On second thought, I think the center of the screen is actually a good place for the Command Palette (that’s how it works in TaskPaper as well). Also for other Keyboard related actions („Search“ or „Goto to Anything“)
However, I think the palette for Projects, Saved Searches, and Tags would work really well as a collapsible sidebar on the right-hand side.
P.S. I guess it really comes down to how people use the app. Some use an iPad exclusively without a keyboard, while others switch back and forth between using a keyboard and using it as a handheld device (often in a more relaxed position). And don`t forget the ones using their iPhones only.
That’s why I think flexibility is usually the better approach. Giving users a choice in how these elements are presented would make the app work well for a wider range of usage styles.
Gonna push a 1.2.1, I think, with a couple of changes.
style and toolbelt panels as sidebars on iPad
command palette toggle to switch sides
some more UI love for other panels on iPad
more perf improvements!
The app is already very fast in many places, but not all. My code is not perfect, not will it ever be. The all can always be improved if we have good real world test data and usage reports.
All the recent improvements are thanks to the docs with huge indent levels and some others with lots of folds, which meant I could improve my April m mattress testing and measurement suite and food the places in the code to improve.
I can add OPML export, in fact it’s currently just commented out, but word of warning: it will not persist any attributes within the opened file. Nor would it clean any HTML from the imported file. It would just be raw text and outline hierarchy.
So, it is a lossy round trip and would be unsuitable for, say, Bike OPML.
No, that’s what I was attempting to get across above.
Everything in OPML other than hierarchy and item text is stripped/discarded/untracked on load, and so would not be present at export as any format, or saving as taskpaper.
Honestly, I don’t like the new sidebar arrangement at all. Why should the settings for the Tool Belt and Style Palette be in the right sidebar? These are settings that you typically configure once at the beginning and then rarely touch again for a long time.
The palette for Projects, Saved Searches, and Tags, on the other hand, is something you use constantly. Yet it pops up like a hammer in the middle of the screen; you select a tag, project, or saved search, and then it disappears. The filter is activated and displayed. To remove it again, I have to swipe from right to left, then repeat the whole process to bring up the palette again, just to select another filter. That’s really tiring.
In TaskPaper, I can use Opt-Cmd-S to open the sidebar containing Projects, Saved Searches, and Tags, and it stays open until I decide to collapse it again. While it is open, I can, if I want, activate one filter after another without having to manually clear the previous filter, or deal with the sidebar automatically closing and needing to be reopened.
Why can’t the most frequently used palette have its place in the sidebar?
Thank you for your great work, Matt, and I hope this will not be the final design.
To make the style and panels right/left most was an easy quick change, I thought because the style one is useful to see the content at the same time it was useful to be to the side. The toolbar panel I had similar thought about.
The rest of the panels could be the same, if it makes sense. Or they could be treated another way. I’m open minded.
Don’t fret @Oli I’m happy to take your advice. I don’t really use it as much on iPad as I should, and I know you do. I’ll happily make more improvements for you.
I’ll make the filter panel a sidebar.
Let me know about each sidebar.
Thank you, Matt! I use PaperTrail daily and extensively. A filter palette that allows you to switch seamlessly between filters is a tremendous improvement to the workflow.
this is already much better. Would it be possible for the panel to remain open after I select a filter? Ideally, when the panel is expanded, I could immediately choose the next filter, and the previous filter view would be cleared automatically before the new one is applied.
Once I no longer need the panel, I could collapse it again with a left-to-right swipe gesture—that would be perfect.
Now you must swipe three times from right to left to 1. apply a filter 2. to clear a filter and 3. to apply a new filter.
Okay, I just noticed that I can also clear the filter using the “X” in the top search bar, which reduces the need for swipe gestures, but it still doesn’t feel completely natural or seamless.
But of course, these are only my personal preferences. It would be interesting to hear what other users in the forum think. Perhaps there are even more elegant solutions?
