format request

Posted June 17, 2008 by michael walsh

Jesse, my main use for Taskpaper right now is to keep a work journal (rather than project or to do lists). Taskpaper's searches and methods for looking at the text file are extraordinarily flexible.

I know that fixing formating issues is not a high priority at this point, but it would be great if the themes allowed paragraph formats such as hanging outdents. That would allow us to use any characters we like as bullets.

For example, I label major events during a day by using the underscore character to tell Taskpaper to underline the entire line. I then take notes in the form of bullets below that line, typically starting a line with a period. It would be very useful and much easier to read if I could control indenting/outdenting, etc.

One other question. I don't have any problem signaling format changes by including a special character at the beginning of a line or contained somewhere in the line. I can't get it to work, though, if I specify that the formating should be applied if the character is at the end of the line. Is Taskpaper always looking at the as the last character or am I missing something?

Regards.

mon10a

jesse - June 17, 2008 12:50 PM

For example, I label major events during a day by using the underscore character to tell Taskpaper to underline the entire line. I then take notes in the form of bullets below that line, typically starting a line with a period. It would be very useful and much easier to read if I could control indenting/outdenting, etc.

I'm not quite understanding what you are trying to do. Could you maybe post an example of the plain text that you want to type in and then a graphic showing how you'll like it to be themed?

One other question. I don't have any problem signaling format changes by including a special character at the beginning of a line or contained somewhere in the line. I can't get it to work, though, if I specify that the formating should be applied if the character is at the end of the line. Is Taskpaper always looking at the as the last character or am I missing something?

I think the problem is that in TaskPaper each line ends with a \n newline character. So if you want to setup a rule to match line endings you'll need to include the \n as the last character that you are matching against. I think you can type \n into the rule editor by holding down the Option key and then hit the enter key.

As an alternative you can match against the end of the "name" instead of line. That will maybe give you better results, because you won't have to worry about the \n (it's stripped of the 'name' value. Also trailing tags are stripped of the end, so if you add a tag to one of your lines it won't break the match.

Hope that makes a bit of sense :)

michael walsh - June 17, 2008 3:04 PM

Very helpful on my "end of line" question.

What I meant by my first question is that if I make changes in the ruler of one of my styles, the changes are not reflected when I apply the style. Changes in the ruler affect first line indent, left margin, and right margin. I will send you an email with a file demonstrating what I want to accomplish.

Thanks.

m

ClintMacD - June 17, 2008 8:27 PM

Jesse:

When I first read Mr. Walsh’s feature request, I thought he meant that he wanted to implement simple font styles, similar to (but not exactly like) John Gruber’s Markdown. This (Markdown in TaskPaper) is still a good idea.

If you implement a “Markdown Lite” (fewer calories than regular Markdown :-) ), you would have to be sure that the straight text format of TaskPaper was not violated. One way to do this is the way Thunderbird has chosen: include the Markdown marks in the style. For instance (I am not sure I can do this in the comment):

This text is plain, __but this text is bold__.

By including the tags in the Marked-down text, they remain completely editable (in another text editor as well as in TaskPaper), yet serve the very useful purpose of text styling. What do you think?

Best wishes, Clint
(who is very pleased that he could emulate the Marked-up text in Markup)

jesse - June 18, 2008 9:05 AM

Generally I really like the idea, but I'm not sure that it's right for TaskPaper. I think one of TaskPaper's greatest strengths is that you can describe the syntax in about two lines. If I add markdown support things all of the sudden become more complex. I know, it's a complexity that's easily ignored, but...

It could scare away new users. TaskPaper's already a little "different" for new users, and if I start throwing around terms like Markdown that could quickly convince people that it's a more complex app then it really is.
Second even for expert markdown users I'm not sure that adding markdown support would really offer very much. In the end TaskPaper is meant for organizing projects and tasks. I think the ability to bold/italic/center/etc content would be just as likely to slow people down as it would be to speed them up.

So I don't really see this feature getting added to TaskPaper.

But WriteRoom might be another option. Just floating an idea here to see what people think...

For a number of reasons I really wish that WriteRoom didn't have to support RTF. It's a fairly opaque file format, it complicates WriteRoom's code, and personally I never use it. But WriteRoom was originally just plain text, and many writers complained because for lots of writing it's important to make things bold and italic.

