List editing on iOS

textediting
#1

I’ve had Agenda for a while now but only recently come up with a personal use-case for using it. So now that I’m starting to delve in, I’m finding that formatting text in the iOS app is… well, frankly pretty rough.

Example: I set up a long list in Agenda on my Mac yesterday, and each item had its own sub-categories like

  • thing
    — sub-thing
    — sub-thing
  • thing
    — sub-thing

Great! So then I’m on the train later and I think to add to that list. I’ll be damned if I could figure out a way to edit that list-formatted text in any way that didn’t turn into a wreck immediately. I ended up really screwing up some of the formatting and could only fix it later back on my Mac. There are also no controls for bold or italic, which is weird.

Ulysses’s tools for text formatting are very comprehensive and unobtrusive until you need them. Heck, even the stock iOS Notes app manages to provide some useful controls which are kept minimized until needed.

(And for the love of god, we really need a button to dismiss the keyboard when browsing through a note. Just getting out of “edit” mode is brutal right now.)

I’m loving Agenda for MacOS, but I just can’t see using the iOS version much beyond referring to what I’ve already typed in on the Mac. The text editor is still too rough in its current state.

Share your feedback with us…
#3

All the tools, including bold and italic, are in the keyboard assistant bar above the keyboard. Use the control on the left to move between different sets of tools (eg paragraph style, inline style etc).

Dismissing the keyboard is actually pretty easy: drag down on that keyboard bar, or just use the built in dismissal technique, ie drag down just above the keyboard so you catch the top edge.

Kind regards,
Drew

#4

Aha, I see now. These are great. Discoverability is rough here though! I saw a highlighted “H1” and did not make the connection that tapping it would uncover a list of categories for this button. A little carat (^) at the top of the H1 button might be a good prompt. Likewise it’s not super clear that swiping down on the thing will put away the keyboard.

Glad these features are here, and they’re well done… once you know about them.

#5

The H1 button has a solid orange background, and a dividing line with the scrolling part on the right, so it should be clear it is at least a different sort of beast.

The dismissal gesture is indeed a different issue. On iPad you tend to have a button on the keyboard for it. On iPhone, you don’t, but then all apps have pretty much the same issue. There is actually a standard gesture Apple have for this: tap and drag down just above the keyboard, as if pulling the keyboard down.

It would be nice to have a button or something to dismiss on iPhone, but you have so little space to work there. We’ll think about it if we revise those controls.

#6

It just looks like that’s the style currently being applied, to be honest. When a big button just says “H1" it looks like a label or indicator of some kind, rather than one in a series of categories — particularly when it’s followed in the toolbar by more text descriptions of styles.

A icon would better indicate that this is a category.