In TaskPaper, I could run a search and get every line tagged with @today, letting me “slice across” my document without being limited by the hierarchies and structures that contained the data. I could see all the tasks in whatever project I wanted to, but then could also get back a new list of all tasks across all projects super easily.
Is there anything similar in Bike yet?
I know Bike can do cmd + shift + c to copy a “row link” which is really neat, but since I can’t only rely on moving rows around with cmd + control + arrow keys I start needing to copy and paste, but then as soon as I copy and paste a row somewhere else it’ll break the row link I made.
This isn’t possible in Bike now, but I (and a friend David Albert) are working on this right now. The tasks are:
Port a path query language similar to TaskPaper to Swift (TaskPaper’s is implemented in Javascript)
Implement evaluator so that queries can be run agains Bike’s outline.
Figure out what the display should look like.
We are making progress on all of these things. I don’t expect a final release for a month or more, but it’s being worked on and I expect Bike will get this feature sometime during the summer.
Wonderful news! I’m definitely excited for more ways to navigate rows + data than simple hierarchies.
When I look at the screenshots of OmniOutliner on their page Outlining Software For Pros - OmniOutliner - The Omni Group, the ability to add more columns and “bits of data” to each row seems like a killer feature (though I’ve never used OmniOutliner, and is too expensive for me to justify buying).
I expect future Bike to allow you to add “bits of data” using a TaskPaper like tags/attributes system, but I don’t expect to support OmniOutliner like columns for the display of that data. I do think it’s an interesting and worthwhile feature, but I think it takes the app more into “spreadsheet” territory and away from “word processor” territory. I expect Bike to stay on the word processor end of things.