Hog Bay Software Blog
This post is for Swift developers interested in the implementation details of Bike’s outline paths. It’s inspired by Swift Blog Carnival: Tiny Languages . Important Links: Bike 2.0 Preview downloads Bike User Guide: Using Outline Paths Claude Code extracted & simplified implementation What are Outline Paths? Bike’s outline is a tree structure where each row has a type and associated attributes.…
I’m often asked why Save As… is missing from my apps. It isn’t gone, but it has been de-emphasized in favor of the new Auto Save + Versions system. This change isn’t specific to my apps—it’s part of the macOS platform. History: Save As, Duplicate, and Versions Before 2011, Save As… was how you copied an open document. Choose Save As…, provided a new name and format, and the app wrote a separate…
Bike Outliner (1.x) runs well on macOS 26 (Tahoe). Download Bike Outliner 2.0 (Preview) also runs well on macOS 26, but I need to adopt the new Liquid Glass UI, and I haven’t decided how I will do that. I’m looking for ideas. Here’s what Bike 2 looks like today: Note: I almost never run Bike with all UI showing like this! Here’s what Apple’s Notes looks like on macOS 26: For my taste, this…
Yikes, it was brought to my attention that I haven’t posted here in over a year :/ What am I up to? I’m still here! Working away on Bike , and keeping TaskPaper well polished. The support forums are still active if you’ve got questions. I just haven’t been posting here. Why? For the last year, I’ve been mostly working on Bike 2. It’s a big project, and there’s just not much to show until it’s…
Use outline paths to query your Bike outlines. Today they are used through AppleScript and Shortcuts actions. In the future they will be used to build new features such as stylesheets and outline filtering. Download Release Notes Watch the Movie First, it’s not neccessary to understand outline paths to use Bike. They are a foundation technology–can be complex, and are definitaly a bit geeky.…
Bike’s new “Focus Heading” feature enables fast keyboard navigation. Download Release notes Watch the Movie Choice Palette Focus Heading uses Bike’s new choice palette . This same UI is also used in the new “Format > Add Link to Row” command. I expect I’ll find other uses for it in Bike soon. If you are a developer and wondering how it’s so fast… it wasn’t me. I’m using nucleo_matcher for the…
Bike Outliner adds row types! Use row types to add another level of structure and meaning to your outlines. You can now include heading rows, task list rows, ordered list rows, and more. Download Release Notes Watch the Movie Using Row Types The easiest way to use row types is through Bike’s new “smart row types” feature. In a new row, type one of the following markdown inspired shortcuts–followed…
Bike Outliner adds inline navigation buttons so you can zoom through your outline with just your mouse. It also adds a navigation bar with back and forward history and breadcrumbs. Download Release Notes Watch the Movie New inline navigation buttons are added after rows with children. Use them to zoom through your outline with just your mouse. They are a nice visual indicator of where you are and…
This month Bike is partnering with Hookmark . Hookmark is a macOS app for creating links to items: files, todos, mails, and more. These links are deep and bidirectional. The latest Hookmark release is updated to work great with Bike. Bike and Hookmark are companions. Use Bike to store and organize links that you’ve created with Hookmark. Use Hookmark to create deep links into specific rows of your…
Bike Outliner adds Shortcut actions! With Apple’s new Shortcuts [1] app you drag and drop actions to create automated workflows. It’s similar in capability to AppleScript, but much easier to get started. Download Bike Shortcut Actions Bike provides a complete suite of shortcut actions. You can create, edit, move, and delete rows. You can also search for rows and expand or collapse the outline.…
Bike Outliner now supports printing! It also adds quicklook previews and icon thumbnails for your .bike files in the Finder. Download Release notes Screenshot Printing Bike prints the view that you see. Focus into a row and collapse rows to print a smaller part of your outline. Focus out and expand everything to print the whole outline. Quicklook Use Quicklook to see the contents of your .bike…
Bike Outliner now supports full screen mode, typewriter mode, and focus mode. You’ve seen these features before, but not combined with Bike’s speed and fluidiy. Try it out, Bike is different. Download Release notes Watch the Movie Full Screen Mode Bike now works great in full screen. Text wraps to a specific width and then scales to comfortably fit your window. Typewriter Mode Typewriter mode…
Bike Outliner now includes word count and a handy status bar. It’s minimal and can be turned off. Use Bike’s new status bar for quick access to some options, navigation status, and text statistics. Download Release notes Watch the Movie
Bike Outliner now supports autocorrect, substitutions, user replacements, and improved spell checking ! Bike’s text checking interface is custom built, adopting and then improving upon macOS standard behavior. Download Release notes Show and correct errors Showing and correcting spelling errors is surprisingly problematic in most macOS apps. Bike makes this task straight forward. Incorrect words…
I’ve been implementing the mark, kill, and yank actions for Bike Outliner . These actions are obscure and under documented. This post documents what I’ve found and includes code I used to implement them. My understanding is that these features were originally implemented in terminal based editors. Later used by NeXTSTEP. Now many years later they are still with us on macOS. There isn’t much…
Bike Outliner now supports rich text! Download Release notes Bike’s rich text editing should be familiar. There’s also innovation [1] . I’m trying to improve the fundamentals of how rich text editing works. Watch Bike’s Rich Text Movie Inspired by Markdown Bike’s rich text editing is inspired by Markdown. I like Markdown because the formatting is directly accessible. The formatting characters are…
I just did an interview for The Changelog :
Post mostly for programmers… The biggest bug in Bike’s 1.0 release was excessive CPU use while in background. This bug is fixed now, but embarrassing since Bike is a macOS native app that isn’t supposed to do that sort of thing. How did it happen? First, I didn’t realize that each time you use .collect(.byTime) you are setting up a new repeating timer. I had expected a timer was involved, but…
I have a new app! Bike is a fast and fluid outliner app for macOS. Your thoughts and ideas flow smoothly across the screen. Bike also works well with big files, uses open file formats, and is scriptable. Try Bike, it feels different: Get Bike Outliner + Watch Movie Limited Time 10% Off Coupon (BIKE10) Why Bike Outliner? We were promised bicycles for the mind, but we got aircraft carriers instead –…
How many items should your todo list handle? Not the most pressing question in the world, but one that I sometimes wonder about. I think productivity apps should scale to “user generated” content. I don’t expect every app to load multi-gigabyte log files, but it should handle what I can write myself. I use “Moby Dick” to test that. I know it’s longer and uses bigger words than anything I’ll write.…