It is wearisome to have to move the cursor out of a line (esp if a bit of powerpack code for line formatting) to avoid having the code or line split vs the option of hitting enter while cursor is anywhere in the line or lines of text to create a new entry. Checkvist uses such a function. Double clicking allows selecting text or breaking the line. I’d love the option in settings to implement such a condition.
Sorry if this is something already suggested, perhaps before I came on board as WF refugee to DL.
If my cursor is positioned in the middle (or anywhere but at the first or last character) of a line of thought, I’d like to be able to create another line below or move down a few lines (down arrow) to do so and hit ENTER only to begin a new related thought.
Command left arrow just adds interference in the workflow.
Checkvist accomplishes this by any click on a line or text selects the whole line. This is handy for the purpose I speak of and also to be able to immediately drag the line up or down to reposition.
If words within the line are intended for action, double click and drag to select.
I realize this is probably not reasonably possible within DL but my hands keep going automatically to this muscle memory way of doing things, and I prefer it.
Not everyone would want this behavior, so in my dreams, it is a toggle in preferences. But that’s just me.
Let me heap less praise on Checkvist after all. Entire blocks and not single lines are selected by a single click. And once selected, to place the cursor in an exact place to edit within the block, it takes no less than 4 clicks of the mouse. And it is for this reason I remember now that I abandoned it, losing any hope it could be my long-form writing tool/outliner.
So for everything you get, you give up something I suppose. DL still rules them all, and it ain’t done yet! Thanks for all the thought and effort and listening to feedback from users, even when it amounts to whining.
My understand of this thing is that we need to balance between smoothness and control. Checkvist style gives you lots of control, but the writing experience is less smooth (you can’t just click into an item and start editing). In other words, Checkvist has more modes, and Dynalist is pretty much modeless (i.e. only has one mode). There are pros and cons for each approach, it’s just that Dynalist has taken the modeless approach.
The thing with toggleable preference is that it’s very personal – I don’t think anyone who has not come from Checkvist would want or even expect this. They might want the same behavior (being able to insert an entry when you’re in the middle of things), but not by press Enter. I’m not aware of any other programs that do this – if your cursor is at a certain position and you press Enter, a new line should be inserted at the cursor position.
Maybe we should add a new empty shortcut that inserts a new item after the currently edited one, and transfer your cursor position there?
You said “Maybe we should add a new empty shortcut that inserts a new item after the currently edited one, and transfer your cursor position there?”
I think there’s merit to that, saves a couple of keystrokes.
Going WAY back, Ecco Pro I think was enter creates a new outline entry no matter where the cursor was. But I doubt anybody even remembers Ecco Pro. Nothing has equalled it since in my opinion.
I understand the tradeoffs, Erica, thanks for putting my request in context and offering something of a solution.
Rest assured that some people still remember Ecco Pro, Fred. I got a testimonial from a user this morning and it mentions that he was using Ecco Pro in the 1990s
Give it a look. I think it can still be had but don’t know what legacy OS it would take to run it. There might be a trick or two from Ecco Pro for DL to borrow–the sincerest form of flattery.
I think I last ran it on Win32 but seem to remember others had been able to make it work beyond that. I’ll see what I can find out and get back. Thanks for willingness to take a look.
That’s really all you have to do. Just copy the program files to a folder and create a shortcut to ecco32.exe (you can do that by copying them from another computer where Ecco is installed… for example). Although it has been reported that it works running the program in the default Windows system program folders on some setups, I would create a new folder for the program just to make sure Windows doesn’t mess with it.
If you want to use EE, simply copy the file eccoext.exe to the folder where you put the Ecco program files and create a link to this file instead of ecco32.exe.
That is really all you need to do on any current version of Windows. If you are able to swing it it’s a few minute process.
All that will be missing is the original Ecco registry entries, but they are obsolete anyway and not needed. If you really wanted them you could add them too, but I don’t see any point in it unless maybe you are still using a circa 1990s Palm Pilot in which case installing Ecco is probably the least of your worries!
It’s interesting to note that last I checked, Windows 10 may be the “last version” of Windows although there have been rumors of a Windows 11. It’s possible that “all” future versions will be updated versions of Windows 10 (I still have a hard time picturing that). And it’s also possible that someday Windows will only be available as a service. So someday we may have to qualify discussions like this by specific versions of a version. Let’s hope Ecco keeps going and we never get to having to do that!
For counterexample, a popular mode of mine is to paste a paragraph, and press enter after every sentence or major clause. This would be awkward if enter didn’t split paragraphs.
Also, dynalist has its way of combining bullets using backspace or delete, and if you didn’t have an equally easy way of splitting bullets, the enter mechanism would become bad.
