Nebulous Notes — an iOS text-editing app that syncs with Dropbox — now has an iPhone URL scheme (in version 6.0) that allows you to append or prepend text to a file in Dropbox. TaskPaper is an iOS and Mac app that allows you to manage lists, and the beauty of this app is that all the lists are just text files. And Launch Center Pro allows you to take advantage of iPhone URL schemes to take actions with other iOS apps.
Put all these together, and you can quickly add a task to TaskPaper without even opening up TaskPaper.
Before you proceed, make sure the following conditions are met:
- You have Nebulous 6.0 installed and synced with Dropbox.
- You own TaskPaper (for iOS and/or Mac) and have a list followed by the .txt extension. For the purposes of this example, I am using Inbox.txt (the .taskpaper extension is not working for me).
- You have opened this text file in Nebulous so that it’s cached, i.e., you have a copy of it on the device.
Ready? Now do the following:
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Open LCP and use the Action Composer to create a Custom URL.
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For the title, enter “Prepend Note” (or whatever, you can do “Add Task”).
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For the URL, enter the following: nebulous://TaskPaper/Inbox.txt?prepend=[prompt] (if you would rather add a task to the end of the list, replace prepend with append)
- Enter a task!
After you hit “Go” you should see that task in the correct text file in Nebulous. After it automatically syncs, open that list in TaskPaper. It should be there.
Cool, right? Since TaskPaper does not currently have an URL scheme, this seems to be the fastest way on your iPhone to add a task.
Addendum (2012-09-24)
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I just noticed that LCP now formally supports Nebulous with the above action, so you should be able to add that instead of the Custom URL mentioned above. In LCP, scroll down to Nebulous, then choose Prepend to File. For the Text field, tap “Input Prompt.” For Path, in my above example, enter TaskPaper/Inbox.txt
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After using this solution for a couple of days, I am noticing one problem: If I prepend a task in Nebulous and then do work in TaskPaper, I then have to go back to Nebulous to synchronize with changes in Dropbox. If I don’t there is a risk that next time I use the prepend action in LCP, there will be sync conflict and I’ll end up with two versions of the same text file.
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