So what do people think about adding support for this style of markdown to WriteRoom and dropping direct RTF editing. This would simplify WriteRoom, and also make WriteRoom a much better markdown editor since it would have built in syntax highlighting for markdown. You'd still be able to set up all your font and line spacing preferences, you just wouldn't be able to change font's etc within a document. But you would be able to use markdown syntax to visually turn things bold and italic.

Anyway, just an idea for now, but to me a really appealing one.

ClintMacD - June 18, 2008 9:43 AM

So what do people think about adding support for this style of markdown to WriteRoom and dropping direct RTF editing.

I don’t know about others, but I use WriteRoom for RTF all the time. RTF is pretty much the Universal Translator of formats, and I think it should remain.

Markdown might be interesting, but I do not see it as being a boon for WriteRoom, since WriteRoom already has RTF.

I still think that Markdown Lite™ would benefit TaskPaper, however, since Markdown is, at its heart, a straight text format. Just my thoughts.

Best wishes, Clint

Matthew Crider - June 18, 2008 9:54 AM

Jesse, put me down for an EMPHATIC "NO" for dropping RTF in WriteRoom. With RTF, one gets the metadata fields like title, author, keywords, etc. that one doesn't get with plain text files. I use this metadata for my tagging. Anyone who has seriously tried tagging or tried to synchronize two computers with tagged files, knows that the the Spotlight Comments field is a very "iffy" proposition.

I hired a programmer to automatically place my tags into the Keywords metadata field, so that the tags don't get lost or separated from the file. Since doing this, I have had consistent tagging in Mac and consistent syncing of tagged files between computers.

Please don't take this feature from WriteRoom. I don't care if you eliminate every other feature of RTF, just don't eliminate the format altogether. PLEASE. P L E A S E.

Matt

jesse - June 18, 2008 10:32 AM

Again I'm mostly just thinking out loud here, I really have no idea what I'll work on when I get back to WriteRoom. But if your only reason for using RTF is for the meta fields it seems to me like there must be an alternative option. Can you give a quick summary of how you use the meta info and what you need it for?

I've never really looked at issues with tagging files. But it seems to me there must be a way to do it in a generic fashion that works for all files and doesn't depend in a particular file format. The OS X file system now supports extended attributes. I'm not sure how well they work at this point, but they seems like the system supported way to attach attributes.

Or if extended attributes and spotlight comments really are not ready for prime time you could just go for a dead simple option, taskpaper style. For example you could just embed the tags in the file name. For example "my file @author(jesse).txt. That strategy would work for all files, and be completely portable and backward compatible. You'd never have to worry about reading/writing binary file formats like RTF. Another alternative is you could just embed the info inside the text file itself.

Matthew Crider - June 18, 2008 11:09 AM

Jesse,

First, Chris uses WriteRoom with RTF all the time, so there really must be a compelling reason to take away a feature a user has been consistently relying upon.

Second, regarding my particular situation: As best as I'm able to understand it, there are two classes of metadata in Leopard - 1) metadata stored as part of a file itself and 2) metadata stored in an associated file per file and summarized in a ds_store file per folder. Spotlight Comments - which almost everyone uses for tagging - falls into category 2. It is universally available to Leopard users regardless of the file type.

However, there are two problems with this: 1) Spotlight's index will corrupt when too many changes are made in the Spotlight Comments fields of several files and 2) when syncing between computers it is easy for the link between the main file and the associated file with the Comments to be corrupted or broken or lost.

These are not problems with only a remote possibility of happening, but are the everyday real world experience of those who tag their files. Various vendors have tried solutions which invariably involve writing the tags to the metadata that is actually part of the file (When using data written to the metadata of category 1, one must employ a Spotlight importer, which varies from file type to file type). Most notable of these vendors is SpotMeta, which worked in Tiger, but broke in Leopard and hasn't been renewed.

So, since I work mainly with RTF (including WriteRoom), Numbers, Pages, PDFs, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel, I had a programmer write some software for me that allows me to tag files and manage tags for these files using the Keywords field that exists as part of the file. Spotlight sees these accurately and syncing these files between computers is problem-free.

I hope that better explains it. Now, if worse comes to worst, then I will have him program a WriteRoom importer that writes tags to the first line of a WriteRoom "document" with some sort of delimiter; this is what I had to do for TaskPaper, since it is a Text file. However, I would prefer not to have to spend the money to design another importer, if there isn't some compelling reason to eliminate the RTF option of WriteRoom.

