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Work-Alike Alternative To Dynalist
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Apr 3, 2024 at 02:38 PM
Well now, AnyType isn’t the most immediately intuitive app out there, but actually, it’s immensely powerful, and they’ve recently introduced a “toggle” feature (accessed, somewhat counter-intuitively) via the context menu) that allows you to turn any section of text into a foldable outline.
You don’t have to pay any attention to AnyType’s many, varied features if you just want to use it as a Dynalist equivalent – the stripped-down UI is ideal for that kind of ultra-simple use. You can turn any note into a lengthy outline, with the advantage that you can also cross-connect any item in the outline to any other note/outline (complete with backlinks etc.).
And AnyType is thoroughly cross-platform ;-)
Posted by MadaboutDana
Apr 3, 2024 at 02:54 PM
I’ve just discovered the very easy shortcut for turning any piece of AnyType text into the beginning of an outline:
> + space
Actually, the folding/outline function is extremely powerful – much more so than Dynalist or Workflowy!
Good grief. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how useful AnyType was going to be to me, although I’ve imported a lot of test data (straight from Obsidian – AnyType can import markdown files without any tweaking. Oh, and PDFs etc.). But this outlining thing is seriously useful! It’s easier to use than Obsidian’s, even!
Posted by MadaboutDana
Apr 3, 2024 at 02:55 PM
I still have to run the “Jesse” test and see how much data any single note/outline can manage… will Moby Dick remain fast and responsive in a single note? I’ll let you know!
Posted by MadaboutDana
Apr 3, 2024 at 03:05 PM
Yep, just imported the entire text of Moby Dick (1.2 MB of markdown text) into an AnyType note, and barely slowed it down at all. The search function is also able to spot all 85 instances of “Moby” in the text (checked against my favourite Mac text editor, CotEditor, which doesn’t allow something as tiny and feeble as Moby Dick to slow it down, no sirree!)
Just for fun, I also changed a number of paragraphs in Moby Dick into an outline. Still pretty darn quick, although there is a very, very slight delay in folding/unfolding.
I’m impressed!
P.S. The only thing that makes me sad is that AnyType doesn’t appear to support smart punctuation yet (i.e. nice, curly apostrophes/quotation marks). But I may be wrong on that – I’ll have to check the settings.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Apr 3, 2024 at 03:12 PM
The other advantage of AnyType is that you can move any paragraph of text (a “block” in AnyType-speak – and indeed in e.g. Craft-speak) to any other note or “object” you choose. You can embed other “objects” in the text, and create links to pretty much anything at all.
The flexibility is enormous. If you decide to extend it beyond what Dynalist or Workflowy can do, you can use an outline as the basis of a database, using various criteria to filter/list blocks or other information held in the outline. That’s quite apart from the search function(s – universal and page-based), which is/are very fast and efficient.