Use row types to add another level of structure and meaning to your outlines. You can now include task list rows, ordered list rows, heading rows, divider rows, and more.

Demo Movie + Next Feature Vote:
https://www.hogbaysoftware.com/posts/bike-row-types/

Other newer features:

- Navigation bar with history
- Printing, quicklook, icon previews
- Status bar with word count and other statistics
- Shortcut automation to complement AppleScript automation
- Distraction free outlining–fullscreen mode, text wrap width, typewriter scrolling, and focus mode.

Shame it's not available for Windows.

Shame you're not using a Mac. ;)

Ha! You might be right.

For a number of reasons it's nice to make maps of content in Devonthink. Bike is probably my new favorite tool for that because it's quick and low friction for editing lists. Devonthink links work fine in Bike files, so it can link to DT notes, files, groups, or tags.

Yesterday I found the game changer. Devonthink recognizes links, backlinks, and mentions in Bike files.

There is one small wrinkle, not Bike's fault, and with an easy workaround.

Devonthink will open and edit a Bike file. Unfortunately, it changes the file type from Bike to HTML and you no longer have a Bike-friendly file - but there's a nice workaround.

Set a smart rule to lock any file with a Bike extension on creation, import, or moving into the database.

The lock is just within the context of Devonthink. You can still open a "locked" file in Bike and edit to your heart's content. The only limitation is I haven't found a way to save an empty Bike file as a template in Devonthink. Creating a new Bike file from a template results in an HTML file, not a Bike file.

I grumble, but I can live with that limitation.

What is it specifically about Bike that makes it useful for lists?

Amontillado wrote:

For a number of reasons it's nice to make maps of content in Devonthink.
Bike is probably my new favorite tool for that because it's quick and
low friction for editing lists. Devonthink links work fine in Bike
files, so it can link to DT notes, files, groups, or tags.

Yesterday I found the game changer. Devonthink recognizes links,
backlinks, and mentions in Bike files.

There is one small wrinkle, not Bike's fault, and with an easy
workaround.

Devonthink will open and edit a Bike file. Unfortunately, it changes the
file type from Bike to HTML and you no longer have a Bike-friendly file
- but there's a nice workaround.

Set a smart rule to lock any file with a Bike extension on creation,
import, or moving into the database.

The lock is just within the context of Devonthink. You can still open a
"locked" file in Bike and edit to your heart's content. The only
limitation is I haven't found a way to save an empty Bike file as a
template in Devonthink. Creating a new Bike file from a template results
in an HTML file, not a Bike file.

I grumble, but I can live with that limitation.

Hi, Nirans,

The auto-indent is nice, and in outline edit mode it's easy to move blocks of lines around.

While some markdown editors will surely do such things, Bike does that very well.

Bike has only recently gotten row types to add checkboxes or set a line as a note. Those features are very nice, but I like a different way of adding a note to an outline entry.

I use one level of indent for hierarchy. If I want to have a note attached to an entry, I use double-indent. The notes are visually different from the hierarchy.

I wish Bike had tagging. OutlineEdit does that nicely, but Devonthink doesn't see links inside an OutlineEdit file like it does with Bike.

nirans@gmail.com wrote:

What is it specifically about Bike that makes it useful for lists?

Amontillado wrote:
For a number of reasons it's nice to make maps of content in Devonthink.

Thanks.

I agree, tagging would be the icing on the cake. Of course you can insert tags and then search for them – Bike's search function is excellent – but it's not the same thing as filtering by tags.

Amontillado wrote:

I wish Bike had tagging. OutlineEdit does that nicely, but Devonthink
doesn't see links inside an OutlineEdit file like it does with Bike.

What is it specifically about Bike that makes it useful for lists?

I think all outliners are pretty good at making lists. Press enter, type, press enter.

What I think makes Bike different from pretty much any outliner is the quality of text editing mode, combined with structured outline editing mode. You can see this demonstrated in demo video on website.

Bike's text editing mode is unconstrained and works just as you would expect a plain text editor to work. There are no weird cases where the text caret doesn't act right, or ends up in slightly wrong place... it's a fully functional multiline text editor. Almost no outliners work this way, instead they are cell based, you edit one row at a time. And while there are ways to move from one cell to another, there are always edge cases where it doesn't quite work right.

With the escape key Bike also has outline editing mode. In this mode Bikes commands work like a traditional outliner. Move a row, child rows come with it.

This combination is pretty unique, and for me makes it particularly nice for editing lists.

I agree, tagging would be the icing on the cake. Of course you can
insert tags and then search for them

Tags are definitely on my todo list.

Big features that I plan to tackle (and start to complete, but probalby not all of them for a bit still) this fall are query language, filtering, tags, stylesheets. They all sorta depend on each other, so I'm puzzling through how exactly I'll do it. I need query language first and have made progress on that. Then will figure.

Forgot to mention ease of use. Command-K, Escape, and control-command-arrows are the only hot keys needed to do most of what you need from the keyboard.

Great to hear – thanks, Jesse.

Ah, so that's what "outlining mode" means! I confess I was slightly baffled by this, even after searching through Bike's online help. Now that is a really useful feature.

Jesse Grosjean wrote:

What is it specifically about Bike that makes it useful for lists?

I think all outliners are pretty good at making lists. Press enter,
type, press enter.

What I think makes Bike different from pretty much any outliner is the
quality of text editing mode, combined with structured outline editing
mode. You can see this demonstrated in demo video on website.

