Support embedded line breaks

Jeff

I’d like to have support for multiple-line items, i.e., embedded line breaks. Many other outliners have this, and I need to import some OPML files from my previous outliner that already have them.

I have many items with multiple lines, such as quotations from books, pieces of text files, addresses, etc. I know about “notes” but that’s not what I want, and wouldn’t be practical to convert if I did. Except for Workflowy, all the other outliner apps I’ve tried do support embedded line breaks within an item. Legend even sort-of supports it already. If I import an opml file with embedded html-escaped line breaks from e.g. OmniOutliner, Dynalist, or Checkvist, it displays them as expected. However, as soon as I edit and change the item, the line breaks disappear. It would be great if they were retained, and also if there were shortcuts to enter a line break and to paste multi-line text into one item. In my specific case, with Circus Ponies Notebook, the files have unescaped raw line breaks, so those would need to be converted.

Fyi, here’s how some other apps support it:

Line breaks in opml:
- OmniOutliner: 
  
- Dynalist: 
  
- Notebook: actual unescaped line feed characters
- Checkvist: 
  
- logseq: uses markdown, not opml
- Roam Research: (not sure, couldn’t test)
Shortcut (on Mac) to type a line break:
- OmniOutliner: option(alt) + enter
- Dynalist: control + shift + enter
- Notebook: option(alt) + enter
- Checkvist: shift-enter starts multi-line mode, then enter for line breaks and command-enter to finish.
- logseq: shift-enter
- Roam Research: shift-enter
Paste multi-line text into one item:
- OmniOutliner:
  - while editing an item: command + V pastes as one multi-line item
  - while not editing an item: command + V pastes as multiple items
- Dynalist: Not currently supported?
- Notebook:
  - command + V pastes as one multi-line item
  - control + shift + command +V pastes as multiple items
- Checkvist:
  - while editing an item: command + V pastes as one multi-line item
  - while not editing an item: command + V asks whether to paste as one or multiple items
- logseq:
  - command + V pastes as one multi-line item
  - multi-item paste not supported?
- Roam Research: shift + command + V

LauraH

I would absolutely use this feature if it existed.
It would be really handy for me in calendar & agenda panes in particular.

Eik

Some how ‘shift+enter’ shortcut feels more suitable for an embedded linebreak in the item than the current ‘Edit note’. ’Edit note could be behind control + shift + enter shortcut.

Jay

We have always prevented line breaks in items for so long that I don’t even remember why anymore. At this point I’m having trouble thinking of a single reason why we can’t do it now. So I will think about this more and come back to it.

Would others find this useful too?

Jeff

Jay I’m having trouble thinking of a single reason why we can’t do it now. So I will think about this more and come back to it.

It looks like people would find this quite useful, and maybe it’s not much work for you… any hope of it happening? For me, it’s one of the two missing features that prevent me from actually using Legend (and buying a subscription).

PS, I wanted to update my original post, but it seems that we can’t edit our own posts anymore, so, regarding support in Workflowy:

Line breaks in OPML:
- Workflowy does correctly import, display, and retain multi-line items from OPML that uses 
   embedded line breaks. It works with its own official “web clipper” browser extension, and when importing OPML, e.g. from OmniOutliner or Dynalist (Dynalist actually uses 
   but it’s just the same thing in hex). Imports from Checkvist, with 
   work too; though it converts the  to a literal line break within the OPML.
Shortcut to type a line break, and
Paste multi-line text into one item:
- Workflowy doesn’t offer built-in keyboard shortcuts for these, but there are now work-arounds to add your own shortcuts for both, see: Line breaks in bullets – Workflowy

DaveT

Yes, I’d find this useful too.

they86

Yes, definetely… 🙂

Jay

Jeff I looked into it and it will be a fairly involved project as there’s some assumption throughout the code that there’s no line breaks. But I have it on my todo list and will try to get to it soon.

Jeff

Oh, that’s too bad, I had hoped it would “just work”. But now that you say it, it makes sense, given what I know now about other issues with text editing and having the cursor in the right place… I had also hoped that I could adapt my existing notes from Notebook to Legend by manually removing the line breaks, within Notebook. But I realized I have almost a decade of writing every day, and the number of times I pasted in some text clip from the internet, or a code snippet, make it basically impossible. Anyway, it’s good to know that it’s on your to-do list, thanks.