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November 14, 2015

Evolution of a Song

Bob Dylan. Okay, he is a bit of an acquired taste, and there seems to be a generational effect when it comes to his appeal, but there is a new collection of CDs from him which got my attention. Columbia has been packaging what they call, the Bootleg series, and releasing some of his older stuff. The Cutting Edge 1965-66: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 is the latest release. There is a version available which is a little insane. 18 CDs worth. I am listening to it in parts. An interesting exercise. You get to see the evolution of the songs. Take a song like Subterranean Homesick Blues. It is a great music video, you can watch it here. The collection has eight versions of this song and if you know the final released version, it is an absolute blast listening to its progression. Gives you an insight into the process of creation. Absolutely mesmerizing.

The absolutely insane 18 disk edition is a little difficult to find. You might have more luck finding the 6 disk edition. It is available The Cutting Edge 1965 - 1966: The Bootleg Series Vol. 12 (6 CD Deluxe Edition).

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

Music Creation Evolution Bob Dylan
November 14, 2015

Links of Note 2015-11-14

Learn some stuff.
Learn Enough™ Command Line to Be Dangerous | Softcover.io

Learn some more stuff.
Learn Enough™ Text Editor to Be Dangerous | Softcover.io

Research on line length.
Readability: the Optimal Line Length - Articles - Baymard Institute

This made me switch to System Font.
Choosing a font for writing — Medium

macosxguru

November 8, 2015

Writing (Better) Markdown in Sublime Text 3

If you are using Sublime Text 3 you need to get package control installed. Go here. Follow the instructions and get Package Control installed. Have you installed it? Good.

Sublime Text 3 provides a Markdown package by default. It is nice but lacking in features. We are going to use the community contributed packages and ignore the default markdown package. These are the packages we are going to install to make Sublime Text 3 a fantastic markdown editor.

  1. The Markdown Editing package.
  2. The typewriter package.
  3. The Github Markdown Snippets package.
  4. Themes for Markdown Writing.

The MarkdownEditing Package

Read about it here. Install it through Package Control.

What does this do? Read the readme.md file in the package and you will get all the details. I am going to highlight some of the features which makes this package useful to me.

Flavors of Markdown supported

The MarkdownEditing package brings support for three flavors of markdown to Sublime Text 3: Standard Markdown, Github Flavored Markdown(GFM) and MultiMarkdown. I have all markdown files assigned to Github Flavored Markdown and that lets me use tables, footnotes and tasks.

Features which I find useful

This is going to be a long list. I am fond of this plugin:

  • Asterisks and underscores are auto paired and will wrap selected text. So, it is easy to apply bold and italic just by typing one or two asterisks. When you are wanting an italic, just type an asterisk and the cursor gets surrounded by two asterisks. Type another one and you are in markup for bold. I don’t use that much though, I press ⌘ + ⌥ + B. That gives me four asterisks with the cursor in the middle. I type in what I need bolded, then press ⌃ + E to get to the end of the markup and get on with my writing.
  • Backticks, the markup for code, are paired.
  • Lists are handled well.
    • At the end of a list item, pressing Return will insert a new list item. If it is an ordered list, you will get a new list item with the incremental number already in place.
    • Pressing Tab on the blank list item will indent it and switch the list bullet to another one (Order is *, -, + in a cycle). Much like this list is doing.
    • Pressing ⇧ + Tab on a blank list item will unindent it, and switch back to the list marker which was used in the previous level of the list.
    • You can disable automatic bullet switching or choose which bullets to be used, in the settings file.
    • If a list item contains a GFM task, pressing Return at the end of the line, will continue with a new blank task.
  • At the end of a blockquote line, pressing Return will extend the blockquote.
  • More interestingly, selecting some text and pressing > will convert the content to a blockquote. You don’t have to select the whole paragraph, any portion of it selected will turn the paragraph into a blockquote.
  • If you select a word and type [, the word is going to be surrounded by square brackets and the cursor will be placed at the end of the right square bracket. Type ( and the right parenthesis is going to be added, with the cursor in the middle. Paste or type in the URL, and you now have a link completed.
  • ~ wraps selected text with ~~ (strikethrough).
  • Select a line. Type # and it is preceded by a #. Type as many as the header level needs. Move on.

Keyboard Commands

I am going to talk about some of the keyboard commands that are useful to me. However, I made a change to the default assignments. By default, ⌘ + ⌥ + V pastes the contents of the clipboard as an inline link on selected text. Didn’t work for me. It clashed with the default paste command, and I changed it to ⌘ + ⌥ + L. Works like a charm now.

