Taskmator - heir apparent to iOS TaskPaper?
Well, I’ve been following the quiet, stealthy and nearly silent progress of an iOS app called (today) Taskmator. It was previously called Tasque, but changed due to conflict with a Linux program. Why?
Well, despite some early pundit-grade rim shots surrounding its initial release, it would seem that this is the first (and maybe the only) fork of the recently-released source code for Jesse GrosJean’s iOS Taskpaper that is undergoing active development.
As I awkwardly quipped above, the details around this release are slight. The Developer Amit Chaudhary maintains a Facebook page, which has some info on it, but none of the usual announcement/developer language one gets used to seeing from a support page.
Some discussion on the Hog Bay Software blog started out rough: the app had several legacy issues from Jesse’s code, and seemed to be an awkward compilation of the original software code. Dropbox sync, for example, was broken.
Continued discussion on the topic revealed via Bob Hughes that the developer is quite responsive and has great plans for the app:
Taskmator version 1.2 (formerly Tasque) has fixed the Font Selection issue, the DropBox issue, and other issues. The developer has plans to keep on improving TaskMator and is very responsive to feedback (see his Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages… ).
Here are the future plans for Taskmator that the developer shared with me:
- CURRENT PLAN: First I want to
remove all important bugs in Taskmator for iOS 7 running devices.
There are still some known issues which are regression in iOS 7 2.- NEAR FUTURE PLAN: Once I am able to fix all the known issues in Taskmator , I will go ahead and make UI better. For example : Keyboard extension looks so ugly on iOS 7, Popover sheet like tag window, Go To Project..window looks ugly also. So I want to make these UI look better and smooth.
- FUTURE PLAN: Now if I am able to get good response from good number of users (positive reviews in App Store, facebook like, decent number of downloads in App Store, etc.) then I want to bring 3 features in Taskmator: a. #1: Want to make it a rich text editor.So that user can attach images, url, and can change fonts separately for a character. b. #2: Text Folding: Currently I have no idea how text folding works but I will make ressearch on it and will try my best to implement it in Taskmator c. #3: Markdown support and some other small nice features
This is good news for TaskPaper iOS users, I think. I’m a little nervous about the bloat implied by Rich Text support, but I’ll withhold judgment. Here’s hoping Mr. Chaudhary sees a fair amount of people throwing down the US$2.99 for the app to encourage his progress. I just did, and will report back here my findings.
In the meantime, I hope the developer takes a more proactive approach to talking about these plans on his support page. The TaskPaper crowd is composed of voracious readers and posters. His best hope for profitable success is to win over the biggest proponents of Plain Text Culture. And that means MacDrifter, Brett Terpstra and others.
Also - it wouldn’t hurt to mention TaskPaper compatibility in the app description.
Good luck Taskmator!