Just started using Taskpaper...should I switch?

Hey folks. So I’m a To Do / Journal Application Freak. I’ve tried them all, and just recently I’ve started to really get into Taskpaper.

My questions is this:

Should I invest time in setting up Taskpaper just the way I want it with various scripts, or just switch to Folding Text now?

Again, It’s not as if I’ve spent too much tim with Taskpaper yet, I just know it is for me. But I’m thinking maybe Folding Text will be an “all-in-one” solution.

Thank you.

Well, TP3 and FT2 are fairly interchangeable – scripts written for one generally need only minor adaptation for the other, and the filter language is essentially the same on both sides.

The current builds of FoldingText have a slightly more up to date scripting interface, and FoldingText has some special .modes which you may find very useful, as well as being a good route on through Pandoc to .docx etc

The main virtue of the TaskPaper format, apart from familiarity and simplicity, might be its use on any iOS apps that you use.

But essentially, I think the stakes are not too high, you can experiment with one, and then move to the other, taking your scripting efforts with you, or tweaking them lightly.

I recently went on holiday without mac but with iPad. I tried using TP on iOS but found it still a bit buggy (not sure it is supported anymore, that was under ios7). I then tried editorial using the task paper mode which supports colouring for tags, but it still seemed too limiting, not quite right.

I then went straight back to using markdown in editorial as it was just better (I had 2 copies of the same document (one in TP, the other in FT) and then uploaded after holidays back to my mac for FoldingText, which works very nicely for tasks, so I am not sure where TP now fits into my toolkit, but I retain it for occasional use.

This iOS app TaskMator works with TaskPaper files and I believe uses the TaskPaper code since it looks like an updated and better version of the original TaskPaper. Please support them so that can keep this app fresh. I do.

I personally find iOs simply not up to the task :wink: of taking a lot of notes and rearranging items and adding tags, or using it for real world projects. The scalability just isn’t there yet (maybe better with external keyboard though), quick transient stuff is ok but then that is how I use iOs anyway, the mac is far more fully featured and not prone to same crashes. For example, the latest version of taskmator crashes repeatedly on my mini, I simply don’t have time to debug stuff for other people.

FoldingText (stable version 2.02) really is nice to use and so simple but has all the additional benefits of scripting and plugins too (from these brilliant guys here!) , so that is where my focus is now.

Taskpaper 3 on the mac when released may be a useful addition to my toolkit but I am still not sure why it would be necessary. iOs is a different ballgame entirely , I sort of understand why Jesse concentrated on the mac (though a Windows version would be nice too)!

Taskmator startet very promising as successor of the original iOS TaskPaper app. But after five updates in two month there is no obvious further development since end of march. Till the iOS 8 Update this was no problem for me, but unfortunately Taskmator doesn’t work well with iOS 8 and on the apps homepage the last post is also from the end of march.

Actually I would recommend using Editorial as iOS TaskPaper client. With the Editorial TaskPaper Mode, the Workflow feature and the option to use Python for scripting you can create lots of individual solutions for different proposes (or use the existing ones from the Editorial Workflow Directory).

I hope there will be an Taskmator Update soon, because I find the handling of the Taskmator app a little bit smoother than the Editorial TaskPaper Mode.

I actually prefer TaskPaper over FoldingText (or Markdown) when it comes to taskmanagement, because of the possibility to:

  • easily move tasks up and down (drag (or touch) and drop)
  • in- and outdent them
  • mark tasks as complete with automatically mark them @done(YYYY-MM-DD)
  • the powerful search functions

… either in the Mac app OR in the iOS clients Taskmator (before iOS 8) and Editorial. Because I’m often on the road I rely on my mobile device the iPhone and sometimes the iPad.

If I could find an iOS app with FoldingText (or Multimarkdown) features that provides my preferred movement functions, I surely would switch to FT/Markdown for taskmanagement. Than the only missing function would be the easy handling of recurring tasks or tasks that starts in the future. I don’t like my actual solution with putting these kind of tasks in apple reminders, because I have to deal with two different tasklists.

Interesting post, we all use our devices so differently. In FT on Mac, I find it easy enough to indent and outdent and move stuff around. Marking done with a date is automatic. The only missing part is searching like in TP but the filer plugin works very well and it is only a matter of tim till FT has a UI for it.

I agree about Editorial which is more stable than Taskmator and also has colours for TP mode, but still find iOs just not good enough to do any heavy task management. Copy and paste can be hit and miss as can undo !

I handle repeating tasks by tagging with nice colours (using styled tags plugin) and then when done, just adding a new entry, a bit like Jesse showed us with autofocus.

Well I have a lot to think about.

