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Outlinely gets a (minor) update
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Posted by Smithers
Jun 20, 2018 at 05:39 PM
Right?!
“Where’s the folding…”
I know your pain.
Lol, I think you and I are going to get along.
With ulysses… folding: sadly, it just ain’t in the cards… ever. They dont like the idea.
Actually, I’m convinced: they hate it.
Talk about sad. It’s sad that I took the time to actually “know”—for a fact—that they do indeed hate the idea of folding(I was curious if it would happen in 20 years). It took me around an hour to find it a ways back but, there’s a twitter thing where Max says something along those lines. And that hour is now gone.
Actually, some folding-ish features are possible within the app. You can style the Annotation tag inside the markdown preferences to look like your text. Click on it, then a way-too-small box pops down and… sigh, there’s space to put text. It’s not “folding” per say; being more of a “pop-down” action; but still, it’s something.
Why am I defending them?!
I’m right there with ya. Coloured tags are NOT anything. It’s a B.S. excuse for their subscription model.
Now I don’t really know this but, I don’t think it’s that hard to MAINTAIN an app as apple periodically pushes out new updates. Isn’t it just pushing a button? It’s not that hard. (I know it’s harder than that but seriously, maintaining an app? Come on! Features! That’s what I want. New, easily traceable stuff that I — an average, angry, ulysses user—can see as I use and experience the consarnit app.)
And I don’t care about “bug-fixes!” I keep seeing these “bug-fixes” inside of the app store when ulysses rolls out another “massive” update. What are all of these bugs? Let me tell ya, I’ve got some bugs. They need a fix’n too. But they don’t like fixing my bugs. My bugs don’t seem to matter. The only “bug” I’ve got in Ulysses has never been fixed! I keep clicking on the text, expecting it to fold and… well, it still doesn’t fold. I keep clicking it. No folding occurs! I contact them monthly about this. They’re very polite. Nothing ever happens though.
Lol.
Honestly, I’ve thought about just hiring a developer and saying, “STEP 1: Just build me an IDENTICAL copy of Ulysses. Then, after we have a freaking copy of ulysses in Xcode, move on to STEP 2:
- Folding.
- Text sizes.
- A big purple option box inside the preferences pane that say’s “hide all that ugly, stupid, final-product-obscurring markdown syntax!”
- Multiple text types in a document.
- Non-Marxist formatting options.
- Inline images that dont suck!
- And… Folding.”
(cough!) Mr. developer man, can ya do that please?
I’m sure he’d say, “Sure! That’ll be $57,000 dollars please.”
I’m real close though… Really close. If all I get after another year of subscriptions is a half arsed new feature like coloured tags, I’m going to do it.
Lol.
I love this place.
P.S. I like agenda as well. I’m just waiting for a dark mode.
Posted by satis
Jun 20, 2018 at 10:29 PM
Ulysses went subscription 10 months ago and has actually done quite a bit in that time. When switching to subscription they rationalized versions to v.11. Since then the devs added image previews to iOS app (matching the Mac app), revamped the iOS UI, added drag-and-drop to iOS, added iOS sheet list swipe actions for keywords & favorites, merged file sources in the Library column, added iPad multi-pane editing, optimized for iPhone X, added new editor themes, improved search/replace, added localizations for Russian, Korean, Portuguese and other languages, made the syntax highlighting much smarter, added daily writing goals & deadlines and paragraph-spanning code blocks, cleaned up epub export, and added a ton of bug fixes.
(And I didn’t even mention color tags, lol.)
Posted by Hugh
Jun 21, 2018 at 08:04 AM
Smithers wrote:
>- Folding.
>- Text sizes.
>- A big purple option box inside the preferences pane that say’s “hide
>all that ugly, stupid, final-product-obscurring markdown syntax!”
>- Multiple text types in a document.
>- Non-Marxist formatting options.
>- Inline images that dont suck!
>- And… Folding.”
>
>(cough!) Mr. developer man, can ya do that please?
>
Not just to show that I read most long posts and have a literal inclination - but what’s a “non-Marxist” formatting option? Or if you prefer, what’s a Marxist formatting option? Just interested. (BTW, welcome.)
Posted by Smithers
Jun 21, 2018 at 06:51 PM
satis wrote:
Ulysses went subscription 10 months ago and has actually done quite a
>bit in that time. When switching to subscription they rationalized
>versions to v.11. Since then the devs added image previews to iOS app
>(matching the Mac app), revamped the iOS UI, added drag-and-drop to iOS,
>added iOS sheet list swipe actions for keywords & favorites, merged file
>sources in the Library column, added iPad multi-pane editing, optimized
>for iPhone X, added new editor themes, improved search/replace, added
>localizations for Russian, Korean, Portuguese and other languages, made
>the syntax highlighting much smarter, added daily writing goals &
>deadlines and paragraph-spanning code blocks, cleaned up epub export,
>and added a ton of bug fixes.
