I am noticing something in TaskPaper that is somewhat non mac standard. Opening TaskPaper opens a dialog. The opening dialog allows me to select a document to open by navigating menus. Or, it allows me to create a new TaskPaper document. Or, it allows me to click done and open TaskPaper and then navigate menus to find recent files.
Much of the work I am doing in TaskPaper is opening something I have been working on so, I often need to find a past document when I open TaskPaper.
I am sure I have seen it done before with Mac software that you also have a popup menu in the opening dialog that shows recent TaskPaper files. I am suggesting that this would be a nice feature in TaskPaper.
As it is, I can either right arrow in Alfred and select recent Taskpaper files, or, I can click done, go to the File menu, search recents, and go to open the file I wanted.
It would take the step out of opening TaskPaper, clicking done to open TaskPaper, and then looking for recents in the recents menu if recent TaskPaper files were also available in the opening dialog.
I’m not sure that it’s ideal, but TaskPaper’s current behavior is the “standard” defined by Cocoa frameworks. This, like many things, is free behavior that I’m getting from Cocoa frameworks. On my computer the behavior is a bit more nuanced:
If you quit TaskPaper with documents open, then next time you open TaskPaper those document will be opened and you will see no dialogue. This is what I see 95% of the time because I just leave the same TaskPaper document open.
If you open TaskPaper and there are not documents to reopen (or maybe if you have a different system setting) then I do see the open dialogue.
You can avoid this step, you can just navigate to TaskPaper’s recent documents menu and choosing a recent document will open it and close the open dialogue automatically.
There is an option in that open panel to show recents by clicking in the open panels Sidebar… I think this can also be configured, so maybe not everyone will see it, but I think it’s there by default, I see it at least.
I’m not sure that it’s ideal, but I’m pretty sure TaskPaper is already providing the default “standard” behavior.
That is probably true. I was testing this in Pages and there is no recents menu in the open dialog. I know that I have seen it though in some mac apps. I found it and took a screen shot of what I am referencing n Swift - relatively low level page layout program.
Part of the challenge I am seeing here with communicating this idea is that as you said, you leave TaskPaper on most of the time, but I do not.
I use TaskPaper less as an overall organization tool and more as a writing organization tool. I work on writing projects often and I am often using TaskPaper to do much of that work. But I don’t leave it on most of the time. There are times I need to stop working on a project, close it out, and work on other things.
Yes, going to the recents menu in an already open TaskPaper would allow me to select a recent document, but that is not what I am talking about.
I am speaking about opening TaskPaper when it is not running. I am also talking about opening TaskPaper and not being interested in the last thing that I was working (exactly) on as I may now be opening it to work on an entirely different writing and or research project.
With that said, I would still be looking in the recents menu as the project I am wanting to open may not have been what was last closed but it is certainly in the last five or six documents I have opened.
That is why I was trying to suggest the idea of making the TaskPaper new document dialog similar to the attached screenshot using Swift.
