
Show HN: Omniflow – Structure for your thoughts - ericax
https://omniflow.io/?ref=hn
======
lxj
I like the application.

\- The demonstration video is very helpful and aesthetically pleasing

\- Tabbing to indent is awesome

\- Easy learning curve

This would be excellent for:

\- Meeting notes (as demonstrated)

\- Many little busywork tasks or shopping lists

\- General tree structures

These tools help you _remember_ a bunch of small things.

However, that is generally not my problem. I need to focus substantial brain
power toward solving a handful of problems. In that case, I find todo lists
useless. I often realise I've chosen too many tasks; many of them stupid,
unachievable or now irrelevant given new information. Furthermore, having lots
of tasks written down is a red flag for me. Lots of tasks means I need to
invest more time into problem discovery. If I just pull a list of tasks off
the top of my head and get to work, I make a serious mess.

I have lately taken to reflective practice while programming. I enter a task
and a time estimate into a Google sheet. Later I return and the sheet
calculates the actual time and estimation error. Then I write a reflective
comment. Sometimes I realise the task was too large, not well-defined, my own
bad design made an easy task hard, etc... I think reflection generates insight
and improvement. This is infinitely more useful to my everyday life than a
todo list.

Google sheets works for this, but it just works; it’s not nice and it’s
overkill really. Consequently, I think an expertly crafted, reflective todo
list could constitute a worthwhile productivity application for problem
solving.

We have had so, so many todo list apps over the years. I've tried and ditched
more than I can count, because the process of mere todo listing has very
limited usefulness in my life.

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indytechcook
This seems nice. I'm a fan of outliners.

I like your font and the general feel of the application. It does feel like
Workflowy.

It's missing some of the features of
[https://checkvist.com](https://checkvist.com) which is a more fully
functional outliner tool then Workflowy. Checkvist is also focused on being
100% keyboard driven.

Also checkout [http://www.moo.do/](http://www.moo.do/). It's a more innovate
approach then the other solutions.

I'd recommend adding some inline help for the keyboard shortcuts.

~~~
ericax
moo.do is cool, never heard of them. I agree it's more innovative, and it
would be even more powerful when Gmail integration arrives.

By inline help do you mean a shortcut cheatsheet like the one Workflowy has?
Or a tooltip-like bubbles that appear next to the note?

You're really a fan of outliners. Which one do you use?

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ryduh
I love Workflowy and this looks like a direct copy. The keyboard shortcuts do
feel a little cleaner on Omniflow though. I especially like the Control Enter
to mark an item as completed.

~~~
ericax
We like Workflowy too, and we started out wanting to build a Workflowy for
ourselves with the features we want, and this is the first iteration.

For example, we want to have a high-level structure that's easy to search,
i.e. folders and documents. We also have a bunch of other ideas, like
interconnected nodes, formatting, math equations, etc. We're trying to
validate the idea and see which way to go further.

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ildfrost
I don't like it. First, you had titled this Show HN "structure for your
thoughts", and I was expecting exactly that. Instead of what I had expected, I
have just seen another linear TODO list which I can use maybe for shopping
list, at most.

Second, honestly, how is it better than Google Docs or any other collaborative
text-editing tool?

~~~
ericax
It's better than Google Docs when you have 10 levels of things, which would be
unmanageable with most text editors.

Also it's not linear, as you can close/open items and zoom in on an item, so
that you're looking at the right context, which I personally find really
helpful.

~~~
ildfrost
Well, it is "spatially linear". Maybe if you could reference one part of text
in some other parts it would be better. What I mean is that context you are
saying about is linear, which doesn't happen often in thoughts. If you have
several deep bullet hierarchies and your context happens to contain some items
in their leaves, there is nothing that will help you see this context at once
without destroying current structure...

~~~
ericax
Ah, I got what you mean. We've thought about the idea of linking a list item
to another and may implement it in the future.

Another way to solve this problem is to have tags, like #project, and when you
click on the tag all list items that don't contain this tag will be filtered
out.

~~~
ildfrost
Yep, but it is not easy problem, I don't know any existing app that does it
well. The thing is that really useful tool would implement several types of
referencing, because there are several equally important ways for doing it,
i.e. sometimes I need to have just an arrow pointing from reference to
destination, sometimes I want a tag, which after clicking on will embed
destination in reference place, sometimes I want just some kind of preview.

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doctordrg
Looks nice and might, going to try it now

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fiatjaf
API! We need an API!

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akhilcacharya
Fantastic!

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dang
Sockpuppet votes and comments aren't allowed on HN. We're turning the penalty
down because we hate to see new work get penalized, but really please don't do
that—it's bad for HN and gets accounts flagged and/or banned.

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make4433
As one of the first users, all I can say about Omniflow is AMAZING. I believe
that most of us who frequently use our computers to take notes were forced to
adjust our tastes and habits to the weird sometime-large-some-time-small
bullets style in MS word and the tedious/complicated process of creating tree
structures. Omniflow saved us, it is incredibly user friendly, with a simple
TAB, now I can organize my thoughts in a few seconds. TAB when a subset is
needed, shift+TAB when I need to go to the upper level. I'm still using
Omniflow on a daily basis whenever I need to take notes during a meeting and
this simple tool made my life much easier.

~~~
rvikmanis
PROTIP: Include some minor criticism and tone down the praise next time.

~~~
make4433
As a developer, and the most importantly, as a user of this website, I see no
reason why my 1 point was taken off. We all know that kind of feeling when we
can call a taxi within just a few touches with Uber, or Share all of the great
moments with Instagram. This is why we are pulling all nighters just to
develop a free website that doesn't seem like it is gonna make us millionaires
in a few months. Please go ahead and try one of these websites here and let me
know if I said anything wrong in my comment about this Omniflow. And please
remember to give the 1 point back to the developers of this great website.
Thank you.

