Paste out also works, but is hard to get right for all tools people use as different apps respond differently to the clipboard
The majority of outlining tools in my experience can accept a paste of plain text lines, indented with tabs. Certainly Workflowy, Ecco Pro, TkOutline, and Dynalist all do, and even OneNote handles it semi-reasonably. Roam (in Chrome) did not appear to accept or output tab-indented text as structured input. (Space-indentation is also produced by some outliners, but even the ones that output spaces will still accept tab-indentation as input.) Most will also let you select an item and its children and hit ^C to copy, without needing an explicit export step unless you need a specialized format.
Whatever format(s) Dynalist and Workflowy put on the clipboard as output, one of the formats is readable by OneNote and Typora as bulleted lists, which is also handy. The other format they produce on copy is four-space indented text, but since they accept tab-indented text as input, as do most other outliners, that should be one of the formats put on the clipboard when a copy operation is done in Roam.
tl;dr: I would suggest investigating what clipboard formats Dynalist and Workflowy use, and accepting either 4-space or tab-indented text on paste, and producing tab-indented text (plus whatever Dl/Wf do) on copy.
we plan for export to be html links of the text of block to the original block
Huh? Then what’s the point of transclusion in that case? If I were using it for writing, it’d be so that I could have single sources of certain type of information transparently included in the markdown output as if it were written there. That way I could have blurbs that I’d share between various newsletters, ebooks, lesson materials, etc. that I could edit once and update across multiple documents as of their next production.
(Or maybe you’re just saying you would wrap the included text in a link? That wouldn’t obviate the point of transclusion, but it’d be an irritant for my use case if I couldn’t turn it off. I just want to be able to transparently include stuff, and find other documents that include those things.)
rather than by responding to our onboarding email as every other user has so far.
I did reply to that email, with a link to the comment. The comment began as a comment here, and I ended up writing more into the comment box as I played with Roam.
you encouraging others to not try the tool
I said (emphasis added):
So, if you have trouble reading tiny text or weird alignments drive you nuts, or if you need to be able to use your writing outside the note tool itself, I wouldn’t recommend signing up for this thing right now. If you intend to use it as a standalone tool and the above-mentioned quirks wouldn’t bother you, then go for it.
That doesn’t look to me like “encouraging others to not try the tool”, so much as “expressing reservations that this is something you can use right now, today, if you have the sort of issues I do with it”.
If you want some real criticism, you should try posting a link on https://www.outlinersoftware.com/. ;-) (Content warning: if you’re into information management tools, that site is a time-stealing cognitohazard, not unlike TV Tropes)
I did reply to that email, with a link to the comment.
Found the email. And in that light the feedback does come across as much more well intentioned.
I said (emphasis added):
So, if you have trouble reading tiny text or weird alignments drive you nuts, or if you need to be able to use your writing outside the note tool itself, I wouldn’t recommend signing up for this thing right now. If you intend to use it as a standalone tool and the above-mentioned quirks wouldn’t bother you, then go for it.
Thank you for the clarification.
The majority of outlining tools in my experience can accept a paste of plain text lines, indented with tabs.
Wow. You’re totally right, completely missed that, and now understand your complaint. We had only been testing paste from google docs, workflowy, etc
fwiw you can import text files (.txt or .md) directly—it’ll interpret tabs, or spacing differences and convert that to the indentation structure. You can also import multiple files at once—it will also respect markdown and convert them into headings appropriately.
We’ll definitely add the paste from plain text, until we get that built you could get around this either with import or by pasting into workflowy from text, and then pasting from there into Roam. We’ll have paste in from plain text soon.
Or maybe you’re just saying you would wrap the included text in a link? That wouldn’t obviate the point of transclusion, but it’d be an irritant for my use case if I couldn’t turn it off. I just want to be able to transparently include stuff, and find other documents that include those things.)
fwiw you can import text files (.txt or .md) directly
That’s nice, but importing (or exporting) files is a huge pain compared to copy and paste, since most of the tools I use don’t really have files as such, or if they do there’s a multi-step process on both sides of finding the file, opening an import function, answering stuff, dragging the file (or worse, having to browse if the import-ee doesn’t support drag/drop).
Compare that to 1) select, 2) Ctrl-C, 3) Alt-Tab, 4) Ctrl-V. No mousing unless it’s for the initial select, if that. Plus, apart from Typora and Notebooks, most of the tools I use don’t even have “files” that would be meaningful to import, so I’d instead be copy-pasting into something else to then create the export file...
Anyway, I’m going to stop here, because my use cases aren’t necessarily what’s best for your project. I’m a CRIMPer (Compulsive Researcher of Information Management Programs), which means I can miss the forest for the trees at times… especially since I have an awful lot of trees, in different software, in which I have a lot of data, notes, ideas, and half-written books.
