Hey guys,
I recently purchased Bike Outliner and love to structure my ideas there. Now I am at a stage where I need to share these ideas with others and basically send the whole thing via email to one of my customers.
Really can’t find any export functionality. What are the best practice approaches to reuse the Bike content in something else?
I tried copy / paste to Apple Notes, but all the structure (indents) are removed.
Thanks for all help.
Best regards,
Daniel
Can you give us a screenshot of what you are trying and seeing ?
The Bike clipboard automatically contains various formats (including OPML, RTF, Plain Text, HTML, Bike XML), from which the receiving application selects, and here I am finding that the RTF (rich text) component of the Bike clipboard is selected by macOS Notes, and seems to paste well (indentation and emphases preserved)
For example, selecting the following in Bike, and copying with ⌘C
and then pasting with ⌘V into a new macOS Note, I am seeing:
Are you seeing something different there ?
Perhaps you could tell us which macOS and Bike versions are at work ?
I suppose it also depends on how editable you want the content to be.
Fo non-editable content, the first thing that comes to mind is File → Print and Save as PDF.
For editable content, I’ve found that Craft works quite well with Bike, because you’ll be working with blocks similar to an outliner’s rows, and it preserves basic formatting.
No, its like this. But I can’t send it like this via email as the indents are completed gone and without them the text looks odd and is harder to read. To give you an example, today I drafted up some great ideas and I wanted to share with my girlfriend who doesn’t own Bike. So, exporting it via PDF and send this via email? Pretty cumbersome.
I ended up putting the whole thing into ChatGPT and asked it to format it nicely or rewrite it. Both worked okay.
I will check out Craft @gorgonzola. Thx.
Appreciate your answers guys, thanks!
FWIW there’s a script on this forum for pasting from Bike as an outline into macOS Mail, using Mail’s native indent format.
Not quite clear here whether you are talking about
Bike -> Mail orBike -> Notes -> Mail ?If the latter, then perhaps this is essentially a problem with copying from Notes to Mail, rather than a difficulty in exporting outlines from Bike ?
Perhaps keep the outlines in Bike ? (In Notes, just paste links to the Bike outlines ?
Bike > Edit > Copy > Row Link, orBike > Edit > Copy > Path Row LinkCan you attach screenshot?
Hey guys,
thanks for all your feedback. For now I have the feeling I need just one thing to work. Copy from Bike to Notes and have the bulletlist (indention) somehow intact. Is that possible?
In a nutshell, I love using bike for brainstorming and focus writing but need to have everything in notes as this allows me to a) share it easily with others and even working together and b) is notes my central location for all sort of notes and thoughts in the end.
Just to check, we are talking here about Bike rather than TaskPaper ?
(Your screenshot(s ?) don’t seem to include a Bike screen, and the text appears, with those bullets, to be in TaskPaper format)
If that/those screenshots are of material pasted into Notes, then it looks as if indentation is being preserved (each line is more deeply indented than its parent).
Perhaps it is really bullets that you want to add to the clipboard ?
(The Bike editor show structural handles, but Bike text doesn’t per se include bullets)
You may be able to get what you are after, (if that is a bulleted plain text outline in the clipboard) with a script. See, for example:
In Bike:
Copied with the script above, and pasted into macOS Notes:
Thanks. The screenshot shows Notes.
So, yes, I want to have bullets in Notes as well. Right now if I paste from Bike to Apple Mail it seems to work, that seems to be a workaround for me right now. But still not ideal. Don’t want to use any scripts, but appreciated your feedback!
To summarize, this not so much an export issue as a variation in which pasteboard format other applications choose from the clipboard.
<ul> unordered lists, displayed by default, in most clients, with bullets.public.html pasteboard item (so you do see bullets when pasting), but Notes and TextEdit, for example, choose Bike’s public.rtf pasteboard item, so you see no bullets when pasting.The choice between pasteboard items is made by the receiving application, not by Bike.