You change the default keyboard commands by finding the keyboard command in the Plugins default Keybindings file. SublimeText>Preferences>Package Settings>MarkdownEditing>Key Bindings - Default file. In this case, it was:

{ "keys": ["super+alt+v"], "command": "paste_as_link", "context":
        [
            { "key": "selector", "operator": "equal", "operand": "text.html.markdown", "match_all": true }
        ]
    }

I changed the “super+alt+v” to “super+alt+l”. Copied the whole section into the SublimeText>Preferences>Package Settings>MarkdownEditing>Key Bindings - User file. Now when I select a section and press ⌘ + ⌥ + L, it surrounds the selected text in square brackets and then puts the URL in the clipboard in parenthesis after the end of the square brackets, turning the selected text into a properly formatted Markdown inline link. Very useful.

Keyboard command Effect
⌘ + ⌥ + V (changed to ⌘ + ⌥ + L) Pastes the contents of the clipboard as an inline link on selected text
⌘ + ⌥ + R Pastes the contents of the clipboard as a reference link
⌘ + ⌥ + K Inserts a standard inline link
⌘ + ⌥ + B & ⌘ + ⌥ + I These are for bold and italic formatting. They are a toggle, you can turn them off/on.
⌘ + ⌃ + 1…6 These will add the heading markup. Number denotes the number of hashes.

Configuration

The default flavor of Markdown the plugin supports is Github Flavored Markdown. If you want to change that, open a markdown file and select your flavor from the menu View > Syntax > Open all with current extension as.

Depending on your choice of flavor, you can look at the default settings files here:

Packages/MarkdownEditing/Markdown.sublime-settings [GitHub flavored Markdown]
Packages/MarkdownEditing/Markdown (Standard).sublime-settings
Packages/MarkdownEditing/MultiMarkdown.sublime-settings

You can override any of the default settings in the appropriate user settings file. Each flavor has a different settings file.

Bold and italic markers are configured through ST shell variables. You can choose Preferences > Package Settings > Markdown Editing > Bold and Italic Settings - Default to see the default settings file. In order to override it, copy & paste its content into the user settings file Preferences > Package Settings > Markdown Editing > Bold and Italic Settings - User from the menu and make your edits. Should be fairly uncomplicated.

The package comes with a selection of themes and you can use them if you want. I am going to cover themes in greater detail a little later in the article.

The Typewriter Package

The Typewriter package does two things:

  1. Typewriter scrolling: Saves you from staring at the bottom of the screen when you are typing a document. Keeps the current line at the middle of the screen and it makes writing a better experience.
  2. Typewriter typing: A travel back in time. This plugin setting moves your cursor to the end of the file and disables mouse clicks and all commands that move the cursor and/or select text – leaving you only with letters, numbers, symbols, Backspace, Delete and Enter.

You can enable the Typewriter Scrolling setting by putting this in your Markdown Distraction Free User file:

"typewriter_mode_scrolling" : true,

The Typewriter Typing mode is a toggle. Use the ⌘ + ⇧ + P command and type Typewriter. It will show up and you can toggle it on and off by choosing it. I don’t use this much. It drives me batty.

For the best results in Typewriter Scrolling mode you should set add this to your distraction free preference file:

"scroll_past_end": true

The Github Markdown Snippets package

This is an interesting snippets package. You type the trigger and hit Tab and the snippet expands. These are the snippets available:

List of Tab Triggers Markdown Equivalent
mh1-mh6 Heading1-6
mb Bold
mi Italic
mbq Blockquote
mstrike Strikeout
mhr Horizontal ruler
mcode Inline Code
mpre Code Block with language based highlighting
mol Ordered List
mul Unordered List
mtable Table

Themes for Markdown writing

The MarkdownEditing Package ships with a few themes. Here are a few more which I like:

  1. This one is from Wes Bos. It is called Theme - Cobalt2. It is a dark theme which supports all of Markdown. While I am on the subject of Wes Bos, he has a book on Sublime Text called Sublime Text Power User. If you want to use this editor to its full potential, you have to get the book and the videos which come along with it.
  2. The Material Theme from Mattia Astorino. I particularly like the lighter theme.
  3. The Github Color Theme by Alexander Ekdahl.
  4. The Preap Theme by equinusocio.
  5. The Predawn Theme by Jamie Wilson.
  6. The Writing Color Scheme by kmisiunas.