Thanks, Jesse, for two GREAT programs.

Matt

jesse - June 18, 2008 2:10 PM

Just one more tidbit. I just noticed that part of the MultiMarkdown plain text format is a standard way to represent document metadata including Author, Keywords, and more. I'll have to remember that if I decide to bring this all back up later on :)

jesse - June 18, 2008 11:19 AM

Ok, let me take removing RTF off the table for now. It wasn't really on the table exactly, just a thought, but I don't want to get everyone worried :) Plus for now my focus really has to be TaskPaper... 2.0 where are you!!!

Joakim Hertze - June 18, 2008 12:32 PM

Well, I still hope you're considering adding (Multi)Markdown support to WriteRoom. Personally I never use RTF in WR -- I always edit in plain text and use Fletcher Penneys MultiMarkdown scripts to transform it into RTF, LaTeX or PDF.

Syntax support for Markdown and built in support for Multimarkdown document conversion (similar to Scrivener) would lift WriteRoom to a whole different level.

ClintMacD - June 18, 2008 12:38 PM

Ok, let me take removing RTF off the table for now.

Whew, that was close! :-)

Just to drive my point home, I use WriteRoom in RTF mode to write drafts of manuscripts and grants that will eventually be imported to a more feature-rich word processor for finalization. The ability to compose in rich text (scientific terms that contain italics, superscripts, subscripts, etc.) is essential to my work-flow.

You made the right decision!

Best wishes, Clint

jesse - June 18, 2008 1:55 PM

The ability to compose in rich text (scientific terms that contain italics, superscripts, subscripts, etc.) is essential to my work-flow.

It's trick though. If you just need superscripts, subscripts, and italics then RTF can get you that far. But that's also a bit of a hack. As soon as you need to start writing equations or something like that RTF gets really painful.

In general I'd argue that for technical documents you'd be much better off authoring in a plain text format like MultiMarkdown. And then generating PDF's or RTF documents from that source document. Checkout the "Sample MultiMarkdown Document" example on this page, and the example PDF that's generated from it. The PDF is filled with technical symbols, math equations, numbered lists, and even a generated Bibliography. But the source document is a simple, and readable text file.

It seems to me that WriteRoom would be a much more interesting app if it focused on plain text, and support for plain text workflows such as writing markdown documents and generating styled text as a result.

I think if all WriteRoom users changed their writing workflows to plain text it would make things much easier for them in the long run. I think page layout and styling should be left to apps like Pages and Word that are designed for the task. To me RTF in WriteRoom muddies the apps focus and leads people down the evil path of mixing content and style :)

At the same time I've been really happy with WriteRoom's success and am really grateful to everyone who's using it. I don't want to ruin the app for all the RTF users. Ideally I'd like to convince all the RTF folks that there is a better way, and then provide them will a plain text based tool that will allow them to do everything they were doing with RTF and more, in a much cleaner way.

But if I try to make that argument/conversion it won't be for a while. And it will be drawn out so everyone has a chance to voice their opinion.

ClintMacD - June 18, 2008 2:32 PM

(This thread would be much more on-topic for the WriteRoom forum, but we’re already here, so….)

In general I'd argue that for technical documents you'd be much better off authoring in a plain text format like MultiMarkdown.

Well, now you’re just talkin’ crazy talk! :-)

Speaking only for myself and my own work-flow, that would not be suitable. I like WYSIWYG word processors! If I were to go for a markup language like MultiMarkdown, I would be far better off using LaTex, which already exists (or maybe I could use WordStar or hieroglyphics or just stick spoons into my eye sockets). While I can see how MultiMarkdown would be exceptionally useful in a text-to-html work-flow, that is not how I use WriteRoom.

My bottom line is, MultiMarkdown might be a great addition to WriteRoom, but removing RTF would be a much greater loss. I would probably leave WriteRoom for another product if RTF were gone (and I would bet that if you took a survey, a significant number of WriteRoom users would agree).

And, getting back to TaskPaper (remember that?), I can see how, if MultiMarkdown would be a nice addition to WriteRoom, it would be an even more powerful addition to TaskPaper. After all, the whole TaskPaper work-flow is designed around plain text. (In fact, maybe the answer to your MultiMarkdown interest is to add the full-screen technology to TaskPaper along with MultiMarkdown, rather than to add MultiMarkdown to WriteRoom. Think about it for TaskPaper 2.5.)

What do others think?