I used Emacs org-mode (which probably needs very little introduction in these forums) for a long time for my Task Management / ToDo needs and recently found both TaskPaper and FoldingText to be viable alternatives.

I’m leaning towards FoldingText as it can be my journal and Task Manager all-in-one, but what is essential is the following:

  • a script (or scripts) that can tie certain tags into iOS Reminders
  • a script (or scripts) that can “dump” all of the day’s activity into Day One or jrnl.

Can anyone point me the right direction of finding scripts like these? If not I will use the API and write my own I suppose.

Thanks folks.

estebanrules1, you didn’t tell anything about if you want to use iOS apps in combination with the FT Mac app, so that I think this is not on your list.

Nevertheless I want to point out that there are some Editorial Workflows that provide solutions for creating iOS reminders or Day One entries.

PS: I discovered org-mode a few weeks ago and wondered if it could be a better solution for me. I’m curious what let you think about switching to FT?

EDIT: Let me clarify, I definitely would like to use iOS Apps with FoldingText :wink:

Concerning org-mode, are you a current Emacs user?

The reason I ask if you are a current Emacs user, is well, because…let me direct you to this well-known diagram of editor learning curves:

learnin-curves

The point is that I love Emacs and org-mode is great, but I’ve decided to “lighten the load” a bit and use something a bit less heavy. You can use Emacs/org-mode for everything imaginable, but I’m switching over to a lighter workflow with Vim, (and vim-wiki sometimes), jrnl, and possibly FT/TP.

Rob Trew @complexpoint created this flexible and useful script for just this. You can set a tag to send to Reminders, then update the FT document if you mark the Reminder as complete or change it in some other way.

Thank you. That looks like a good place to start.

So I decided to get Folding Text and I’m loving it, there is a lot more I have to learn, still need to get my workflow down exactly, etc.

Are there any iOS apps currently that can edit *.ft documents?

Editorial is my current iOS companion for FoldingText. Be sure to adjust settings for “Taskpaper” mode, in order to take advantage of what Editorial has to offer— otherwise just Markdown or plain text manipulation. No folding, though.

Yeah, I use Editorial for Taskpaper and markdown and it is fantastic. I hope it adds support for foldingtext some time soon.

Due to crashing in ios8, I found it unusable. Here is a reply from developer yesterday (some weeks after initial bug I reported). As you can see, it is not worth developers adding and upgrading if they get paid nothing for their attempts, though in this case I think a caveat with ios8 should have been on the app store.

> Thank you for contacting and extremely sorry for my late response.

I fixed almost all the issues related to iOS 8 ( Latest TextExpander Touch support for iOS 8, crash issue and shrinked/misplaced menu views) in Taskmator. Next version of Taskmator will be available soon in App Store.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks,
Amit

PS: Currently the number of sales is drastically low (average 1-2 copies are selling per day). I ( and loyal users of TaskPaper/Taskmator ) need to spread the word so that I can give enough time in development process of Taskmator to include some cool features.

Thanks for sharing these news @MarkLikesText. I was just starting to look around for alternatives of TaskPaper and Taskmator. If I know Taskmator will be updated for iOS 8 (and as importantly for the iPhone 6/6 plus), I could probably convince myself to look into customizing FoldingText to look and behave like TP3.

I can confirm that Taskmator is now stable in iOS 8. Whether or not it is good to use 2 apps with all the sync issues that can cause, I don’t know. For transient task lists it works if you copy as outline from FoldingText (thanks to complexpoint for his great scripts) and paste into TP, but do you then want to retrofit back into FT afterwards, or is there a point in keeping separate documents only where TP is just for tasks, but longer documents that require better formatting and can publish on the web in FT?

  1. I keep seeing about @complexpoint’s scripts but I haven’t found a link.
  2. After quickly digging into FoldingText, I figured out that the level of customization I enjoy in TaskPaper would be rather difficult to be achieved in FoldingText (it’s more generic and I’d need to rely on a bunch of custom plugins which will probably lead to a maintenance nightmare). Right now I decided to enjoy the expired TaskPaper 3 version that I have as long as it works. If it doesn’t get any updates but continues to work, that’s OK. If it gets updated even better. And if it stops working, then I’ll use another scriptable editor.

After having various sync issues using both FT and TP, I now find the best method is to use FT only which allows for nice styling with the plugins, and if I want to see something on iOS, I use the FT document with a taskpaper extension and this is then perfectly usable with taskmaster or editorial. Only problem I had was making sure there were no empty lines after a project heading (which also has to end with a colon for TP type display), and also indenting the tasks with one or 2 tabs. The only other outstanding issue using just FT is for notes as they are not connected clearly enough to a project, though the @note tag does help a bit.

Do a search on the forum of the scripts, there is a link somewhere!