There are about 110 themes posted on Package Control. Before installing any of them, it is a good idea to download the zipped file from the github repository, open the theme file in Sublime Text 3 and search for the word mark. If the theme supports markdown you are going to find a lot of occurrences of that word, more than 15, at least. If it doesn’t, it is going to be a lot fewer. Fewer occurrences of the word denotes that the theme doesn’t really support markdown. You can tweak those themes to support markdown, but they will not be adequate without the tweaking. I am going to deal with how to tweak a theme to support markdown in a later article.

Conclusion

I use Marked 2 app for previewing the markdown files. It is one of mad scientist Brett Terpstra’s creations. It does a lot of things, and does them well. I wouldn’t use markdown without it. Get yourself a copy.

You can find my Sublime Text 3 setting files here.

Acknowledgment

I must express my admiration of the readme.md file which accompanies the MarkdownEditing plugin. I have learned from it, and have used it to write this article. Thank you Ali Ayas for making my life better.

Update 2015-12-23

I have been using the Material Theme, and the color scheme: Material-Theme-Darker.sublime-theme. Together they provide a beautiful environment to write in. Very impressive.

Update 2015-12-01

There is a new color scheme called Mandarin Peacock Color Scheme - Packages - Package Control which got posted to packagecontrol.io. It is a dark scheme which supports all of the Markdown tags. Very nice.

macosxguru

Markdown Sublime Text
November 2, 2015

Review of TextNut

TextNut iconTextNut icon

Product: TextNut
Price: Regular $34.99 On sale for $16.99

TextNut is at its base a text editor which supports CommonMark. CommonMark is an attempt at a standardized Markdown specification. At this point, there are two editors, which I know of, which are based on CommonMark, this one, TextNut, and Versatil Markdown. I am going to talk about Versatil Markdown in a later post.

Who are the competitors of this product?

It competes with Write for Mac. It has an advantage over Write for Mac, in that the development on Write has ceased. It competes with Ulysses. It also competes with the various note-taking programs like Katana - Note app for Mac OSX, nvALT - BrettTerpstra.com, and a host of others who have been playing in that space.

I am not going to talk about Write for Mac in this review. It saddens me that a very well designed product has been essentially abandoned by the developer. I cannot recommend it anymore and so we are going to keep it out of this review.

The main distinction between the various note-taking programs and TextNut is that the alternatives only have the ability to manage one folder of text files. TextNut manages as many folders as you want. It is very similar to the model Ulysses uses. You can create, edit and manage documents which reside in its Library or you can add folders from your Mac. You can create, edit and manage files in these folders on your Mac. I didn’t find any major differences in the way TextNut handles its own library files and the external folder files. This ability of TextNut to handle multiple folders of text files from your Macintosh hard drive immediately differentiates it from the competition.

WYSIWYG Environment

TextNut tries to hide you from Markdown by its implementation of what it calls a WYSIWYG markdown editing environment. You style the text as you want and it incorporates the markdown code around your styles. For those, who are starting out with markdown, this is not a bad workaround. For others, who are comfortable with markdown, this is unnecessary. Considering that markdown in its basic implementation is pretty easy to pick up, I am not sure that this feature has too much traction. But it is a solution for those who are not comfortable with markdown and it lets them write and then their content is seamlessly converted to markdown and that must appeal to some people. TextNut lets you switch between its WYSIWYG mode and markdown mode on the fly and that is a convenient feature if you are interested in previewing your markdown document.

Language Syntax Highlighting

TextNut is a tad confusing when you consider that it provides a WYSIWYG environment for markdown novices but provides full syntax highlighting in its implementation of code blocks. Wouldn’t the writer who is familiar with code, also find it easy to learn markdown? It is a nice touch for those who pepper their markdown documents with code snippets. For the rest of the users, it is not a feature which is very useful. But you do get full syntax highlighting for your code snippets, and it does support a plethora of languages.

Easy Document Management

The ability to handle documents both in its internal library and in external folders is a feature shared by TextNut with Ulysses. It makes handling a whole bunch of text files easier. You can drag and drop files from one folder to the other, you also have the ability to preview, export, rename or reveal in Finder right from the sidebar files you have in an external folder. In the Library folder, files cab be previewed, exported or deleted to trash.

Document managementDocument management

One significant difference between TextNut and Ulysses is that TextNut doesn’t support iCloud. TextNut doesn’t have a corresponding iOS version, so it doesn’t need to do that. Your files in TextNut are all residing on your computer: some in the TextNut Library and some in folders on your Macintosh. If you are looking for a cloud backup, you can add folders from your Dropbox folder, or any cloud folder, and TextNut handles them fine.