Best wishes, Clint

jesse - June 18, 2008 3:02 PM

Well, now you’re just talkin’ crazy talk! :-)

Ha :) Well in the end the truth is that I don't use RTF, but I probably wouldn't use markdown myself much either, because mostly I just use WriteRoom to work through ideas and brainstorm. And since removing RTF seems to be a small point of contention, I think I'll probably just keep WriteRoom as it is. If for some reason I decide to persue the Markdown stuff maybe I'll make a new app.

I still don't really see markdown support in TaskPaper though. TaskPaper isn't intended for generating formatted documents, just simple lists of projects and tasks.

Anyway thanks again for your feedback.

Matthew Crider - June 18, 2008 4:15 PM

First, note to Clint: I called you Chris in my earlier reply; sorry! Also, I loved this comment of yours: "(or maybe I could use WordStar or hieroglyphics or just stick spoons into my eye sockets)" - I laughed out loud.

Second, note to Jesse: One can absolutely use RTF as plain text. In fact, that is how I use it. I only use the RTF format for the tags. In fact, when first testing it out between Text and RTF versions, I could see no appreciable difference on screen. So, the argument that it's just better to write in text seems to fail - one can write in just text with RTF.

Thanks for tabling it for now.

Matt

ClintMacD - June 18, 2008 8:23 PM

Also, I loved this comment of yours: "(or maybe I could use WordStar…)" - I laughed out loud.

Well, I am a little sorry about that statement — it came out much meaner than I had intended. But I am glad it gave you a chuckle. :-)

However, I hope this was a useful discussion for Jesse. “User-driven software” means taking different use scenarios into account when judging features. Plus, it gave me some new ideas on how to use these applications. To me, brainstorming is a multi-document process (I might consult published manuscripts in PDF format, or search for keywords in PubMed), so the full-screen of WriteRoom would make that untenable. However, a semi-structured outliner like TaskPaper is perfect. On the other hand, when writing a manuscript or grant, I must minimize distractions, so full-screen (but full RTF formatting) is the way to go. It seems that Jesse uses these applications in exactly the opposite ways (WriteRoom for unformatted brainstorming and TaskPaper for structured lists), which is plenty cool.

Best wishes, Clint

ClintMacD - June 18, 2008 8:21 PM

…mostly I just use WriteRoom to work through ideas and brainstorm.

But, that’s what I use TaskPaper for! :-) (And, I want to add that many of your new features in TaskPaper 2.0 — like drag-and-drop — make it even nicer for brainstorming. Thanks!)

So, to each his/her own.

I still don't really see markdown support in TaskPaper though. TaskPaper isn't intended for generating formatted documents…

My desire of Markdown (and it is not a critical feature request, only a desire) was for simple visual formatting of a few words for emphasis here and there. I agree that formatting documents would be too much for TaskPaper. Maybe we will revisit this request in version 2.5.

Best wishes, Clint

Joakim Hertze - June 19, 2008 1:43 AM

You really shouldn't give in this easily, Jesse! ;-)

WriteRoom as plain text only, with supporting features for structured writing (i.e. MarkDown) would make it a welcome addition to the text editors market for writers. I suspect you wouldn't find much support for it in your current user base, though. Today's WriteRoom is a fine RTF editor I suppose, but people using plain text probably turn to other editors, such as TextMate with it's superb MultiMarkdown bundle. TextMate and BBEdit have a whole range of shortcomings, though. They are after all programmers editors.

You'd probably do best to leave WriteRoom as it is and write another app for plain text only. Perhaps you could call it WriteRoom Pro. ;-)

Matthew Crider - June 19, 2008 7:56 AM

Joakim,

I respectfully disagree. WriteRoom's raison d'etre is distraction-free writing. It has one focus, one purpose, one strategy, one goal: get ideas on to the page as quickly as possible with as little interference as possible. If one wants anything else, then it is a very simple port/copy to some other program to get whatever formatting one wants.

Matt

Joakim Hertze - June 19, 2008 8:46 AM

Matthew,

what exactly are you disagreeing with? I fail to see how plain text editing with support for Markdown would conflict with the distraction-free qualities of WriteRoom. On the contrary, what could be more distraction free than plain text editing? Fiddling with typefaces, font weights or sizes? Setting margins or line heights? I know you can use RTF as plain text, but why bother tainting the pureness of a plain text file, forever portable and easy to version with Subversion or GIT? It makes little sense to me, but I fear this is like comparing religions. There is no right or wrong.

