New app, Bike

Posted by Amontillado
Nov 29, 2022 at 02:56 AM

I took Jesse up on his ten dollar offer. First impressions are very positive. I haven’t tried the long file scroll test. For outline-sized files, it’s working fine.

I’m hoping to replace OmniOutliner. It’s great, but it’s got quirks and OmniGroup is not going to be addressing them soon, if ever. I’m sure it will be supported for a long time. It’s not exactly a vibrant product any more, though.

I think my primary use for it will be in conjunction with Devonthink. I’ll write snippets that cover an idea in DT and then link topics in Bike to them. I’ve been brainstorming this way with MindNode. MindNode is nice and can be used in outline mode, but it’s not quite the right tool for outlining.

The advantage to using an outline or a mind map as an overview of Devonthink topics is that I can discard an outline without discarding the ideas. Or, I can work up an alternate outline, recycling ideas.

The same could be done in Obsidian. Unfortunately, I seem to be a Devonthink recidivist. The tagging, replicants, and things like that just keep sucking me in.

Bike’s formatting popover is really cool. I will probably create links with Keyboard Maestro more often than manually, though.

If I highlight a word in Bike, go to Devonthink and pick an item, my new Link to Bike macro will copy the DT item link and either paste it as a new link or replace the one that’s already highlighted.

By the way, links that are just text with a separate link button is really nice for this sort of thing. There might be an argument for the link button taking up space, but the benefits are great. The text is more naturally editable.

Bike is a very nice tool.