A script, however, can be used to solve the problem.
For example by pruning out unwanted pasteboard formats from the clipboard, or by adding a new one.
If you feel that Apple should make the same pasteboard selection in all their applications (making the pasting behaviour of Notes and TextEdit consistent with that of Mail, for example, then you could try telling them 
)
For reference (in case this makes it clearer) if we copy the following selection in Bike:
then Bike automatically ‘exports’ all of the following formats into the clipboard:
com.hogbaysoftware.bike.xml as string:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
</head>
<body>
<ul id="B1NTL5Cr">
<li id="Lj">
<p>Test</p>
<ul>
<li id="I_">
<p>A</p>
<ul>
<li id="_0">
<p>B</p>
<ul>
<li id="MM">
<p>C</p>
<ul>
<li id="4R">
<p>D</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
org.opml.opml as string:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
</head>
<body id="B1NTL5Cr">
<outline id="Lj" text="Test">
<outline id="I_" text="A">
<outline id="_0" text="B">
<outline id="MM" text="C">
<outline id="4R" text="D"/>
</outline>
</outline>
</outline>
</outline>
</body>
</opml>
public.rtf as string:
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf2758
\cocoatextscaling0\cocoaplatform0{\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Helvetica;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;}
{\*\expandedcolortbl;;}
\pard\tx560\tx1120\tx1680\tx2240\tx2800\tx3360\tx3920\tx4480\tx5040\tx5600\tx6160\tx6720\pardirnatural\partightenfactor0
\f0\fs24 \cf0 Test\
A\
B\
C\
D}
public.utf16-external-plain-text as string:
public.utf8-plain-text as string:
Test
A
B
C
D
public.html as string:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
</head>
<body>
<ul id="B1NTL5Cr">
<li id="Lj">
<p>Test</p>
<ul>
<li id="I_">
<p>A</p>
<ul>
<li id="_0">
<p>B</p>
<ul>
<li id="MM">
<p>C</p>
<ul>
<li id="4R">
<p>D</p>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
public.data as string:
Test
A
B
C
D
com.hogbaysoftware.bike.references as string:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8"/>
</head>
<body>
<ul id="B1NTL5Cr">
<li id="Lj">
<p>Test</p>
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
Which of these pasteboards is actually used by the pasting application is not up to Bike – the choice is made by that other application.
What you want, to get bullets, is for the HTML pasteboard to be chosen. If that is not the choice made by the receiving application, then there is really nothing that Bike can do about it.
(A script, however, can solve the problem for you, by changing the choices available to the receiving application – for example, reducing it to one single choice)
At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward way to achieve what you want.
A simple Apple Shortcut could get you there relatively easily, just as much as a script.
If you select Edit → Copy → HTML in Bike, then run this shortcut:
You should be able to paste into Notes the way you want.
Here’s the shortcut:
Bike HTML to Rich Text.shortcut.zip (11.4 KB)
BIke
Apple Notes:
Well that output is pretty darn perfect!
Any idea what the best way to skip having to call Bike > Copy > HTML is… just make it part of the automation? I think I can do with AppleScript system events, but maybe there is a prebuilt Shortcut Action that I can’t find?
Highlighted text doesn’t translate over to Notes for some reason (even though Shortcut output shows highlighted text correctly). Can’t win them all 
EDIT: Notes doesn’t support highlighted text, that’s why 
Sorry, no, I don’t think there is a built-in option to run menu items. I think Applescript or JXA is the only way to do that in Shortcuts.
One route is to call the Shortcut from Keyboard Maestro:
@ddrinhausen Here’s an updated version of the Script that automates the copy step:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/da3112b1801e41e3ade950c6c126b81e
Once you set it up, end result is you can use a single keyboard shortcut to get the behavior that you want. I don’t think there’s any good way to get the behavior otherwise.
Works like a charm.
Thanks a lot to you and everyone else here. Splendid support!