In this category, the ability to handle multiple folders is much requested. Users have their own organization schema and they like it when a note-taking program can handle all their notes from different folders rather than forcing them to use one folder for all their notes. Ulysses does provide the same ability. Solutions like nvALT, and Katana, do not.

TextNut provides a tagging ability within the program. These are not shared with the Finder, so it is a tagging system unique to the product itself. You add tags to your document in the following form +tag+ +tag2+ and so on. It is a nice system, which is useful if you decide to do a lot of your writing in TextNut. Interestingly, and I do not know whether this is a bug or not, tags only work in files which are in the TextNut Library. If you add tags to your files which reside in external folders, TextNut records them in the Tags but it doesn’t let you jump to the file by clicking on it. Files which are in the TextNut Library are easily reached by just clicking on them in the Tags document.

TaggingTagging

Ulysses implements tags differently. You can assign keywords to your documents, and they can be searched. Ulysses also suffers from the same bug/feature in that tags are accessible when they are in the iCloud folder or in its internal library, but not external files.

Themes

TextNut provides you the ability to use themes. It ships with six themes and you can duplicate and modify them to your hearts content. Unlike Ulysses it doesn’t let you export your creations and share with the world. Ulysses provides more fine-grained control in your theme design while TextNut is adequate in its implementation.

ThemesThemes

Export

You can export your content from TextNut as markdown, html, PDF or RTF. Those are the usual standard options and TextNut does a decent enough job in that regard. It doesn’t hold a candle to Ulysses’s output skills though. It doesn’t let you define the formatting of your output. It doesn’t do epub’s and it is severely constrained when you consider the choices Ulysses provides in this space. TextNut lets you get the content out of the program but doesn’t let you do anything interesting with it. It is sufficient but not competitive with Ulysses.

ExportExport

Ulysses is conceptualized as a writing and publishing solution, and that explains the control over its output. TextNut is a basic note-taking program and is not overtly concerned with providing you fine-grain control over your output.

Zen Mode

I don’t see the benefits of Zen mode. It does not include typewriter scrolling. It is just an attempt to take away the chrome from your editing window. In zen mode, the title bar disappears and the sidebar disappears. Seems to me that this is a pretty standardized implementation in almost all of these markdown based editors. Byword, iA Writer, and a whole host of its competitors do a much better job of providing an environment for you to write in. Zen mode in TextNut is an imperfect and incomplete implementation of an old idea. Ulysses the main competitor to this product does this in much more innovative ways.

Again, it seems to me that TextNut is aware of a feature in this space, but doesn’t care enough to implement it with any degree of precision or thought. If you have a three-panel application, it is not at all unusual to hide two of the panels and focus on the editor panel. Every application in this space does this. Calling it “zen mode” is just marketing hogwash and lazy. There is nothing zen about this mode. Just hiding the chrome around the window and the panels doesn’t equate to any zen you are going to be happy in. How could this be improved? Add typewriter scrolling, focus on sentence or paragraph, let me implement typewriter scrolling at any point I want. Try to provide an environment which lets me write better: then you can call it zen.

Advanced Markdown Styles

Like Ulysses, TextNut supports lists, blockquotes, codeblocks, images, footnotes and the like. The one thing that TextNut covers which Ulysses doesn’t is Tasks. It is a not a part of the CommonMark Specifications, it is an addition from TextNut. If you are looking to manage a list of tasks amongst your text files it is not a bad solution. In fact, this is one feature which this program has implemented that is not available from its competitors. Erato, through its support of Github flavored markdown also provides a task list implementation, but Ulysses or Katana doesn’t.

Conclusions

TextNut is a nice addition to the arsenal of note-taking apps. It brings the ability to handle multiple folders. It provides some nice touches, WYSIWYG markdown editing, CommonMark specifications, an underwhelming zen mode, and Filters & Tags. If you take your writing and note-taking seriously, you are better off with Ulysses. It is just better at providing a writing environment for the user. If you are resource constrained, TextNut is not a bad choice, specially at the reduced price point.

macosxguru at the gmail thingie

TextNut Ulysses Writing
November 2, 2015

Here today gone tomorrow

(Originally posted on 2015-10-19)

Two things happened:

  1. Write for Mac and Write for iPad ceased development
  2. Glamdevelopment’s website has gone dark. They are the developers of Outlinely.

Sunk costs of software adoption

I liked both products. I wrote about them. Here and here. I have them installed on my machine and I use them periodically. They are not going to be developed any more.

What does that mean?

That means that bugs are not going to be fixed. New system features are not going to be supported. For instance, El Capitan gives us Split View. It is never going to be incorporated into these products. Outlinely would be an useful product in split view. They will continue to function till some system change makes them unusable.

