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FoldingText for Mac out
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Posted by Bernhard
Oct 17, 2012 at 07:24 AM
There is a new tool form the author of WriteRoom and TaskPaper: FoldingText.
From the website (http://www.foldingtext.com/):
“Plain text productivity for geeks. As you type, FoldingText auto-formats your document into sections, lists, and paragraphs. Fold sections to see the big picture. Focus to see the details.”
It uses a sort of Markdown syntax but isn’t fully Markdown compatible.
What is nice, that one can use outlining functions (move up/down left/right) on Markdown texts. It’s not a bargain (I didn’t bought it yet), but there is a discount for a week and it seems interesting.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 17, 2012 at 01:30 PM
I bought my copy yesterday and I have to say that I’m a bit disappointed so far with limited use.
First of all, there’s not much that Folding Text can do that you can’t already do with TaskPaper and more ellegantly.
Second, I am finding the spartan text does not provide enough clues about hierarchy. For example, this is what a screen might look like (although the text after the hash marks would be bold):
# This is the first heading
- This is a list item under the first heading
- This is a second list item
## This is a sub heading of the first list item
## This is a second sub heading
# This is the second top level heading
Now, you can add blank lines between the headings to help. But what would be more useful is that sub headings have a different style and are indented, but that functionality seems to be absent (unless I’ve missed it).
I know the philosophy of the developer is to keep it as simple as possible, but I think he’s kept it too simple. You can manually add tabs and blank lines, but to I found, ironically, in this “simple” app, that I had to do too much fiddling to get my work to appear in a way that helps reveal meaning and relationships.
There is the promise of more features to come, so I am hopeful that this will be ironed out. I think it is too bad that their idea is to phase out TaskPaper and move users to FT.
Steve Z.
Posted by Bernhard
Oct 18, 2012 at 07:10 AM
Maybe it’s a little bit off topic but it is about Hog Bay Software. Today I checked the updates in iTunes and there are new versions of Plain Text and WriteRoom for iPad.
Nice going I first thought but then I stumbled: They dropped support for iPad 2. What the heck do they think? I would have to buy new hardware for such simple software? Are they sponsored by Apple to increase revenue?
First, I thought FoldingText could be a step forward from TaskPaper as TaskPaper only allows one nesting level. But with such an update policy I lose confindence and will not rely on Hog Bay.
Posted by Bernhard
Oct 18, 2012 at 07:49 AM
Sorry, I have to apologize for my hasty posting. It isn’t the Ipad 2 but the IPod 2. That’s a complete different story as this is indeed a quite aged device!
Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 18, 2012 at 02:05 PM
Hm - well, they may have dropped “support” for the iPad 2, but WriteRoom is certainly still running quite nicely on my iPad 2.
I still rate Hog Bay software quite highly (in particular, WriteRoom must be one of the only writing apps where you can actually specify line height), but it’s being rapidly displaced in my affection by Cotton Notes, a pure-D outliner of the single-pane school that is advancing by leaps and bounds (after initial problems with data stability). Not only is it a very powerful outliner, complete with hoisting, but it can also be used as a fairly efficient task management app, in which case tasks can be synchronised with the iOS Calendar app, too. Oh, and it allows you to attach files and images, so not unlike good ole’ Bonsai in that respect (albeit sans columns).
The search function is pretty good, too - although it doesn’t yet highlight “found” terms, which is a bit disappointing. But the developer (Anthony) is extremely responsive, and recently incorporated a whole raft of export features (including export to Dropbox, export to OPML, export to Evernote etc. etc.). Which makes it remarkably flexible. And he’s looking into Markdown support, too…
Cotton Notes is, effectively, FoldingText for the iPad - already here. And currently very cheap. Deffo worth a look.
Cheers,
Bill