Import creation dates from Circus Ponies Notebook

Jeff

I have a large number of files in the now-defunct Circus Ponies Notebook, an outliner for Mac, that I’d like to move to Legend. I can do that with the OPML that Notebook outputs, but Legend doesn’t parse some of the data, such as creation dates, in the OPML. I’m hoping it would be relatively simple to add that, as retaining the creation dates is very important for me.

The creation and modification dates are in the OPML like this:

<outline text="example of creation and modification dates" created="Sat, 29 Jun 2019 21:26:33 GMT+2" changed="Fri, 02 Apr 2021 21:36:05 GMT+2"/>

There are also a few other features like checkboxes (_status="unchecked", also used by OmniOutliner), tags, due dates, etc. that are included in the OPML, which would be nice to import, but the main thing for me is the creation dates.

See my post on Slack for more info, and some test files.

Jay

Hey Jeff, I’m sorry for it taking so long to get to this, but now that Legend has all come together we’ve got a lot more bandwidth. And we’ve also built up a big test suite for parsing so it’s a lot easier to add parsing features now.

I have added support for the created, changed, and due attributes in the next beta update.

And to confirm what you’re looking for, should _status="unchecked" create a task item and _status="checked" create a completed task item?

Jay

Added in the latest beta version. https://forum.legendapp.com/d/45-august-beta-updates/32

Jeff

Oh that’s great, thanks! That puts me on track to being able to use Legend as my main notebook… I did a couple of tests and the creation date import seems to work, so I can start the process of moving things over. The other things I’m missing at the moment are support for importing embedded line breaks, and importing to a local file. I’ll make new posts for those. But having the creation dates is fantastic, it should let me bring in the bulk of my existing notes, so thanks again!