If I was Jesse I wouldn't pull RTF from WriteRoom either. But I would build a new distraction-free plain text editor. There is room for us all.

jesse - June 19, 2008 9:20 AM

If I was Jesse I wouldn't pull RTF from WriteRoom either. But I would build a new distraction-free plain text editor. There is room for as all.

Yeah I've made up my mind at this point that WriteRoom should stay as is. I think that Markdown etc is a really interesting direction, but I'm no longer (even remotely) considering it for WriteRoom.

Maybe in another future app, but that's seems pretty far away.

ClintMacD - July 1, 2008 8:40 PM

Ryan of 37Signals has this to say about removing features (“Features are a one-way street”):

http://tinyurl.com/6lhz4w

Best wishes, Clint

michael walsh - June 18, 2008 4:51 PM

Interesting discussion.

Let me clarify that I am not asking for the ability to change formats within paragraphs (e.g., mixing different fonts, bold, or italics within the paragraph). All the style changes that are available now affect entire paragraphs and I am perfectly happy with that. I am asking to increase the paragraph style options to include changing the margins and where the first line starts in relation to the margins of the rest of the paragraph.

Taskpaper does this automatically for tasks (paragraphs starting with a "-") by placing the "-" to the left and then lining up all the text to the right. I would like to do that using other symbols.

Regards.

m

ClintMacD - June 18, 2008 10:30 PM

Mr. Walsh:

Taskpaper does this automatically for tasks (paragraphs starting with a "-") by placing the "-" to the left and then lining up all the text to the right. I would like to do that using other symbols.

I apologize for getting this discussion off on a completely wrong track. Now that I have reread your original feature request, I think you will be pleased to learn that the answer is: “TaskPaper already does exactly what you want”!

Go to Preferences > Themes > Rules.
Create a new rule by clicking the “+.”
Click Edit Rule, and give the new rule a clever name (I experimented with “Underline Me”).
Now use the drop downs to create a rule Any of the following are true, line begins with, and fill in the text “_ ” (underscore-space).
Click on the Apply text attributes: checkbox, and click Choose Attributes….
Right-click (or control-click) on the example text, then change the text to your liking, such as Underline, Bold, or Italic.
Close the dialog box, click Save & Apply Theme (important!), then dismiss the Preferences dialog.

Now, create a new item in TaskPaper starting with the underscore-space (“_ This is an underlined sentence in TaskPaper”). You should see it formatted exactly as you want.

Does that work for you?

Update: after more experimentation, I see that text attributes work using that system, but paragraph attributes (indenting, centering, etc.) do not. Maybe that is more like what you want.

Best wishes, Clint

michael walsh - June 19, 2008 5:59 PM

Clint, thanks for your clear explanation. I have been using the steps you outline for quite some time now to change fonts, fontcolors, underline etc.

As you note in your update, it's the paragraph attributes (outdenting, indenting, centering, etc.) that don't seem to work. My request is to add those formatting capabilities to the Themes. Among other things it would allow us to use whatever characters we want for bullets, rather than the "-" used to indicate a "task."

Regards.

m

ClintMacD - June 19, 2008 7:36 PM

…it's the paragraph attributes (outdenting, indenting, centering, etc.) that don't seem to work. My request is to add those formatting capabilities to the Themes.

Yes, you are right the paragraph formatting doesn’t work, even though the UI implies that it should. This is something Jesse should fix (i.e., make it work, not remove the UI!).

Best wishes, Clint

Nick Brawne - June 19, 2008 10:38 PM

Paragraph indents don't work, but line heights and line space before and after a para do. Is it that there is no ruler, and if this was implemented we would have full control ?

Going back to the RTF discussion, it would be good if this was implemented in TP so that users could add bold, italic underline etc at will without having to implement a rule.

jesse - June 20, 2008 8:32 AM

Sorry for skipping out on this paragraph conversation... I actually know what is happening. I do support most paragraph attributes, but I'm intentionally ignoring firstLineHeadIndent, tabStops, and headIndent because I need to make those match up for all tasks so that comment and project lines match up properly with task lines. I'm not sure if I'll be able to find a good workaround or not. I use the fact that I'm in control of all those values in a number of different places in the program. But I'll take another look when I get a chance.

michael walsh - June 20, 2008 10:28 AM

Thanks, Jesse -- much appreciated.

m

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