From 2001 to 2007 I made a program called Mori. My goal was to create the perfect information manager. A place to record, process, and create ideas. It did everything that I thought I wanted…
It turns out I liked plain text better. It didn’t do as much, but it is clean, simple, and direct. Just me and my ideas without a bunch of user interface widgets in the way.
This left me in an embarrassing situation. I worked all day in my fancy information manager, and kept all my notes in plain text files on my desktop. Eventually I sold Mori.
But text files aren’t perfect either. After a while they get messy and are hard to understand and navigate. I think being free to make a mess is important, but without a way to eventually create structure they break down.
So in 2007 I created TaskPaper. It gave me a simple syntax to divide my text files up into projects, tasks, and notes. And it allowed me to filter those files so I could find things. It still works today, but it’s intended for todo lists. I wanted to try again and make a more flexible solution.
That’s why I created FoldingText.
It takes what I’ve learned building TaskPaper and tries to keep the good stuff, fix the mistakes, and make it more flexible. It’s my next stab at a “plain text productivity”. I hope it’s useful!