Still working away

TaskPaper
1

I haven’t posted a TaskPaper 3 preview release recently, here’s what I’m up to:

  • I’m working on user documentation.

  • I’m working on API documentation.

  • I spent a few days last week thinking about reminders and TaskPaper. After a few spent/distracted days I’m again sure I won’t add anything for 3.0. Lesson Learned I guess.

Going forward I’m trying to decide if I will tackle one more big infrastructure project before jumping into the real final push (churning through and finishing relatively strait forward issues) for TaskPaper 3.0 final.

That infrastructure project would be to add a character in the document to for filtered and folded ranges of text like this (from FoldingText):

On one hand I think this would help TaskPaper’s usability quite a bit by taking away the mystery of where folded/filtered text blocks are. On the other hand it would take some time to implement it’s it’s not something people have requested very often. I think I will probably go for it, but if anyone has thoughts either way please let me know.

2 Likes
2

Since TaskPaper 2 is working fine for me, I don’t mind waiting for version 3 while infrastructure projects are developed. Being able to visually spot where filtered/folded ranges are sounds good to me.

Just my 2¢.

3

Intuitively it sounds and looks very helpful to me.

it’s not something people have requested very often

I have a feeling people will know they need it when they see it : - )

( Looks like a good balance between leading from behind and leading from the front …)

1 Like
4

I’d say go for it. It will surely help and since we can either use V2 or keep using the current preview version, timing is more of a restraint you set for yourself and not a real deadline (like a critical bug fix or similar).

5

Thanks for all your hard work, Jesse.

FWIW, I actually don’t like the folding markers in FT because they are selectable and so just a hazard to navigate around. I am constantly deleting them and having to undo.

6

Given @jackbrannen’s experience, I don’t know whether it looks feasible to make that display mode switchable / optional ( for users who are finding they trip over it, or for contexts in which a tracelessly pruned display has some value/appeal ? )

1 Like
7

Yes, making it optional would be wonderful if feasible.

8

@jackbrannen Thanks for your feedback. I don’t think making it an option would work very well, it’s a low level change that would touch lots of places, making it optional would get messy fast.

I think in TaskPaper 2 this problem in general wasn’t so obvious because there was no folding, so items were only ever hidden when a search was active. Assuming I can get it implemented (haven’t started, still working on docs) I still think that there needs to be some way to indicate areas where text is hidden.

With that said the implementation doesn’t need to be exactly the same as FoldingText’s. I could imagine an option (or just default behavior) to avoid deleting folded regions without using some specialized delete command?

1 Like
9

@jessegrosjean Oh yes, that’s even better! Folded sections should be undeletable. That would be ideal.

10

@jessegrosjean. Great idea. I didn’t like the idea of adding more options. A simple program will soon ballon to become another Word processor. But having invisible options like that make sense. I like it!

11

Why not just have disclosure triangles like most outliners?

12

As long as you are mentioning it, I don’t really understand where folding fits in TP given filtering. It makes sense in a typical list manager but everything I’d normally use folding for is really better served by filtering in TP. Why support both? I’ve never really understood where I might benefit from folding at a specific level of an entire TP document. My project levels typically do not correlate between projects within the same document.

I do like the idea of displaying the placeholder icon but that could also get messy. For example when I load this filter I really just want to see an outline of my projects:

Projects @search(project)

If there were disclosures between everyone then it would be less efficient and more distracting. Just something to consider. I don’t have a strong opinion other than preferring subtle indicators

1 Like
13

I actually use folding and project focusing much more then filtering. For me TaskPaper is more of an idea tracker then a todo list that I go through item by item. Quite possibly there are better ways to think and get things done then what I do… but I spend a fair amount of time just staring at my lists, editing a little, thinking, expanding/collapsing, and staring some more. I use TaskPaper more as a notebook that I scribble in then as a pure todo list.

Sometime when I’m really focused on trying to get something done (should probably do that more!) I’ll create a little sublist in my notebook and play with done tags and filtering to motivate my way through it, but I’ve never had my entire notebook organized in a GTD style. Again might very well be better if I did, but so far no luck.

14

Update… still in process of messing with internals before publishing plugin API. Taking longer then I’d expected.

15

Not sure I entirely see the need for this. Doesn’t TaskPaper 3 already have an indicator of folding in the form of the darker dot at the folded line? This seems like unnecessary visual clutter to me, and I much prefer the simpler dark-dot approach of TaskPaper over the FoldingText appearance. Why not hit a middle ground and make the dark-dot at a fold more obvious? Perhaps I’m missing something in the explanation, or this thread started before I jumped onboard with the latest preview, but I think the TaskPaper interface is just about perfect as-is.