(I haven’t even mentioned Scrivener before this point… or ConnectedText, whose calendar your date-based pages reminded me of. I actually used CT for quite a while and then realized that I couldn’t really use the text anywhere else; that was before I caught the markdown religion.)
Paste out now handles block-references well (they just appear as the text that appears in the references)
Should also paste out pretty nice into most apps
Pasting in from plain text (and from scrivener) keeps formatting
OneNote provides some very strange formatting when you try to paste it into our app (or most other apps) -- but it’ll give you the right outline structure if you use Command-Shift-V for paste as plain text.
The majority of outlining tools in my experience can accept a paste of plain text lines, indented with tabs. Certainly Workflowy, Ecco Pro, TkOutline, and Dynalist all do, and even OneNote handles it semi-reasonably. Roam (in Chrome) did not appear to accept or output tab-indented text as structured input. (Space-indentation is also produced by some outliners, but even the ones that output spaces will still accept tab-indentation as input.) Most will also let you select an item and its children and hit ^C to copy, without needing an explicit export step unless you need a specialized format.
Whatever format(s) Dynalist and Workflowy put on the clipboard as output, one of the formats is readable by OneNote and Typora as bulleted lists, which is also handy. The other format they produce on copy is four-space indented text, but since they accept tab-indented text as input, as do most other outliners, that should be one of the formats put on the clipboard when a copy operation is done in Roam.
tl;dr: I would suggest investigating what clipboard formats Dynalist and Workflowy use, and accepting either 4-space or tab-indented text on paste, and producing tab-indented text (plus whatever Dl/Wf do) on copy.
Huh? Then what’s the point of transclusion in that case? If I were using it for writing, it’d be so that I could have single sources of certain type of information transparently included in the markdown output as if it were written there. That way I could have blurbs that I’d share between various newsletters, ebooks, lesson materials, etc. that I could edit once and update across multiple documents as of their next production.
(Or maybe you’re just saying you would wrap the included text in a link? That wouldn’t obviate the point of transclusion, but it’d be an irritant for my use case if I couldn’t turn it off. I just want to be able to transparently include stuff, and find other documents that include those things.)
I did reply to that email, with a link to the comment. The comment began as a comment here, and I ended up writing more into the comment box as I played with Roam.
I said (emphasis added):
That doesn’t look to me like “encouraging others to not try the tool”, so much as “expressing reservations that this is something you can use right now, today, if you have the sort of issues I do with it”.
If you want some real criticism, you should try posting a link on https://www.outlinersoftware.com/. ;-) (Content warning: if you’re into information management tools, that site is a time-stealing cognitohazard, not unlike TV Tropes)
Found the email. And in that light the feedback does come across as much more well intentioned.
Thank you for the clarification.
Wow. You’re totally right, completely missed that, and now understand your complaint. We had only been testing paste from google docs, workflowy, etc
fwiw you can import text files (.txt or .md) directly—it’ll interpret tabs, or spacing differences and convert that to the indentation structure. You can also import multiple files at once—it will also respect markdown and convert them into headings appropriately.
We’ll definitely add the paste from plain text, until we get that built you could get around this either with import or by pasting into workflowy from text, and then pasting from there into Roam. We’ll have paste in from plain text soon.
Solid point
That’s nice, but importing (or exporting) files is a huge pain compared to copy and paste, since most of the tools I use don’t really have files as such, or if they do there’s a multi-step process on both sides of finding the file, opening an import function, answering stuff, dragging the file (or worse, having to browse if the import-ee doesn’t support drag/drop).
Compare that to 1) select, 2) Ctrl-C, 3) Alt-Tab, 4) Ctrl-V. No mousing unless it’s for the initial select, if that. Plus, apart from Typora and Notebooks, most of the tools I use don’t even have “files” that would be meaningful to import, so I’d instead be copy-pasting into something else to then create the export file...
Anyway, I’m going to stop here, because my use cases aren’t necessarily what’s best for your project. I’m a CRIMPer (Compulsive Researcher of Information Management Programs), which means I can miss the forest for the trees at times… especially since I have an awful lot of trees, in different software, in which I have a lot of data, notes, ideas, and half-written books.
(I haven’t even mentioned Scrivener before this point… or ConnectedText, whose calendar your date-based pages reminded me of. I actually used CT for quite a while and then realized that I couldn’t really use the text anywhere else; that was before I caught the markdown religion.)
New version pushed up
Paste out now handles block-references well (they just appear as the text that appears in the references)
Should also paste out pretty nice into most apps
Pasting in from plain text (and from scrivener) keeps formatting
OneNote provides some very strange formatting when you try to paste it into our app (or most other apps) -- but it’ll give you the right outline structure if you use Command-Shift-V for paste as plain text.