My Reluctant Transition Away From TaskPaper
TaskPaper is a to-do list app from Hog Bay Software that is surprisingly simple yet powerful. Because of it’s simplicity and power, I would rate TaskPaper far better than almost all alternatives as the alternatives tend to be more complex and not as innovative.
Hog Bay was a pioneer in apps that do “one thing well”. They did this through key UI (like TextExpander support), syncing (simpletext.ws) and minimalist, distraction-free design and functionality… all things that made TaskPaper the to-do app to beat.
Taskpaper works like a plain text editor. What you type is automatically formatted into a project, task or note based on your list’s structure. You can create your lists in the app itself or within any text editor. Being plain text, you can easily repurpose the text into other applications.
From there, it is easy to filter your lists based on projects or tags (which you assign with simple “@text” format). Advanced searching is available if needed.
Perhaps one of the most “ahead of its time” features was TaskPaper’s cloud syncing. Using the SimpleText.ws sync service you can keep your lists synced between work, home, and your iPhone or iPad and you could do this long before just about any other to-do app. This great service also works with Hog Bay’s wonderful WriteRoom app.
I love these apps, but lately I’ve been drawn more and more to just do everything in another simple app that I also love: Simplenote.
I’ve use Simplenote for as long as I’ve used Taskpaper. I used Simplenote for notes and Taskpaper for tasks. However, SimpleNote has always had some strengths that Taskpaper has not. With SimpleNote, you don’t need to save. This is done automatically and constantly. You don’t need to do anything to initiate sync either. With Taskpaper, there are explicit things you must do to sync (my loyalty to this app even lead me to accept this shortcoming by using CronniX to initiate a timed update to a .txt file in my Simpletext folder to automate these updates).
Simplenote has built on it’s strengths and has evolved into something much more powerful than Taskpaper. Simplenote has evolved into one simple but powerful thing: a cloud-based database of plain text files that can be tagged, searched, sorted, viewed and shared as notes, tasks or even Markdown previews. It’s ecosystem is amazing, especially when paired with things like Dropbox, MarkdownNote for iPad and nvAlt for the Mac.
In short Taskpaper’s strengths have become it’s shortfall. Hog Bay has already made some of their own apps (that revolve around SimpleText.ws) very outdated as they have released other great apps that I continue to use such as PlaintText for iOS (with Dropbox integration) and QuickCursor which turns a global keyboard shortcut into a way to access your favorite text editor from within any app and then automates a copying and pasting process between apps your apps to enhance your writing experience while saving you time. I continue to use WriteRoom from time to time as well, but I am finding SimpleNote is meeting all of my needs when I write anything. Anything at all… including this post.
And so, I’ve taken my plain text files from TaskPaper and moved them to my Simplenote folder in Dropbox. They have synced to my SimpleNote account and I view them, edit them and mark tasks as done using list view in SimpleNote on my iOS devices or using nvAlt on my Mac. The transition was easy and using this single app has made things even easier.
