I have been testing out Traverse app this weekend with my Bike 2 (opml) files and it works well. Last thing I need is another outliner but I do like being able to view my outlines in different ways and Traverse has a columns view which reminds me of the old Tree app. It is pretty cool. It can even handle Bikes row types and tasks so I can edit the file in Traverse and see the changes show up in Bike. It won’t replace Bike for me as my main outliner tool but I can see it being handy for some use cases. I believe there is an iOS version coming out soon too which will hopefully mean I can easily edit my outlines on the move. Anyway thought I would share as is definitely worth a look if you use Bike’s opml format.
1 Like
Link:
Traverse outliner
Just took a quick look, and, to be honest, found myself a little puzzled or frustrated by some basic outlining operations and their key-mappings, but perhaps the main point is that there is a structural constraint on the interoperabilty between Traverse and Bike, deriving from the former’s use of the _note attribute (originally introduced by OmniGroup, and not part of the OPML standard).
The distinction is perhaps best understood in terms of shallow outlining, and deep outlining.
OmniOutliner and Traverse use “shallow” outlining, which continues down through layers of headings, but then stops at the level of a “Note” – a sequence of paragraphs which can not be outlined, and simply become a string value of an attribute.
In Bike’s full, or deep outlining, even note rows can be outlined with arbitrary sub-outlines of descendants, of any type.
In terms of sharing OPML files, Bike’s note rows export without problems, but Traverse _note attributes would need a special script or extension to make them legible or useful.
An import from Traverse, with its unoutlinable _note attributes:
I am no expert with Traverse yet but I do know if you enable its Type attribute then you can assign a level as a note type (along with heading, quote etc - just like in Bike).
That means there are effectively 2 note types in the app - and the export options allow neither/one or both to be included.
One thing we need is Bike on iOS 
3 Likes
That’s next after 2.0 release. I have made some progress on it… have a tech demo, but still needs to be turned into actual app.
7 Likes
Traverse seems cool in concept, but the app felt sluggish even for basic use. Did you also experience that?
I did, I noticed a discussion on outlinersoftware.com and was surprised that wasn’t mentioned as a drawback… though taking a quick look again and it seems keyboard (arrows keys) based navigation is not too bad. It’s just mouse-clicks which are really delayed. I think to discriminate between clicks and drags maybe?
There is a new update that seems to directly address this lag. Does seem pretty snappy when clicking though I generally use the keyboard so hadn’t really noticed the issue before.
1 Like
I used Tree a lot until it was discontinued, so was grateful to see someone come up with an app that could render my old outlines in the same way. The latest update does seem snappier.
1 Like
Keyboard navigation also has some kind of delay or inertia, where it still jumps some rows, eventhough the hand is of the keyboard. Maybe it memorizes some commands and still does them. I mean this is minor, but does not feel that good.
The app in general offers a great feature set, this just really nags me.