All I ever wanted to do on my desktop is this:
1) Select some text on the screen 2) Have the text AND the URL to the source copied to one place, without me having to manually copy and paste the URL.
I am a huge fan of collecting random clippings from the web. Your app saves me just enough clicks to make it worth while.
Thank you for implementing Markdown export.
I suggest you add one feature: the ability to not have to confirm the save - frictionless saving. Just save everything to one default place, don't have the app ask me anything.
A comparison:
Workflowy -> CrushPaper
Enter -> Alt+s
Enter -> Alt+u/b
Enter + Tab -> Alt+c
This feels like it was designed to be used with a mouse and keyboard shortcuts inexpertly bolted on. :)
After that fix, this is a joy to use. :)
I think one of the major UI differences between Workflowy and CrushPaper is that CrushPaper aims to support multiline notes and quotations. I often paste snippets of code into CrushPaper but that does not seem to work well in Workflowy. In Workflowy you can create multiline notes with Shift+Enter, but then you don't seem to be able to navigate to those lines with the keyboard.
CrushPaper can definitely be changed to use Enter+Tab instead of Alt+c.
Perhaps Alt+Enter should insert a new line within a note, and Enter should create a new note. When I experimented with that during user testing no user guessed that it was possible to create multi-line notes.
- Enter for newline and Shift-Enter for new entry (and Alt/Cmd-Shift-Enter for new child)?
This would retain your multiline discoverability. I would be careful with Alt, as it makes CrushPaper awkward to use on Macs, where Alt+s both sends the keystroke and types 'ß' (German eszett) and similar issues abide for other Alt combinations. Since you have so many Alt shortcuts, it might be worth mapping them to equivalent Cmd shortcuts on Mac, as web apps commonly do.
- OmniFocus/Outliner on Mac use Escape to finish editing and Enter always makes a new entry. Escape might make an easier-to-hit-reliably edit key than F2 (which can be hard to hit without looking/fumbling, even for a touch typist).
You could do worse then really digging deep into emacs org-mode and learning it well.
It takes what you are doing to a much higher level but doesn't exist on the web yet.
Also (as mentioned elsewhere) get yourself up here https://demo.sandstorm.io/demo
This whole area is very underserved in how people
interact with their computers, glad to see people
pushing at it.
Are there any tools other than org-mode that you have your eye on?
outliner
org-tangle/org-babel, literate programming and/or http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/literate-devops.htm...
broadly exportable format
calendar/todo/personal information management
etc etc
I'm not aware of anything else that covers that territory.
However Xiki and IPython (Jupyter now) do have some of the aspects of the "computational document" that I think of in this broader context.
I believe that when people have tools that allow them to visualize their thoughts they can become more rational as well as more productive.
I like emacs org-mode too. I would like to add functionality to CrushPaper that is similar to some aspects of emacs org-mode. But, first I need more feedback on the current iteration.
Try to avoid the popup modal dialog boxes ie for creating a new note. Focus on fluid note editing within the document.
Alt+enter to end a note? What is the absolute most fluid way you can give the user to create a sibling?
I wrote most of CrushPaper before finding out about Workflowy or HackFlowy, but I tried to take a different path from HackFlowy.
CrushPaper is hopefully easy to deploy because it is a single executable JAR.
CrushPaper is hopefully easy to contribute to because all of the server code is in Java.
CrushPaper has unit tests. I am always surprised when people are willing to store their information in an app that doesn't have any test coverage.
The gap between "you can run your own server" and a one click install via sandstorm is profound.
The backend of this is pluggable so it can use other datastores.
If you sync a 2Do app instance with SabreDAV, you can see that the 2Do developers have added app-specific fields to the standard schema, to store text notes, audio attachments and app-specific metadata, without losing interoperability.
CalDAV clients: http://caldav.calconnect.org/implementations/clients.html
CalDAV libraries: http://caldav.calconnect.org/implementations/librariestools....
(I'm hoping you aren't using AGPL with the intention of giving yourself an exception and turning this into a proprietary service yourself; the guarantee against that is accepting AGPL patches from others without a CLA — that would assure that the whole thing is AGPL for everyone equally)