Let me make this clear so that we completely understand each other: The developers selling a version of the product are just selling that version. There is no implied agreement that the product will continue to be developed. As a consumer we are buying the present version and nothing else. There is no guarantee of an upgrade path, or compatibility with future versions of the OS update.

As an user, however, when you decide to adopt a product into your workflow, there are investments you make in that decision.

  1. The cost of the application.
  2. The time spent learning how the product functions. Getting to know how some of these products work takes time and energy. You put in the effort since you believe that the product is going to add value to your workflow and it is this time spent pursuing the benefits of using the product you lose when you have to move on to another solution.
  3. The work which is stuck in the application. Most of these applications have their own file formats and all your work in it gets saved to these file formats. If the application ceases development, and you can’t use the application anymore, you are caught with files which are not readable anymore. In other words, you are locked out of your own work.

So, from the perspective of the user it makes sense to choose a product which is going to continue to be developed. The time and energy commitment to learning to use the product is better served that way.

What does the user do?

How does an user who is looking for a solution to a problem find a solution which is going to have legs? Going to be developed for a few years? Is going to evolve with the OS?

Sadly, there are no easy answers. There is an answer but it is not the most efficient of answers. Buy from established developers is the answer. But I am not sure it is the most efficient answer. When you buy from an established outfit an ancillary benefit is the history they bring to the transaction. If you are looking for a text editor, you can buy BBEdit. You are not going to have any problems with the developer disappearing or the product being abandoned. Barebones has been making BBEdit for 20+ years, and they are not going away anytime soon. You are going to get a fantastic text editor, which is well-supported and has a record of keeping up with system updates for a long time. Taking the trouble to learn the ins and outs of BBEdit will stand you in good stead for a very long time. It is an investment worth making. If you are looking for an outliner, buy OmniOutliner or OmniOutliner Pro. Omnigroup, the developer, has also been around for a very long time and they are very well established in the marketplace. They are not going away any time soon. Both of these products are great examples of well supported and consistently updated pieces of software which are a pleasure to use.

So, what is the downside?

By definition, the established houses are risk-averse and it shows in their software. In the current marketplace of text editors, BBEdit certainly lags behind both SublimeText 3 and Atom in terms of features. The newcomers are hungrier. They are more interested in differentiation and they are eager to adopt new technologies. Multiple cursors in Sublime Text 3 and the webkit implementation of Atom being two indicators of this trend. OmniOutliner does things no outliner was really supposed to be doing, and that is unique to this product. Omnigroup has done a great job of keeping this product at the cutting edge of what an outliner is supposed to do. Although even in that market space, Outlinely with its Markdown roots and FoldingText with its different modes has shown us what more can be achieved through an outliner. Thus, even though this is not a statement which can be applied in every circumstance, if you are looking for innovation or innovative features in a category, the newcomers are a much better bet than the established powerhouses. So, when you adopt the established product you are giving up on some features which distinguish the newer competition. Is this trade off worth it? That is a difficult question to answer when you bring in another criteria to the decision. The offerings from the established products are usually priced higher than the newcomers. This is not always true, but generally true. An exception of course is that SublimeText 3 is more expensive than BBEdit. But SublimeText 3 is cross-platform and a license entitles you to use the product in every platform it is available in. Atom of course, is free.

So, what does the user do?

  1. Only adopt products which have a clear output path. You should be able to output your data from the product into an application independent format. Standardized formats are well supported across a wide choice of applications and they include, .txt, .rtf, .pdf, .doc, .md, and so on. Before adopting a product make sure that the data you input into it can be exported to a format which is universally accessible. If the product doesn’t do that, take it out of your consideration set.
  2. Adopt multiple products in categories. If the outlining category is important to you, adopt OmniOutliner and one of the newcomers. If text editors are not that important to you (considering that I spent my life in text editors I have no idea who you are anymore), adopt one of the established ones, BBEdit is a great choice and don’t worry about cutting edge features. Learn it well. You are going to find a lot of uses for it.
  3. Look at products which are task specific. They bring specificity to the problem they are trying to solve and that leads to innovation and improvements which the generalists do not have the motive to consider. Ulysses is great for writers of all kinds, the newest version of iA Writer is not bad, Byword is a great web publishing solution.

Silver lining

I must tell you about an application called Opal. I wrote about it on June 28, 2009, here. Yes. You read that right. 2009. It was last updated on 14th October, 2009. That is 6 years ago. I still use it. It works like a charm and is as efficient as it always was. Sometimes software surprises you.

macosxguru

Software Mac OS