beorg news - February 2022

Hello 👋 - and thanks for joining me for the second edition of beorg news. I’ve just had a week off and I’m looking forward to finishing off the next app update - which we’ll talk more about in this newsletter.

Time off from software development

I find it good to take a proper break from programming every now and again. It isn’t always possible but I’d prepared my clients well in advance and provided them with lots of builds to test in my absence and a timeline of what I’ll be working on for them when I restarted work. Some of the things I’ve been doing other than programming:

• (Not yet complete) Lego Statue of Liberty 🗽
• Bowling and swimming with my children
• Getting ready for a new kitchen installation
• Very much enjoying Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 👩‍🚀

Templates

The next beorg update is focused on improving templates. A template will be able to configure the UI elements to show in the item editor. This will streamline adding items for specific purposes - sometimes you just don’t need to see three different types of dates! 🧘‍♀️

The other improvement to templates is that you can now specify that new items should be added at the start of a file or subtree. Thanks to Luis from the forum for a remind about this feature which was first suggested back in February 2021.

A little further ahead…

I’m still working on the database to help beorg cope better with hundreds or thousands of files. This is a project which will likely take a few more months before it is ready.

A number of users have been asking about support for habit tracking. The current version of beorg doesn’t understand the minimum/maximum range syntax and won’t include habits in the agenda. The next update makes a small step towards support for habit tracking by parsing repeat intervals which include a range so they should show up in your agenda. I’m going to start soon on allowing beorg to create and edit habits and report on how well you’re doing.

Support Center

Here are some recent tickets which users have raised:

• One user has requested I take a look at the iOS widget and tidy up some of the spacing. I’m planning on an overhaul of the widget at some point and will definitely take the time to ensure spacing is consistent so the widget looks even better on your home screens.
• I’ve been dragging my feet on subfolder support. One user was trying out this with Dropbox sync and came across a bug where beorg crashes if the folder you specify has a trailing ‘/’. This will be fixed in the next release. I hope to get subfolder enabled by default at some point.
• Backing up of templates was raised. A user wanted a way to backup the templates they’d created. You can spend hours setting things up just how you like them in an app - and there is always the worry that you’ll accidentally delete your configuration. This seems like a good suggestion and I’m going to look at how I can add this in a future update.

Thanks for reading this newsletter. Look out for the next edition in around a months time! ✌️