Scratchpad

[zeitlings]

Quickly access up to 9 ephemeral scratchpads for spontaneous note-taking. 🟡 🟠 🔴 🟣 🔵 🟢

With this workflow I'm adopting the Tot approach, deliberately limiting the available workspaces to keep things simple and avoid distracting overhead. It is intended as a lightweight and flexible scratchpad for frictionless ad-hoc note-taking, brainstorming, prototyping, temporary to-do lists, jotting down thoughts, sketching ideas, instantly responding to new information as it emerges, and anything else that requires a notepad in a moment's notice. 

 

Setup

 

Define the two keyboard shortcuts, e.g.  ⌘⌥P  for the primary and  ⌘⌥⌃P  for the secondary entry point.

Usage

Press the keyboard shortcut to open the scratchpad that was last used.

• Press the keyboard shortcut again or  ⎋  to dismiss the scratchpad without saving.
•  ⌘⏎  to save your changes¹
•  ⇧⏎  to preview as rendered markdown
•  ⌥⏎  to view all pads and search your notes²
•  ⌘⇧⏎  to cycle through your scratchpads

 

Press the secondary keyboard shortcut or enter the workflow's keyword (default:  sps ) to open a list of all scratch pads and the search mask.

 

 

Notes: 
¹ Changes are also saved when previewing and when switching the active pad.
² When searching for a pad containing a keyword, the first matching line is used as subtitle. Press  ⌘L  to view the matched line as large type.

• Also, kudos to Quickpad!

 

 

Edited May 7 by zeitlings

[Imagine]

Is it possible only to view the notes in markdown instead of jumping right into the edit mode?

[zeitlings]

32 minutes ago, Imagine said:

Is it possible only to view the notes in markdown instead of jumping right into the edit mode?

 

Nope, currently not. But I was wondering the same thing and how to implement it. I still have some ideas to explore and if it is not too much of a rewrite, it might be possible soon.

[vitor]

1 hour ago, zeitlings said:

But I was wondering the same thing and how to implement it.

 

Note Taker may give you some ideas. In short, Edit and Preview use different triggers (↩ and ⌘↩) and the Text View is stacked so ⎋ takes you back to pick a different option if you want. Additionally, when using ⌘↩ to Preview, you can then ⌘↩ again to Edit in Alfred.

Another approach would be to have ↩ Preview and ⌘↩ Edit, and on the Preview mode having ↩ go to Edit.

Many options, it kind of depends on what you want the default flow to be.

[zeitlings]

Thanks, though I've found a way already without introducing any friction! 😄 Now the standard entry behaviour can be selected in the configuration and it works exactly as before. Apart from additions to the markdown view, the magic happens with some minor manipulation of the view's configuration on the fly.

I'll do some more testing and share it later.

[sepulchra]

Wow @zeitlings. I've been thinking about this very use case and came up with a way less elegant solution with a list filter. I have two small requests if they don't cause too much of a headache.....   Would it be possible to establish a location for the files instead of the path of the workflow? I like to keep my text files in a path that i can access remotely on my other devices on the go. For example,  I would like to have a folder for these files on dropbox etc. Secondly, i would love to be able to change the extension to .txt as well like Note Taker allows.  

 

And lastly your creative output and @pseudometa's is pretty incredible. So thanks to you both as we all reap the rewards of your hard work.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 8 by sepulchra

[zeitlings]

Hey @sepulchra, thanks for the kind words. I don't think it should be too much of a problem to fit in your requests 🤗

[pseudometa]

49 minutes ago, sepulchra said:

And lastly your creative output and @pseudometa's is pretty incredible. So thanks to you both as we all reap the rewards of your hard work.

 

 

 

 

Haha, many thanks, but my input for this one was rather modest, to be frank – QuickPad was literally a quick-and-dirty workflow cobbled together in 2 minutes to try out the new Text View.

 

zeitlings implementation with cycling through the pads is much smarter

[sepulchra]

Well I was referring to the totality of all of your work!

[Imagine]

4 hours ago, vitor said:

 

Note Taker may give you some ideas. In short, Edit and Preview use different triggers (↩ and ⌘↩) and the Text View is stacked so ⎋ takes you back to pick a different option if you want. Additionally, when using ↩ to Preview, you can then ⌘↩ again to Edit in Alfred.

Another approach would be to have ↩ Preview and ⌘↩ Edit, and on the Preview mode having ↩ go to Edit.

Many options, it kind of depends on what you want the default flow to be.

 

Great tip, I changed the  ⌘↩ and ↩ functionality in Note Taker and now I can view the notes in Markdown right after triggering only ↩

Edited May 8 by Imagine

[Imagine]

4 hours ago, zeitlings said:

Thanks, though I've found a way already without introducing any friction! 😄 Now the standard entry behaviour can be selected in the configuration and it works exactly as before. Apart from additions to the markdown view, the magic happens with some minor manipulation of the view's configuration on the fly.

I'll do some more testing and share it later.

 

Awesome, looking forward! 

[zeitlings]

Ready to go! 

 

5 hours ago, pseudometa said:

QuickPad was literally a quick-and-dirty workflow cobbled together in 2 minutes to try out the new Text View.

 

That's what I thought this one would be, too, only that it kind of escalated in complexity quickly. 😄

 

[sepulchra]

This is really great. I've loved my pal Tot but this may make us part company!