Show HN: Bike – Rich Text and Innovation | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Bike – Rich Text and Innovation

hogbaysoftware.com

8 pointsjessegrosjean5 comments

I have just added rich text to my outliner Bike.

I think the implementation is worth taking a look at. Follow the link for details, a screencast (4 min), and download. (this is paid feature, but there is a no signup 7 day trial so you can play with it)

In the past I have used plain text formats (like .taskpaper and .markdown) for my apps. I've grown sick of seeing and parsing syntax characters, so this time around I am taking a rich text approach.

Rich text looks clean, but editing is problematic. You don't have precise control/visibility into the formatting. It's hidden behind the text. There are no formatting characters to guide you like you have in Markdown. This is particularly problematic when you want to insert text at formatting boundaries.

Bike solves this with "typing affinity". This lets you precisely specify which formatting to use at those boundaries. It does this by adding an extra text caret state at these boundaries. This extra state allows you to point the text caret upstream or downstream to the formatting you want.

Other interesting features include:

• Link Buttons: Insert a dedicated "open" button after each link so there is no conflict between editing link text and opening the link.

• Keyboard Centric Formatting Popover: Remember a single keyboard shortcut and have full keyboard access to formatting commands. No mouse needed.

• Visible Typing Attributes: Show hidden typing attribute state (when it cannot be visually determined by looking at surrounding text) as part of the text caret.

Please take a look and let me know what you think. I'm happy to answer questions and would love to hear your thoughts on ways to improve rich text editing further.

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It's kind of shown in the video, but how do you edit the link target URL?

A related pain point is when I want to insert a link, I usually copy the URL into the clipboard first, then type the link text. This results in a bit of minor gymnastics. It would be nice if the editor detected the URL in the clipboard and automatically inserted it.

My work-around for the puzzles is to start editing in the middle of the word with the format I want (one character over), then delete that character if needed. Yes, it is a little painful.

> It's kind of shown in the video, but how do you edit the link target URL?

For that Bike uses standard approach from other rich text editors, you need to invoke some command to show popover UI. Either right click on link and choose "Edit Link" or there's a dedicated menu item if you ant to assign keyboard shortcut, or you can get to it through the Command-K popover, then type "l".

> A related pain point is when I want to insert a link, I usually copy the URL into the clipboard first, then type the link text. This results in a bit of minor gymnastics. It would be nice if the editor detected the URL in the clipboard and automatically inserted it.

Bike is doing that, or at least is intending too. If you have a non-empty selection and then Paste URL text, a link is added.

I feel that anyone trying to work with rich text and thinking Markdown is the best guide should look back in history to Wordperfect and Wordstar. The problem being described here was well handled in both, with the ability to toggle the formatting codes on/off to get the precision when you needed it, but turn them off and just type when you don't.

I think it is great that people are trying to improve on editing UX - just don't skip researching the old solutions, too.

Does anyone have a good link demonstrating this? I've never run Wordstar, though I have read through manuals and screens in the past trying to make sense.

My impression from skimming manuals/screens is that the approach isn't really compatible with what people are used to now. Many things may be better about it, but it would require teaching users a new approach.

I think there is where Bike's approach is useful. It's basically just the same as what everyone is already used to, just with a few small changes that fix some important problems. I think it's a good incremental approach.

I've been digging around and think I see what you are talking about.

I see using visible codes for formatting such as ^PBbold^PB. I agree this allows for more precise text input in relation to formatting. For similar reasons that Markdown is also good for that.

But I don't think it addresses my second goal, which is to have clean looking text without formatting characters. I'll keep digging around, but if there is something specific about Wordstar that you think my app could benefit from let me know.

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