Brandon Toner

Explain the problem as you see it

Problem: Fields can be a bit overbearing in Tana and would benefit from some enhancements to improve the user experience.

Structured data is great; but sometimes you just want to focus on the text.

Why is this a problem for you?

Currently, I don’t use Fields as much as I could be, due to their overwhelming presence. I believe these changes would help users get the most of Fields, while allowing them to fade into the background when possible.

Suggest a solution

For Fields to feel really good for me in Tana, they need some enhancements around visibility. The following might help:

1. Ability to adjust the default show/hide preferences for a field for each Instance of that field.
   • e.g. I may want “Area” to be “show when empty” on a project, but “always hide” on another Supertag.
2. Ability to quickly toggle the visibility of all fields on a node.
   • i.e. collapse them, without collapsing the sub-node contents.
   • This should be assignable to a keyboard shortcut (which is easy to do as long as it’s in the Command Line.
3. Ability to adjust the show/hide default for a particular session. Like adjusting light/dark mode.
   • When I’m writing-focused, for example, I want to be able to enter a “hide all fields, unless I toggle them on for a node” mode.

In summary:

1. Ability to adjust the default show/hide for each instance of a field (on different supertags).
2. Ability to toggle the collapse status of fields per node.
3. Ability to toggle the default collapse status of fields globally.

Explain the problem as you see it

It is currently not possible to export a node and it's sub-node contents while preserving the outline format.

Why is this a problem for you?

Portability and interoperability.

There are other outlining tools and software out there. I would benefit from being able to more easily import/export information between these applications.

E.g. I publish my blog using Drummer (an outlining software that uses OPML as a format).

Suggest a solution

Solution: Added support for "export as OPML" in the command line menu.

With this solution, I could conduct my writing in Tana, export the OPML, import into Drummer and publish. chef's kiss. This is just my particular use-case. Where OPML is the open format for outlines, it would also enable better compatibility with other outliner applications.

I believe this to be a natural export format since OPML is the open standard for outlines. OPML is an XML-based format designed to store and exchange outlines with attributes.

OPML attributes could be determined based on contents of Fields.

An "OPML package" for implementing this solution exists at: https://github.com/scripting/opmlPackage

Explain the problem as you see it

Problem: The undo/redo commands (CMD-Z/Y) are too granular. Currently, they include each character as a step.

Why is this a problem for you?

I have to button mash the undo/redo keys in order to get the intended result.

Suggest a solution

Adjust the granularity of the undo/redo commands to something more appropriate for most user circumstances. (e.g. to the level of phrase)