I’ve been using Dave Winer’s new outliner product Fargo frequently, yet I often initially enter my ideas into Drafts for iOS. Fargo works with OPML files, but if you copy a list into it (even one with tab indents), Fargo will maintain the structure, creating a new node (or “headline”) for each line and even making the tab-intended lines “children” of the main line above them.
The Problem: how to get my list in Drafts into Fargo with the least amount of effort?
It’s possible to just send the entire list to a text file in Dropbox, then access that file on the desktop, copy it, and paste it into Fargo. But there’s a better way. Inspired by Alex Guyot’s work on chopping a draft, I’ve composed a five (!) Drafts actions that let me convert a text list of any length into an OPML file that I can import into Fargo. The key to this solution is an URL Action that works as an infinite loop, in which the following occurs:
- Take first line of draft (
[[title]]
) and use it to create the opening of the OPML file. - Take the rest of the list (
[[body]]
) and create a new draft with it. - Take the first line of the new draft and append it as an outline node to the OPML file I just created.
- Take the rest of the list (
[[body]]
) and create a new draft with it. - Repeat those previous two steps ad infinitum until the loop is closed, i.e., we’re left with an empty draft.
- Then close the OPML file with the final line from the list and the closing tags.
Recent Comments