Bike's text editing mode is unconstrained and works just as you would
expect a plain text editor to work. There are no weird cases where the
text caret doesn't act right, or ends up in slightly wrong place... it's
a fully functional multiline text editor. Almost no outliners work this
way, instead they are cell based, you edit one row at a time. And while
there are ways to move from one cell to another, there are always edge
cases where it doesn't quite work right.

With the escape key Bike also has outline editing mode. In this mode
Bikes commands work like a traditional outliner. Move a row, child rows
come with it.

This combination is pretty unique, and for me makes it particularly nice
for editing lists.

> I agree, tagging would be the icing on the cake. Of course you can
> insert tags and then search for them

Tags are definitely on my todo list.

Big features that I plan to tackle (and start to complete, but probalby
not all of them for a bit still) this fall are query language,
filtering, tags, stylesheets. They all sorta depend on each other, so
I'm puzzling through how exactly I'll do it. I need query language first
and have made progress on that. Then will figure.

There's a hidden preference in DTP that lets you add file extensions that are to treated as plain text.

defaults write com.devon-technologies.think3 AdditionalPlainTextExtensions -string .bike

This fixed the .html problem for me. My notes: https://wiki.baty.net/#2023.07.27%20-%20Using%20.bike%20files%20as%20templates%20in%20DEVONthink


Amontillado wrote:

For a number of reasons it's nice to make maps of content in Devonthink.
Bike is probably my new favorite tool for that because it's quick and
low friction for editing lists. Devonthink links work fine in Bike
files, so it can link to DT notes, files, groups, or tags.

Yesterday I found the game changer. Devonthink recognizes links,
backlinks, and mentions in Bike files.

There is one small wrinkle, not Bike's fault, and with an easy
workaround.

Devonthink will open and edit a Bike file. Unfortunately, it changes the
file type from Bike to HTML and you no longer have a Bike-friendly file
- but there's a nice workaround.

Set a smart rule to lock any file with a Bike extension on creation,
import, or moving into the database.

The lock is just within the context of Devonthink. You can still open a
"locked" file in Bike and edit to your heart's content. The only
limitation is I haven't found a way to save an empty Bike file as a
template in Devonthink. Creating a new Bike file from a template results
in an HTML file, not a Bike file.

I grumble, but I can live with that limitation.

Awesome! Works here, too.

Jack Baty wrote:

There's a hidden preference in DTP that lets you add file extensions
that are to treated as plain text.

defaults write com.devon-technologies.think3
AdditionalPlainTextExtensions -string .bike

This fixed the .html problem for me. My notes:
https://wiki.baty.net/#2023.07.27%20-%20Using%20.bike%20files%20as%20templates%20in%20DEVONthink


Amontillado wrote:
For a number of reasons it's nice to make maps of content in Devonthink.
>Bike is probably my new favorite tool for that because it's quick and
>low friction for editing lists. Devonthink links work fine in Bike
>files, so it can link to DT notes, files, groups, or tags.
>
>Yesterday I found the game changer. Devonthink recognizes links,
>backlinks, and mentions in Bike files.
>
>There is one small wrinkle, not Bike's fault, and with an easy
>workaround.
>
>Devonthink will open and edit a Bike file. Unfortunately, it changes
the
>file type from Bike to HTML and you no longer have a Bike-friendly file
>- but there's a nice workaround.
>
>Set a smart rule to lock any file with a Bike extension on creation,
>import, or moving into the database.
>
>The lock is just within the context of Devonthink. You can still open a
>"locked" file in Bike and edit to your heart's content. The only
>limitation is I haven't found a way to save an empty Bike file as a
>template in Devonthink. Creating a new Bike file from a template
results
>in an HTML file, not a Bike file.
>
>I grumble, but I can live with that limitation.

Just wanted to update this topic to sing out in praise of Jesse’s Bike outliner, which has steadily evolved into one of the most impressive writing tools out there.

I’ve just been revisiting the user guide to update my awareness of what Bike is now capable of, and am so impressed by the many thoughtful little touches that turn Bike into a truly effective tool.

When the app first appeared, I made a little list of new features I’d love to see. Almost all of those features have now been introduced (and reading through the user guide, I’ve discovered a whole lot more). The only things still outstanding on my list are support for images (you can already link to an image, of course; file linking is something Bike does extremely well), support for underlining (but I know it’s not a markdown standard), and support for tags (hash and at).

But as previously remarked, it’s the little touches that make it really stand out – the indicators that show you what codes are in use, the context-sensitive caret, the focus/unfocus arrows... really great stuff.

Plus the ability to link to individual rows (in any Bike file). In fact, the handling of rows (= text blocks) is outstanding.

And the speed, of course.

(I’m still working on my understanding of Outline Paths, but I’m sure I’ll get there eventually ;-))

Cheers!
Bill

FoldingText still works great.
Is there any feature of Bike that is not on FoldingText?

FoldingText still works great.
Is there any feature of Bike that is not on FoldingText?

I think the apps are quite different. They have some similar features, but quite different approaches and emphasis.

One fundamental difference is that FoldingText is a plain-text app, while Bike is a rich text app. So while they both support the "bold" feature, they support it in quite different ways.

Another fundamental difference is that FoldingText is build using mainly web technologies (it's an HTML view), while Bike is built using lower level macOS specific technologies. This for example allows Bike to have very efficient animations that (I think) make outlining a more fluid and enjoyable experience.

FoldingText has some extensibility features (such as modes) that I expect Bike will likely never get. Bike 2 (in progress, expected it would take a long time, it's taking longer) will add a host of other features including a stylesheet system and path based filtering.