>
>(And I didn’t even mention color tags, lol.)
Hey Satis,
Well, it looks as though I stand corrected.
“And a tip of the hat to you sir.”
All I can say is: ” da*n, you’re right.”
I was just whining. Lol.
The new code blocks are really nice too.
I wish they’d spend the same amount of time making other elements within the editor more visually distinct.
Stuff like making the headers look like headers; or giving the user the option to do so..
That’s a big gripe of mine.
Headers should— no matter where they’re written — always be more distinct than the body copy under the header. That is, to say IF!... The final destination of the header will render the text within said header larger than the text below it. (As it usually is.)
See, there I go again. I’m whining.
I just don’t like having the editor and final product look different.
Posted by Smithers
Jun 21, 2018 at 08:12 PM
Hugh wrote:
>Not just to show that I read most long posts and have a literal
>inclination - but what’s a “non-Marxist” formatting option? Or if you
>prefer, what’s a Marxist formatting option? Just interested. (BTW,
>welcome.)
Hey Hugh,
Glad to be here.
Lol. I got a tad carried away there.
Firstly, I should have clarified: i’ve got nothing against Carl or marxism.
What I meant by Marxist formatting options is: limiting my ability to do something for the sake of… Limiting my ability to do something. (Marxist may not be the right word here. At the time though, it sounded best.)
Now.
I totally get their mantra. Tyrannically enforcing a “simplicity at costs” coda is something I really respect. It’s the entire reason ulysses itself is a great app.
Everyone can’t get what they want. I get it: you can’t give the user the ability to do everything.
But…
When you do indeed decide to give the user the ability to DO something through some kind of feature…
That “thing” you’re about to let the user do better not be a half arsed attempt at letting the user do it. It should cover all the bases, be thoroughly thought out, and let the user do what he wants to do!
Again, IF! — as the app developer— you’ve decided to let the user do it.
Hazaa!
For example: the notes pane on the far right. What. The. Hell is going on in there?
In Ulysses, within the far right notes pane, it’s as if civilization is falling down all around me. It’s absolute insanity.
When you write something in that section and decide to make it bold does it become bold? Does the font-weight become thicker?
It does not. “NOT’ i say. It turns yellow(on iOS) and blue(on desktop), as does underlining and italicizing.
That’s right folks! Within the notes pane, bold, italics, and underlines are all just blue and yellow. It’s like another universe over there— the Magical-Ulysses-Land where bold, underlines, and italics now all mean the same thing, and are yellow and blue. How is anyone supposed to know what the heck is going on in there? It’s madness! Pure pandemonium!
I need a field guid just to navigate it.
And I… I have no field guide. Not do i. Want s field guide.
Now code blocks on the other hand… They love code blocks. In the notes pane when I make a code block, it displays as a pretty code block—just like it does in the main editor… but smaller.
Cool! They still make it blue, but… well, ok! I can live with that. I don’t know why they like blue and yellow but, at least it looks like a code block.
Blue code blocks… A-ok in my book.
But, don’t ya see: they’re a’ pick’n and a’ choose’n here.
They like code blocks more than they do bold, underlines, and italics. They’re redistributing assets, wealth, and development time on a more “important” feature.
In-con-sistencies!
I’m sure they’ve got a reason for trying to change the world’s definition of bold, italics, and underlining to blue and yellow. I bet it’s good. Seriously. Markus and Max are pretty smart dudes and put a hell of a lot of thought into every single decision they make.
But…
I don’t know what happened or who they talked to to make them feel this way but… it’s pretty obvious: they don’t like bold, italic, and underlined formatting.
Every time I open it up it’s like I’m being blasted by a decree from the Premier, “Comrades, be advised, you have entered the blue and yellow zone. For the good of mankind, from this moment forth, within this section all bold, underlined, and italicized text shall be blue or yellow and in no way shape or form appear as it does within the primary editor!”
Am I alone here?
Sorry Hugh, I kinda went on a bit there.
P.s. the In-line image previews are also a mess. For some reason they don’t like these either. On iOS I don’t get to see them at the same scale as I do on desktop. They’re always smaller on iOS. You can only increase the number of preview lines to a 6 whereas on desktop it’s a 12 (I think)
Again, i’m Sure there’s a reason for it. Knowing them, it’s probably a really amazing one. However it makes no sense in my logic center. If I get inline images, I want to see the images. Not part. Not some. But full size. It’s an image after all.
Still a gorgeous app though.
I’m just complaining.