Obsidian vault, but the ideal would be export to Markdown.
This one might seem out of left field, but which fonts are people using? Bike does not let one select font-weight, so the number that are visually appealing narrows considerably. Let’s hear it for Comic Mono
Status is waiting for Bike 2 to be released. Then will start on Bike iOS part time, while also pushing Bike 2 forward. Current status of Bike 2 is in progress with some preview releases made. Foundation good I think, but lots of details to go.
No. One problem with markdown and outlines is there doesn’t seem to be ONE clear way to make the mapping. There have been some scripts shared, but nothing’s built in.
Few thoughts:
I think some people use DevonThink to store multiple outlines. I think a benefit is you can use Bike’s native file format, meaning you don’t loose things like row IDs.
A big part of Bike 2 is a much more powerful extension system. This could make commands like “Copy as Markdown” pretty easy to implement, though that doesn’t quite solve the store it in Obsidian desire.
I just use system standard font, and I think that’s the best option for Bike 1… or at least you should choose a font with variants for all the different bold, italic, code formatting.
Another big feature of Bike 2 is stylesheets. That should allow for much more font and layout exploration. With the stylesheets you can include lots of different fonts in a single outline.
Stylesheets are low level and technical, so not everyone’s cup of tea, but they show what is possible. Here’s a Bike 2 stylesheet demo:
Note: Bike 2 user guide referenced in video is going through some updates (as of this afternoon) and changes that I’m making are describing the upcoming Bike 225 preview. I hope to release 225 tomorrow or the next day. It has quite a few changes that break things… thought the core API and design is still the same.
Jesse, thank you for the swift and thoughful responses. I am looking forward to stylesheets, as no one font fits all people or all occasions.
I would like to “up my vote” for having an outline of outlines as the interface for Bike. Imagine a sidebar outline of document titles, each of which is an outline on the main panel. Better still, a detachable, floating sidebar. Although a fan of Bear and Obsidian, neither matches Bike in terms of outlining.
Since I am on a soapbox (but would be happy to p.m. you instead of taking space here), I’ve an aesthetic / real-estate request. Daughter disclosure triangles should be left justified with the text of their mother entry. This gap is compounded by each level lower and by the time one reaches grand-daughters, there is a lot of wasted screen real-estate.
This is on my want list too, hopefully this will be included in Bike 3. That’s still over the horizon, next step is Bike 2. Then after that Bike iOS. Then work on Bike 3 starts.
Here is good
I think in Bike 1 I set that spacing by measuring width of 4 characters in chosen font. In Bike 2 it’s more flexible and that indent is defined by stylesheet. Looking at current 2 preview release it seems I’m already using a smaller indent width.
