Bike App

Sascha

If you like Outliner Bike is something you should experiment with.

I am in the processing to formalise some of my outlining methods into teachable tools and decided to tinker with dedicated outlining software. Bike and the OmniOutliner are my top candidates at the moment.

Perhaps, it is because I started to experiment with Bike and am yet more familiar with it as opposed to OmniOutliner. But I am really pleased with its feel and nimbleness.

GeoEng51

@Sascha I've tried Bike and find it is simple to use and easy to learn. It seems to be mainly an outliner program. You could use it to write notes, but it is missing essential items like bullets. Can you share for what purposes you would use Bike?

Sascha

My current use cases are:

1. I want to improve my writing using a thoroughly developed outline for my texts.
2. I am satisfied with my understanding of creating video scripts but I am not satisfied with my layout. For this, sadly, the OmniOutliner is better suited. But I hope to make it work in Bike to avoid having two separate apps.
3. Using it as a thinking tool in a more literal sense. Its nimbleness allows for quickly re-order the items. So, I am experimenting with the use bike in combination with the knowledge flower and similar tools (Currently, I develop a model for story-driven non-fiction for my future videos)

Vinho

For me, the main use case of outliner software is to make notes during a presentation/webinar or when working through a book before zettelising its content. It makes it possible to quickly structure and reorganise the thoughts/content I'm writing down and the resulting file is then a good start for zettelkasten work.
For taking notes during a webinar, it's essential that the outliner software allows me to add screenshots of slides etc. to the file easily per drag and drop.

For the past years I've been using OmniOutliner for this purpose as well, but I often feel that it's too overloaded with unnecessary features and it also doesn't work with plain text files.
Still waiting for a plain text outliner that allows for drag & drop of images and has image preview... As far as I understand, Bike doesn't do that (yet?).

saf_dmitry

@Vinho Still waiting for a plain text outliner that allows for drag & drop of images and has image preview...

You can try Logseq.

Sascha

@Vinho Perhaps OutlineEdit 3?

Vinho

@saf_dmitry and @Sascha

Thanks for the recommendations – didn't know either of those. Unfortunately, and despite it having some appealing features, Logseq is a bit too overloaded for me as well – all I'm looking for is really a simple text editor with outlining features that works with plain text files.
As far as I can see, OutlineEdit also doesn't edit plain text files. All it seems to be able to do is allowing to copy plain text out of a different file format. Then I might as well stay with OmniOutliner for now...
Would be great if The Archive got outlining features @ctietze

ctietze

@Vinho Maybe not in The Archive directly anytime soon

MartinBB

I'm wondering if you could (sort of) do plain text outlining in NotePlan.

Perikles

@Vinho said:
all I'm looking for is really a simple text editor with outlining features that works with plain text files.

What about BBEdit then? It should do it.

Vinho

@MartinBB said:
I'm wondering if you could (sort of) do plain text outlining in NotePlan.

I don't think so, having tried it a year ago or so. Also, NotePlan is so much more than just a text editor – all the other features would be too distracting...

@Perikles said:

@Vinho said:
all I'm looking for is really a simple text editor with outlining features that works with plain text files.

What about BBEdit then? It should do it.

Thanks for the suggestion, but you don't seem to have read my first post: it also needs to work well with images, i.e. support drag and drop and image preview in the editor window itself.

Sascha

@Vinho said:
As far as I can see, OutlineEdit also doesn't edit plain text files. All it seems to be able to do is allowing to copy plain text out of a different file format. Then I might as well stay with OmniOutliner for now...

Ah, you already use OmniOutliner.. Then my recommendation makes less sense.

Would be great if The Archive got outlining features @ctietze

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I am falling in love with bike. It's NIMBLE and truly an awesome preprocessor.

GeoEng51

@MartinBB said:
I'm wondering if you could (sort of) do plain text outlining in NotePlan.

Yes, you absolutely can. But it is not as nimble as Bike. Nevertheless, I use NotePlan for pretty much all note-making outside of my ZK, and use it to create outlines all the time.

Perikles

@Vinho:

Several ideas then:

1. You could use Apple Notes, it works well drag 'n drop based and with images, and through it's folders structure it is essentially an outliner.
2. Evernote and Onenote are the same concept, should be doable to achieve the same there.
3. Workflowy comes to mind, what about that?

Vinho

@Perikles: Thanks for your suggestions, but you forgot the plain text requirement. I want the app to be able to open, edit and save plain text files. Without this feature, I might as well stay with OmniOutliner...

Perikles

@Vinho:

How is it possible to have a file being a text file and at the same time drag 'n drop of images? If you then save the file, the images would get lost, because it's supposed to be a text file, no?

At this point I don't see how it is even possible to even exist what you want?

Vinho

@Perikles said:
@Vinho:

How is it possible to have a file being a text file and at the same time drag 'n drop of images? If you then save the file, the images would get lost, because it's supposed to be a text file, no?

At this point I don't see how it is even possible to even exist what you want?

The Archive does exactly that. If you drag an image in, it's stored in a "media" folder and the plain text file just contains the link to the image. But the app also shows a preview of the image right below the link to it.

ctietze

Here's a demo for the non-believers

Sascha

Just to give you an update if you considered using Bike: It is awesome.

I use it for outlining but not to create an outline. Meaning: It is hyper-nimble and feels awesome. I use it to take notes when watching a presentation/video/etc., use it to prestructure a longer reply (not frequently, so sometimes my trademark all overplaceness is still alive and well), and use it as a canvas to develop a single thought when I am not in the context of my ZK. I then use the result as a prototype.

boxcariii

I have also been using it for a few weeks and really enjoying it, but I am trying to find its niche in my workflow. I have been using Drafts for a few years. Nothing fancy with automation, just as a repo for quick thoughts. It is my scratchpad where I drafts emails and take notes during meetings. I like that I can write in markdown. For longer term storage I can just drop the text into Bear, or into the Archive if it is going to be in the Zettelkasten.

I am trying to replace Drafts with Bike now. I like the outlining aspect and the ability to collapse or focus on any particular piece. It is better than having to scroll through the list of notes in Drafts. Like I said, I struggle with where it goes in my workflow. It is tempting to write in it when thinking, but I should really be doing that in the Archive. Otherwise I might not put the information back into the Zettelkasten and I'm also not connecting the thoughts here.

Copying and pasting the text is not ideal either. Often the HTML formatting is not exactly what I want. Turning off formatting collapses the text and that is not ideal either. Perhaps I should look into the scripting to get it to do what I want. Sometimes I want the text to remain an outline and other times I want the outline to serve as a structure. For instance, I wrote this in Bike. When I copy into the forum, I want line breaks between the bullets instead of having to manually put them back in. Basically I want it to read my mind and paste into different applications in the exact format I want.

I guess I was hoping this would be an all-purpose tool and not just another special purpose tool in my toolbox of apps.

Sascha

It is tempting to write in it when thinking, but I should really be doing that in the Archive. Otherwise I might not put the information back into the Zettelkasten and I'm also not connecting the thoughts here.

Sometimes, I use Bike as a crutch until The Archive v2. I open notes from in Bike from within The Archive to zoom in. My reasons are the exact same: I want to think and use my thinking to improve my thinking machine to get better at thinking.