I would like to replace my main note-taking app (Notational Velocity) with Bike. However in order to do that, I need a faster way to navigate and switch between multiple files/notes.
Currently I store all my bikes files in a folder, but after having a few files open it becomes cumbersome to navigate between windows and open files.
This is where Notation Velocity shines. You start in the search box, type to find, and press return to move focus to the selected note. Pressing esc brings you back to the search box and note list. If you type the name of a note which doesn’t exist yet, pressing return creates the new note.
nvAlt, and similar applications, like The Archive are generally limited to working with plain text files – a possible though not ideal use of Bike.
(See Preferences > Document)
My impression is that the planned nvUltra is/was also designed to work with OPML files, which might be less limiting than plain text for use with Bike.
To make full us of Bike’s rich text and links to particular rows you could write all-folder searches with standard XML tools like XQuery.
I would like to do these sorts of things eventually in Bike… a queryable file/folder workspace. Planning for this is still over the horizon. It’s a chunk of work similar to porting Bike to iOS I think. Probably won’t really start thinking about deciding between the two until next summer/fall. Still lots of smaller things to do first.
Hello Jesse!
I’ve just discovered BIKE, and am already feeling its potential! (I especially like the “soft” feeling to the data entry, as the cursor “floats” across the page…nice!
I’m chiming in here, as I found this user’s request (Francisco) similar to what I’d like to see:
Having Bike handle multiple/many notes at once. Maybe there’d be a list of notes on the left (like old iTunes) then the main window on the right would be the content. And on the left, there could be hierarchy as well. This would be like older (now defunct) “notebook” programs, of which I have yet to find a great replacement; one that handles many hierarchical categories, as well as outlining with collapsable content.
NoteTaker by AquaMinds is what I’m aiming for, but their interface is dated and clunky. Your contemporary feel and style would do it a world of wonder!
Anywho, I’ve just started my demo, so we’ll see how it feels…but already I feel that unlike Apple’s NOTES app, I’m going to be swimming in documents, with all of their organization being done in the Finder. Thoughts!!!
Still working in that direction, but not there yet.
There is a new feature along these lines… make sure to checkout Go > Focus Heading… That will allow you to quickly navigate between headings (note!) in a single file.
Going forward at some point I expect:
That I will add a view that shows these headings in a sidebar. So you can click a heading to navigate to it. I think this is what you want, but it would still be in a single file.
Still longer, I expect to add a “workspace” where you can browse and navigate multiple files. This is still a bit over the horizon, so not sure details on how it will work. I expect this is something after iOS, and iOS isn’t until spring.
Yowza, sounds like BOTH of these ideas would be helpful, and just what I’m looking for, especially the “workspace” version! As a sign of support and hope, I shall thusly be purchasing BIKE, per the offer I received in my inbox. Good luck with your progress 'till spring, and I really look forward to using a “workspace” version after that! ~Alex
