Search ideas for Bike 2

Bike Outliner
7

Continuing this topic based on discussion in Bike 2.0 (Preview 211-212) - #14 by jessegrosjean.

I’ve given this some serious thought, and looked at how things are handled by similar apps.

Many follow some kind of natural language model for text-based input, like Workflowy, Legend, Dynalist. What is also common is that there is some form of autocomplete available that takes care of the syntax. This makes it easy to chain together multiple searches without worrying about typos.

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Other apps offer saved searches that you can build with the help of a dedicated UI element. This is Apple Notes/Reminders Smart lists, this is Omnifocus advanced perspectives, Ulysses Group filters etc. I’m showing iOS equivalent here, but principle is similar on macOS. There’s a surprising amount of depth to this.

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Then there’s the exotics like Remnote which offers dynamic search buttons based on existing attributes in the outline.

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Then, there’s the monstrosities like Tana and Roam/Logseq with dedicated query builders, all of which have a button-based UI that is as confusing as it is detailed.

On the super simple side of things, there’s Things, which has a few ‘secret’ predefined searches all based on autocomplete, and Notes/Reminders that allow you to quickly search for tags (or exclude them):

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So, what to do?

Some ideas:

  • some kind of nicer autocomplete, like typing in highlight and heading, and that would get converted to //*/run::@highlight.. intersect //heading. Maybe even switch off outline paths from the UI unless the user chooses an advanced mode and all that’s available is basic autocomplete and operators.
  • for beginner-intermediate operation, a Shortcuts/Reminders/Notes-like Saved Search builder that has limited options but covers most basic cases and converts friendly UI to outline paths.

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  • Barring that, there’s predefined searches like in Things, but I suppose it makes sense to do a vote on those, choose only a handful and give them super nice icons :sunglasses:. Off the top of my head:

    • Open tasks
    • Done/Archived tasks
    • Level 1/2/3/X headings
    • Notes
    • Highlights

Not sure if any of this is helpful, but anything more natural-languagey and/or tappable (iOS!) would be welcome.

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